Friday 20 November 2009, 8:36 AM
Saving the "Best" for Last - Fedora 12 (Constantine)
It's been quite a wave of new Linux distributions over the past month or so, but with the release of Fedora 12 (Constantine) this week, we have finally made it through. I have intentionally chosen what is likely to be a controversial title this time, but the basis for my choice is rather simple. Fedora 12 is the only one of this series of releases which has loaded successfully on absolutely every computer I own. So rather than waste my time and yours on "yet another Fedora 12 review", I'll simply say that if you want good, authoritative information, I would recommend the Fedora Project Documentation, and if you are looking for an overview of the highlights of the new release, complete with pictures, have a look at the excellent Fedora 12 One Page Release Notes".
The Fedora 12 distribution is available in 32- and 64-bit versions, and with the Gnome or KDE desktop. It also offers a variety of other desktops as installable packages, including Xfce, Moblin, and a variety of others. I have initially installed only the Gnome version, but both the 32- and 64-bit versions on different computers, as noted below. Unlike the unhappy experience with the Fedora 11 distribution, there are no problems or restrictions with installing from the LiveCD. Installation is amazingly fast - you really have to try it for yourself to believe it - and there are relatively few questions to be answered during the installation. Once installed, Fedora 12 boots fairly quickly (between 30 seconds and a minute on my systems), and shuts down very quickly - and without imposing a silly, irritating 60-second delay.
That's it for the "review" details. If you really want a good idea of what Fedora 12 looks like, I strongly recommend the One Page Release Notes mentioned above. That not only gives an excellent overview of the new release, it also gives you a good idea of what the developers themselves are most proud of. What I will do now is give a "scorecard" of how installation of the various releases went on some of my systems:
- Fujitsu Lifebook S6510: This is really a very ordinary laptop by today's standards, with an Intel Core2 Duo CPU and associated chips for graphics and WiFi. One distribution managed to "get it wrong", though - Mandriva 2010. For some reason the xorg.conf file they generated for it during the installation was wrong, and the console came up at 1024x768 instead of 1280x800. All I had to do was delete that file, and everything was then fine both during and after installation. I installed 64-bit distributions on this system.
- ASUS N10J: This should be a pretty typical netbook, with an Intel Atom 270 CPU and associated chips (as long as I don't switch on the nVidia graphic controller). So once again, I expected this one to be "easy", but once again, one distribution got it wrong. Surprisingly, that was Ubuntu, on which the installation program (ubiquity) consistently crashed near the end of the installation, leaving the installation functional but incomplete, and incorrectly configured. I stumbled across a "work-around" for this, by turning on the nVidia card during installation. Once the installation finished successfully, it would then run perfectly well with either the nVidia or Intel graphic adapter active. I installed 32-bit distributions on this one.
- HP Pavillion dv2-1010ez: I consider this one to be a bit more "unusual", because it has an AMD Athlon Neo CPU, an ATI Radeon HD graphic controller, and an Atheros 9k WiFi adapter. To my surprise, every one of the distributions installed on it with absolutely no problems. Go figure. I installed 64-bit distributions on this one.
- Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook S2110: This is now an "old" laptop. I also expected it to have some problems, because it has an AMD Turion 64 CPU, an ATI Radeon X200 graphic controller, and an Atheros 3k WiFi adapter. In fact, only one distribution had a problem with it, and that was openSuSE, which just basically failed miserably. When I tried the 64-bit distribution, I couldn't even get the LiveCD to boot properly, and when I tried the 32-bit distribution the LiveCD booted ok and seemed to install normally, but when I try to boot the installed system, it hangs about 8 times out of 10. I still haven't been able to figure out where the problem is. I installed 64-bit distributions on this one.
- HP 2133 Mini-Note: This little guy is still my favorite, but it really does tend to be a problem for a lot of distributions. It has a VIA C7-M CPU and Chrome 9 graphic adapter and a 1280x768 display, both of which can be tricky, and a Broadcom 4312 WiFi adapter, which can be a royal pain. It turned out that I was pleasantly surprised at how well the new distributions did on it. They all at least installed and started up normally. The only one that had significant problems was openSuSE, which gets the display wrong (1024x768) because it is not using a VIA Chrome-specific driver, and doesn't have a suitable Broadcom WiFi driver. With previous releases I was able to get around the WiFi problem by using the install_bcm43xx_firmware script, but when I do that with this release openSuSE becomes very unstable, and hangs the first time I move the mouse after login. Also with previous releases I was able to install the openchrome driver from the openSuSE Software Build Service, and thus get the console right, but that package isn't in the Build Service for 11.2 yet, and when I installed the version listed for the "Factory" distribution, openSuSE again became very unstable, and strange things started happening like audio volume levels suddenly shooting up so high that I through it might blow out the built-in speakers. Fedora also does not include the Broadcom WiFi driver, but it does have the b43-fwcutter utility, so it didn't take much effort to install the b43 driver myself, and it then worked just fine. Likewise, Ubuntu does not include a Broadcom driver in the base distribution, but after the installation it offers a choice of downloading and installing either the b43 or STA driver. The b43 driver seems to cause the 2133 to hang, though, so I have only been able to get it to work properly with the STA driver. Hmmm. I guess that means that the only distribution which really installed completely "out of the box" and works properly on the 2133 was Mandriva!
- Dual Atom MiniServer: This is the one I assembled myself, with a Dual Atom 330 CPU and associated chip set, and no WiFi. All four of the distributions installed on this system with no problems, no drivers missing or needing to be added after installation, everything just went very smoothly. Too bad they all didn't go this easily.
So, of the four "major" distributions over the past month (Ubuntu 9.10, Mandriva 2010, openSuSE 11.2 and Fedora 12), the only one that didn't crash, hang or otherwise misbehave on at least one of my laptop/netbook/nettop systems was Fedora.
Of course, there is plenty more fun to come yet. New releases of Linux Mint and SimplyMEPIS are already on the horizon, and I don't think it will be long before there is another PCLinuxOS release, too. The fun never stops in the Linux world!
jw 20/11/2009
The Fedora 12 distribution is available in 32- and 64-bit versions, and with the Gnome or KDE desktop. It also offers a variety of other desktops as installable packages, including Xfce, Moblin, and a variety of others. I have initially installed only the Gnome version, but both the 32- and 64-bit versions on different computers, as noted below. Unlike the unhappy experience with the Fedora 11 distribution, there are no problems or restrictions with installing from the LiveCD. Installation is amazingly fast - you really have to try it for yourself to believe it - and there are relatively few questions to be answered during the installation. Once installed, Fedora 12 boots fairly quickly (between 30 seconds and a minute on my systems), and shuts down very quickly - and without imposing a silly, irritating 60-second delay.
That's it for the "review" details. If you really want a good idea of what Fedora 12 looks like, I strongly recommend the One Page Release Notes mentioned above. That not only gives an excellent overview of the new release, it also gives you a good idea of what the developers themselves are most proud of. What I will do now is give a "scorecard" of how installation of the various releases went on some of my systems:
- Fujitsu Lifebook S6510: This is really a very ordinary laptop by today's standards, with an Intel Core2 Duo CPU and associated chips for graphics and WiFi. One distribution managed to "get it wrong", though - Mandriva 2010. For some reason the xorg.conf file they generated for it during the installation was wrong, and the console came up at 1024x768 instead of 1280x800. All I had to do was delete that file, and everything was then fine both during and after installation. I installed 64-bit distributions on this system.
- ASUS N10J: This should be a pretty typical netbook, with an Intel Atom 270 CPU and associated chips (as long as I don't switch on the nVidia graphic controller). So once again, I expected this one to be "easy", but once again, one distribution got it wrong. Surprisingly, that was Ubuntu, on which the installation program (ubiquity) consistently crashed near the end of the installation, leaving the installation functional but incomplete, and incorrectly configured. I stumbled across a "work-around" for this, by turning on the nVidia card during installation. Once the installation finished successfully, it would then run perfectly well with either the nVidia or Intel graphic adapter active. I installed 32-bit distributions on this one.
- HP Pavillion dv2-1010ez: I consider this one to be a bit more "unusual", because it has an AMD Athlon Neo CPU, an ATI Radeon HD graphic controller, and an Atheros 9k WiFi adapter. To my surprise, every one of the distributions installed on it with absolutely no problems. Go figure. I installed 64-bit distributions on this one.
- Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook S2110: This is now an "old" laptop. I also expected it to have some problems, because it has an AMD Turion 64 CPU, an ATI Radeon X200 graphic controller, and an Atheros 3k WiFi adapter. In fact, only one distribution had a problem with it, and that was openSuSE, which just basically failed miserably. When I tried the 64-bit distribution, I couldn't even get the LiveCD to boot properly, and when I tried the 32-bit distribution the LiveCD booted ok and seemed to install normally, but when I try to boot the installed system, it hangs about 8 times out of 10. I still haven't been able to figure out where the problem is. I installed 64-bit distributions on this one.
- HP 2133 Mini-Note: This little guy is still my favorite, but it really does tend to be a problem for a lot of distributions. It has a VIA C7-M CPU and Chrome 9 graphic adapter and a 1280x768 display, both of which can be tricky, and a Broadcom 4312 WiFi adapter, which can be a royal pain. It turned out that I was pleasantly surprised at how well the new distributions did on it. They all at least installed and started up normally. The only one that had significant problems was openSuSE, which gets the display wrong (1024x768) because it is not using a VIA Chrome-specific driver, and doesn't have a suitable Broadcom WiFi driver. With previous releases I was able to get around the WiFi problem by using the install_bcm43xx_firmware script, but when I do that with this release openSuSE becomes very unstable, and hangs the first time I move the mouse after login. Also with previous releases I was able to install the openchrome driver from the openSuSE Software Build Service, and thus get the console right, but that package isn't in the Build Service for 11.2 yet, and when I installed the version listed for the "Factory" distribution, openSuSE again became very unstable, and strange things started happening like audio volume levels suddenly shooting up so high that I through it might blow out the built-in speakers. Fedora also does not include the Broadcom WiFi driver, but it does have the b43-fwcutter utility, so it didn't take much effort to install the b43 driver myself, and it then worked just fine. Likewise, Ubuntu does not include a Broadcom driver in the base distribution, but after the installation it offers a choice of downloading and installing either the b43 or STA driver. The b43 driver seems to cause the 2133 to hang, though, so I have only been able to get it to work properly with the STA driver. Hmmm. I guess that means that the only distribution which really installed completely "out of the box" and works properly on the 2133 was Mandriva!
- Dual Atom MiniServer: This is the one I assembled myself, with a Dual Atom 330 CPU and associated chip set, and no WiFi. All four of the distributions installed on this system with no problems, no drivers missing or needing to be added after installation, everything just went very smoothly. Too bad they all didn't go this easily.
So, of the four "major" distributions over the past month (Ubuntu 9.10, Mandriva 2010, openSuSE 11.2 and Fedora 12), the only one that didn't crash, hang or otherwise misbehave on at least one of my laptop/netbook/nettop systems was Fedora.
Of course, there is plenty more fun to come yet. New releases of Linux Mint and SimplyMEPIS are already on the horizon, and I don't think it will be long before there is another PCLinuxOS release, too. The fun never stops in the Linux world!
jw 20/11/2009
Wednesday 18 November 2009, 1:31 PM
Toshiba TG01 running Windows Mobile 6.5
When we first saw the TG01 from Toshiba we were both delighted and displeased. There was a lot to like, but Toshiba’s cranky front end to its operating system Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional was, in our view, strangely misconstrued.
The TG01 has made a reappearance running Windows Mobile 6.5 and the news is better. The front end, which reminded us of nothing more than a slot machine, is gone, at least nominally. Right out of the box there is, on our Orange-badged device, a simpler main screen comprising a scrolling menu of key features: pictures, music, clock, phone, voicemail, text, email and favourites. Tap that last one and a horizontally scrolling menu pops up that you can populate with apps you're likely to want to use often.
It still isn’t ideal, though. As noted in our review of the TG01the first time round, the device is hampered by a touchscreen that needs firm pressure rather than a gentle caress. To be fair, if you are naturally heavy-handed or have not experienced the best capacitive touchscreens, you’ll probably not notice this. But it is an issue.
And you can call up the slot-machine-style interface if you want it.
What did appeal last time round, and still does now, is the sleek design and huge screen. At 130mm by 70mm by 9.9mm and 129g the TG01 feels more like a media player than a phone, and its 4.1in. 800-by-480-pixel display is bright and sharp. Toshiba makes the most of it, but even here everything isn’t rosy: the TV Player link pointed to an Orange web page that's currently under development.
As for the remaining specifications, there’s the very capable Snapdragon processor, running at 1GHz, as the headline feature.
The remaining specifications include HSDPA (7.2Mbps/2Mbps), quad-band GSM, GPS, Wi-Fi, a 3.2 megapixel camera, 512MB ROM, 256MB RAM and a microSD card slot complete with an 8MB card in our review sample. It's just a shame in such large hardware that Toshiba could not have engineered the microSD card slot so that it is accessible without removing the battery.
Sadly the headset connector is microUSB at the handset end, although there is a 3.5mm adapter just past the microphone so you can use your favourite headphones if you wish.
The hardware details seem unchanged from the original TG01. It appears to be just the updated OS that is new. Full details are at Toshiba’s web site, although when we visited it the device was still being listed as running Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional.
Sandra Vogel
The TG01 has made a reappearance running Windows Mobile 6.5 and the news is better. The front end, which reminded us of nothing more than a slot machine, is gone, at least nominally. Right out of the box there is, on our Orange-badged device, a simpler main screen comprising a scrolling menu of key features: pictures, music, clock, phone, voicemail, text, email and favourites. Tap that last one and a horizontally scrolling menu pops up that you can populate with apps you're likely to want to use often.
It still isn’t ideal, though. As noted in our review of the TG01the first time round, the device is hampered by a touchscreen that needs firm pressure rather than a gentle caress. To be fair, if you are naturally heavy-handed or have not experienced the best capacitive touchscreens, you’ll probably not notice this. But it is an issue.
And you can call up the slot-machine-style interface if you want it.
What did appeal last time round, and still does now, is the sleek design and huge screen. At 130mm by 70mm by 9.9mm and 129g the TG01 feels more like a media player than a phone, and its 4.1in. 800-by-480-pixel display is bright and sharp. Toshiba makes the most of it, but even here everything isn’t rosy: the TV Player link pointed to an Orange web page that's currently under development.
As for the remaining specifications, there’s the very capable Snapdragon processor, running at 1GHz, as the headline feature.
The remaining specifications include HSDPA (7.2Mbps/2Mbps), quad-band GSM, GPS, Wi-Fi, a 3.2 megapixel camera, 512MB ROM, 256MB RAM and a microSD card slot complete with an 8MB card in our review sample. It's just a shame in such large hardware that Toshiba could not have engineered the microSD card slot so that it is accessible without removing the battery.
Sadly the headset connector is microUSB at the handset end, although there is a 3.5mm adapter just past the microphone so you can use your favourite headphones if you wish.
The hardware details seem unchanged from the original TG01. It appears to be just the updated OS that is new. Full details are at Toshiba’s web site, although when we visited it the device was still being listed as running Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional.
Sandra Vogel
Tuesday 17 November 2009, 3:27 PM
Windows Marketplace available on 6.1 and 6.0 devices, but needs more apps
It has taken a little while, but Microsoft has finally released its Marketplace for Windows 6.1 and 6.0 devices.
This means that owners of those devices have access to over the air application download, bringing them into line with Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets.
The range of applications is still woefully small, though. When announcing Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 Microsoft seemed rather proud to be able to offer over 800 applications – more than three times the number available at launch.
Microsoft might be new to the over the air apps game, but it is by no means new to the smartphone applications sector, and having just 800 apps in its marketplace is woeful.
On 4 November Apple announced that its App Store was hosting 100,000 applications and that more than two billion downloads had been made onto devices. Statistics at Androlib.com suggest as many as 16,000 applications are available for Android based devices (nearly two thirds of them free).
We all know that more is not necessarily better. Just because there are thousands more apps on other platforms, does not mean that all those apps are good, let alone great. But there are enough good and great ones to make the app stores key drivers for the device.
If Microsoft is really interested in pushing Windows Mobile at the consumer sector as well as the business user it needs to buck its ideas up on the apps front. There are thousands of Windows Mobile compatible apps out there, they just aren’t all in the Marketplace yet. Microsoft needs to make getting them there a priority.
Meanwhile, if you want the Marketplace on your Windows Mobile 6.1 or 6.0 device visit http://mp.windowsphone.com from your device or go to http://windowsphone.com/getmarketplace from your PC.
This means that owners of those devices have access to over the air application download, bringing them into line with Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets.
The range of applications is still woefully small, though. When announcing Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 Microsoft seemed rather proud to be able to offer over 800 applications – more than three times the number available at launch.
Microsoft might be new to the over the air apps game, but it is by no means new to the smartphone applications sector, and having just 800 apps in its marketplace is woeful.
On 4 November Apple announced that its App Store was hosting 100,000 applications and that more than two billion downloads had been made onto devices. Statistics at Androlib.com suggest as many as 16,000 applications are available for Android based devices (nearly two thirds of them free).
We all know that more is not necessarily better. Just because there are thousands more apps on other platforms, does not mean that all those apps are good, let alone great. But there are enough good and great ones to make the app stores key drivers for the device.
If Microsoft is really interested in pushing Windows Mobile at the consumer sector as well as the business user it needs to buck its ideas up on the apps front. There are thousands of Windows Mobile compatible apps out there, they just aren’t all in the Marketplace yet. Microsoft needs to make getting them there a priority.
Meanwhile, if you want the Marketplace on your Windows Mobile 6.1 or 6.0 device visit http://mp.windowsphone.com from your device or go to http://windowsphone.com/getmarketplace from your PC.
Monday 16 November 2009, 9:10 PM
openSuSE 11.2
I've been trying out the new openSuSE 11.2 release for nearly a week now, loading it on everything I have. It's been a mixed bag of results, starting out very strong, and ending up with several significant disappointments. Here is a summary of the highs (and lows):
The cosmetics look great. I have to say, over the past couple of releases openSuSE has gone from what seemed like a fairly "stodgy" distribution, both in terms of cosmetics and content, to one which I think is right up with the absolute leaders in both of those.
One of the first things I noticed, on the first system I installed openSuSE on, was that they have fixed the problem with non-U.S. keyboard maps not working. Hooray! That one has been a minor pain in the neck since Milestone 5 or so, and when it was still there in the RC releases, I was afraid it wouldn't get fixed before the final release. Well done!
Installation from the LiveCD was reasonably easy. It seems to me that with previous openSuSE releases, if you installed from the LiveCD on a system which did not have an internet connection (such as a laptop or netbook which depends on WiFi that is not yet configured), it could stumble when trying to configure software update and repository information, and that could be a bit tedious to recover from once you booted the installed system. That is certainly not the case with this release, I installed all of my netbooks without internet connection, then configured the WiFi afterward, and they call came out just fine.
The openSuSE 11.2 release installed flawlessly on my Fujitsu S6510 (laptop), HP dv2-1010ez (subnotebook) and ASUS N10J (netbook). At that point I thought I was pretty much home free, because it had successfully covered a range of systems, CPUs, graphic controllers and network adapters. I was starting to think that, considering the problems with Ubuntu this time around, maybe I would consider openSuSE as my first-choice Linux for everyday use. Then things started to go south...
When I installed 11.2 on my HP 2133 Mini-Note, everything seemed to go pretty much as it had with openSuSE 11.1, which worked ok with a bit of tweaking on the 2133. The console was only 1024x768, rather than 1280x768, and the Broadcom WiFi adapter didn't work. I already knew how to solve both of those problems, from 11.1. So went to the openSuSE Software Build Service, and used 1-click install (really nice!) to download and install the latest SVN build of the openchrome graphic driver. When I rebooted, the console was indeed 1280x768, but several other things were seriously screwed up, most noticeably the sound having gone to some ridiculously high volume that I could not get down again. So I backed that out, and then I noticed that there has been a new release of openchrome, apparently newer than the SVN build i had been using, and it is also in the openSuSE Software Build Service. So I tried that, and got the same results. Sigh. Ok, back those out, stay with the standard driver at the lower resolution for now. Sigh.
Next up, get the WiFi working. This one I knew from 11.1 also, and if anything it is even a little easier. Just run install_bcm43xx_firmware - that's a script that comes on openSuSE which picks up the firmware cuts out the bits you need and puts them in the right place - and then reboot. Nice and easy. Except when I rebooted, openSuSE would freeze as soon as I touched the trackpad. Every time, frozen solid, the only way out was to hold the power switch for 5 seconds. Grrr. I confirmed that it was the WiFi adapter causing the problem by switching it off while openSuSE was booting, and confirming that it then didn't freeze. Once that was clear, I added the b43 driver to /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf, and the freezes stopped without me having to remember to switch off the WiFi.
At that point I was left with the 2133 having sub-standard graphics and no WiFi, and I decided that it wasn't worth fighting with any more. I'll leave it loaded, and pick up updates from time to time by plugging in wired ethernet, in hopes that some fixes will come along that take care of one or both of these problems. I'll also keep an eye on the openSuSE Software Build Service for a new build of the openchrome driver specifically for 11.2, in hopes that will fix the graphic problem. I would also like to try the Broadcom "wl" driver package from the Build Service, but I honestly don't know which one to try (default, desktop, kmp or whatever) so that is going to take some time to figure out. I know that I have had much better success with Ubuntu on the 2133 when I use the STA (wl) drivers rather than the b43, so I hope that will be true for openSuSE too.
Having effectively given up on openSuSE on the 2133 for now, I moved on to my trusty old Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook S2110. It has an AMD Turion 64 CPU and ATI Radeon X200 graphic controller, which used to be a bit touchy but for the past few releases haven't been any great problem. Installation seemed uneventful. But when I tried to boot the installed system, it hung with a black screen. BLEAH! Several tries, always the same result. This is getting tiresome. I booted to safe mode, that worked just fine. I used startx to get the X server going, and that worked fine too. Strange. I fiddled with the rc5.d scripts, to try to isolate where it was hanging, but I started getting strange results, sometimes it seemed like one stage, sometimes another, and sometimes it even seemed to come all the way up without hanging. Very strange. I finally gave up on that in disgust as well. I don't have the time to fight with those kinds of things any more.
So, the bottom line is that on my three newest systems, openSuSE 11.2 installs easily, looks wonderful and works great. I suspect it will behave this way with many or most "newer" systems. But with my two older systems, one VIA CPU/graphic based (2133) and one AMD/ATI CPU/graphic based (S2110), it has all sorts of problems, so serious that even I gave up on it, at least for the time being.
Your mileage may vary. Mine did.
jw 16/11/2009
The cosmetics look great. I have to say, over the past couple of releases openSuSE has gone from what seemed like a fairly "stodgy" distribution, both in terms of cosmetics and content, to one which I think is right up with the absolute leaders in both of those.
One of the first things I noticed, on the first system I installed openSuSE on, was that they have fixed the problem with non-U.S. keyboard maps not working. Hooray! That one has been a minor pain in the neck since Milestone 5 or so, and when it was still there in the RC releases, I was afraid it wouldn't get fixed before the final release. Well done!
Installation from the LiveCD was reasonably easy. It seems to me that with previous openSuSE releases, if you installed from the LiveCD on a system which did not have an internet connection (such as a laptop or netbook which depends on WiFi that is not yet configured), it could stumble when trying to configure software update and repository information, and that could be a bit tedious to recover from once you booted the installed system. That is certainly not the case with this release, I installed all of my netbooks without internet connection, then configured the WiFi afterward, and they call came out just fine.
The openSuSE 11.2 release installed flawlessly on my Fujitsu S6510 (laptop), HP dv2-1010ez (subnotebook) and ASUS N10J (netbook). At that point I thought I was pretty much home free, because it had successfully covered a range of systems, CPUs, graphic controllers and network adapters. I was starting to think that, considering the problems with Ubuntu this time around, maybe I would consider openSuSE as my first-choice Linux for everyday use. Then things started to go south...
When I installed 11.2 on my HP 2133 Mini-Note, everything seemed to go pretty much as it had with openSuSE 11.1, which worked ok with a bit of tweaking on the 2133. The console was only 1024x768, rather than 1280x768, and the Broadcom WiFi adapter didn't work. I already knew how to solve both of those problems, from 11.1. So went to the openSuSE Software Build Service, and used 1-click install (really nice!) to download and install the latest SVN build of the openchrome graphic driver. When I rebooted, the console was indeed 1280x768, but several other things were seriously screwed up, most noticeably the sound having gone to some ridiculously high volume that I could not get down again. So I backed that out, and then I noticed that there has been a new release of openchrome, apparently newer than the SVN build i had been using, and it is also in the openSuSE Software Build Service. So I tried that, and got the same results. Sigh. Ok, back those out, stay with the standard driver at the lower resolution for now. Sigh.
Next up, get the WiFi working. This one I knew from 11.1 also, and if anything it is even a little easier. Just run install_bcm43xx_firmware - that's a script that comes on openSuSE which picks up the firmware cuts out the bits you need and puts them in the right place - and then reboot. Nice and easy. Except when I rebooted, openSuSE would freeze as soon as I touched the trackpad. Every time, frozen solid, the only way out was to hold the power switch for 5 seconds. Grrr. I confirmed that it was the WiFi adapter causing the problem by switching it off while openSuSE was booting, and confirming that it then didn't freeze. Once that was clear, I added the b43 driver to /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf, and the freezes stopped without me having to remember to switch off the WiFi.
At that point I was left with the 2133 having sub-standard graphics and no WiFi, and I decided that it wasn't worth fighting with any more. I'll leave it loaded, and pick up updates from time to time by plugging in wired ethernet, in hopes that some fixes will come along that take care of one or both of these problems. I'll also keep an eye on the openSuSE Software Build Service for a new build of the openchrome driver specifically for 11.2, in hopes that will fix the graphic problem. I would also like to try the Broadcom "wl" driver package from the Build Service, but I honestly don't know which one to try (default, desktop, kmp or whatever) so that is going to take some time to figure out. I know that I have had much better success with Ubuntu on the 2133 when I use the STA (wl) drivers rather than the b43, so I hope that will be true for openSuSE too.
Having effectively given up on openSuSE on the 2133 for now, I moved on to my trusty old Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook S2110. It has an AMD Turion 64 CPU and ATI Radeon X200 graphic controller, which used to be a bit touchy but for the past few releases haven't been any great problem. Installation seemed uneventful. But when I tried to boot the installed system, it hung with a black screen. BLEAH! Several tries, always the same result. This is getting tiresome. I booted to safe mode, that worked just fine. I used startx to get the X server going, and that worked fine too. Strange. I fiddled with the rc5.d scripts, to try to isolate where it was hanging, but I started getting strange results, sometimes it seemed like one stage, sometimes another, and sometimes it even seemed to come all the way up without hanging. Very strange. I finally gave up on that in disgust as well. I don't have the time to fight with those kinds of things any more.
So, the bottom line is that on my three newest systems, openSuSE 11.2 installs easily, looks wonderful and works great. I suspect it will behave this way with many or most "newer" systems. But with my two older systems, one VIA CPU/graphic based (2133) and one AMD/ATI CPU/graphic based (S2110), it has all sorts of problems, so serious that even I gave up on it, at least for the time being.
Your mileage may vary. Mine did.
jw 16/11/2009
Thursday 12 November 2009, 8:38 AM
Mandriva One 2010.0 (including Moblin UI)
I know, I know... I'm late, Mandriva 2010 has been out for a week now, and openSuSE is due out already today. This is a crazy time of year, with all of these releases coming so close together, but I do the best that I can to keep up, even if it is a bit slowly.
I think I'll put the wagon before the horse this time. Mandriva Linux is one of the long-established distributions, and it just keeps getting better. There are plenty of reasons to choose it on its own merits, as it is a good, solid, stable distribution, it has wide support in the Linux community, and they do a good job of keeping up with the latest packages and device drivers. But in addition to all of that, if you have had trouble with the new Ubuntu 9.10 distribution, or you are a bit reluctant about it because of the numerous reports of problems circulating... or even if you are just becoming uneasy about the direction that Canonical is moving, then this could be a very good time to take a look at Mandriva Linux.
I always use the Mandriva One distribution, because I want the added proprietary drivers and packages it includes. If you want to stick with a strictly FOSS distribution, you can choose Mandriva Free. If you want the "Full Monty", with support and printed documentation, go for the Powerpack distribution. There is generally also a "Mandriva-On-A-Stick" USB drive option, but it doesn't seem to be ready for the 2010 distribution quite yet, it should be out soon.
I ran into a bit of a problem with installation on a couple of my notebook/netbook systems. Mandriva seems to still be trying to generate an X.org config file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) on the fly during installation, and with the newest X server they are somehow getting it wrong on a few systems, and when you boot the LiveCD the console display is black. All I did was press the power button, and let the system shut down normally, then reboot and choose "Safe Mode" or whatever Mandriva calls it, to get a text console. Then delete the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and run startx. If you get a normal desktop display, you can continue with the installation; if the console is black again, I don't know what else to suggest, as that has not happened to me.
Installation is fast and easy, with very few questions. Mandriva offers both KDE and Gnome LiveCDs; I usually use their KDE version. The installer window was a bit small for my system, so things were cramped and difficult to read in the disk partitioning step (especially on the netbooks), but it was no problem to either resize or just maximize the window, and then all was well. Device driver support is excellent, there was not a single device on any of my systems which wasn't supported in the LiveCD installation, including the various ATI graphic controllers and Atheros WiFi controllers.
Once the installation has completed and you have rebooted, you might have to deal with the X.org config problem one more time. On one of my laptops the console resolution was incorrect, 1024x768 rather than 1280x800. Again, the solution was to get rid of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, and reboot so that the X display server could figure out the "right" thing to do. In fact, I ended up doing this on all of my systems, even the ones on which the console appeared to be correct, because I would prefer to run without the config file if possible. If you want to be on the safe side, you can simply rename the config file to xorg.conf.Mandriva or some such.
Besides that little hiccup (and heaven knows Mandriva is not the only one struggling with X.org configuration right now), everything else in Mandriva 2010 seems to look wonderful and work well. The graphics are once again a lovely improvement... funny thing about that, isn't it? Almost every time a new distribution comes out, there is a lot of ooohhh and aaahhhh about how nice the graphics are, and yet six months later when the next release comes out, they are perceived to be "even better". I'm as guilty as the next person of this, but I guess it is just that a fresh new look is always a welcome change.
Mandriva 2010 includes the usual array of utilities, applications and packages. Firefox 3.5.5, OpenOffice 3.1.1, GIMP for grpahics, Amarok for audio and Dragon Player for video, and of course lots of KDE applications and applets. If a particular package that you want, need or prefer isn't installed, you can generally find it through "Install & Remove Software", as I did for things like Thunderbird.
The other interesting thing about Mandriva 2010 is the alternative desktops that are available - in particular, Xfce and Moblin. Since I was just writing about Moblin (whinging about it, to be honest), I decided to give the Mandriva implementation of it a try, in hopes that it would work better than the "native" Moblin distribution.
Installation was easy, I just selected task-moblin in the Control Center / Install & Remove Software utility. That downloaded and installed something like a hundred packages, which took another 10 minutes or so. Once that was complete, I just logged out, and then on the Login screen I clicked the "pencil and paper" icon, chose Moblin from the drop-down list, and logged in.
I was surprised at the Moblin desktop that came up. Although it says Moblin 2.1, the background and icons were clearly still those from the 2.0 release. Also, there is a gap in the icon bar where the Bluetooth icon appears in the native Moblin 2.1 desktop. I did some poking around, and got more confused rather than less. This really does look like a strange mix of Moblin 2.0 and 2.1, but at least it seems to have most of the Mandriva KDE menus integrated into the applications section - but not all of it. It seemed to function better, or at least more reliably, than the Moblin 2.1 distribution I tried the past couple of days, at least nothing hung or crashed on me as I was testing it. After a good bit of investigation and testing I decided that this might really be a better and more reliable implementation than Moblin's own distribution, so if and when Mandriva finishes updating everything to the Moblin 2.1 standard, it could be a good alternative if this style of "social networking" desktop is what you need.
Then came the unpleasant part. Ok, I'm done looking at Moblin, I'm ready to go back to the normal Mandriva KDE desktop. Just logout and select a KDE session, right? Well, of course, this is Moblin, so there is no "Leave/Logout/Reboot/Shutdown" button. Hmmm. Well, at least I remember that Moblin 2.1 reacts to Ctl-Alt-Del by rebooting, so I can do that. Not. No reaction. Sigh. All right, start a console terminal window, and kill the X server, that will log me out... except I can't find one in the application menus! This is getting irritating.
Ok, so I have to hit the power button, let it shut down and power off, and then start over. That works, except.... GRRRRR! Mandriva has this nasty habit of setting itself for automatic login without me telling it to, so when I rebooted it came right back up into Moblin! Now I'm mad. I could probably do a safe mode boot, or boot one of the other Linux partitions, and fix it from there, but I don't want to do that. There has to be a way to get out of this mess.
After a good bit more digging around, I finally remembered (stumbled across, actually), Applications / System Tools / Configure Your Computer / System / Open a console as administrator. Whew. From there I could kill the X server, which logged me out, and then select the KDE desktop again on login.
I will say this again about Moblin. They might think it is "cool", or "chic", or "new wave" to make a system without a Logout/Shutdown selection, but it is a mistake. You think you are being very "modern", but what you are doing is making things less obvious, and therefore more difficult, for a lot of people. It wouldn't hurt anything, other than perhaps a few over-inflated egos, to add one more bizarre hieroglyphic to the menu bar, and put "Lock Screen / Logout / Suspend / Reboot / Shutdown" on there!!! End of Rant.
To summarize, Mandriva 2010 is, as expected, a worthy successor in their long line of distributions. It installs easily, it supports all of the hardware that I tried it on with ease, and it works well. Their Moblin desktop seems to work better than Moblin's own distribution, but that is rather thin praise. If you have been using Mandriva Linux previously, you are likely to be pleased with this one.
jw 12/11/2009
I think I'll put the wagon before the horse this time. Mandriva Linux is one of the long-established distributions, and it just keeps getting better. There are plenty of reasons to choose it on its own merits, as it is a good, solid, stable distribution, it has wide support in the Linux community, and they do a good job of keeping up with the latest packages and device drivers. But in addition to all of that, if you have had trouble with the new Ubuntu 9.10 distribution, or you are a bit reluctant about it because of the numerous reports of problems circulating... or even if you are just becoming uneasy about the direction that Canonical is moving, then this could be a very good time to take a look at Mandriva Linux.
I always use the Mandriva One distribution, because I want the added proprietary drivers and packages it includes. If you want to stick with a strictly FOSS distribution, you can choose Mandriva Free. If you want the "Full Monty", with support and printed documentation, go for the Powerpack distribution. There is generally also a "Mandriva-On-A-Stick" USB drive option, but it doesn't seem to be ready for the 2010 distribution quite yet, it should be out soon.
I ran into a bit of a problem with installation on a couple of my notebook/netbook systems. Mandriva seems to still be trying to generate an X.org config file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) on the fly during installation, and with the newest X server they are somehow getting it wrong on a few systems, and when you boot the LiveCD the console display is black. All I did was press the power button, and let the system shut down normally, then reboot and choose "Safe Mode" or whatever Mandriva calls it, to get a text console. Then delete the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and run startx. If you get a normal desktop display, you can continue with the installation; if the console is black again, I don't know what else to suggest, as that has not happened to me.
Installation is fast and easy, with very few questions. Mandriva offers both KDE and Gnome LiveCDs; I usually use their KDE version. The installer window was a bit small for my system, so things were cramped and difficult to read in the disk partitioning step (especially on the netbooks), but it was no problem to either resize or just maximize the window, and then all was well. Device driver support is excellent, there was not a single device on any of my systems which wasn't supported in the LiveCD installation, including the various ATI graphic controllers and Atheros WiFi controllers.
Once the installation has completed and you have rebooted, you might have to deal with the X.org config problem one more time. On one of my laptops the console resolution was incorrect, 1024x768 rather than 1280x800. Again, the solution was to get rid of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, and reboot so that the X display server could figure out the "right" thing to do. In fact, I ended up doing this on all of my systems, even the ones on which the console appeared to be correct, because I would prefer to run without the config file if possible. If you want to be on the safe side, you can simply rename the config file to xorg.conf.Mandriva or some such.
Besides that little hiccup (and heaven knows Mandriva is not the only one struggling with X.org configuration right now), everything else in Mandriva 2010 seems to look wonderful and work well. The graphics are once again a lovely improvement... funny thing about that, isn't it? Almost every time a new distribution comes out, there is a lot of ooohhh and aaahhhh about how nice the graphics are, and yet six months later when the next release comes out, they are perceived to be "even better". I'm as guilty as the next person of this, but I guess it is just that a fresh new look is always a welcome change.
Mandriva 2010 includes the usual array of utilities, applications and packages. Firefox 3.5.5, OpenOffice 3.1.1, GIMP for grpahics, Amarok for audio and Dragon Player for video, and of course lots of KDE applications and applets. If a particular package that you want, need or prefer isn't installed, you can generally find it through "Install & Remove Software", as I did for things like Thunderbird.
The other interesting thing about Mandriva 2010 is the alternative desktops that are available - in particular, Xfce and Moblin. Since I was just writing about Moblin (whinging about it, to be honest), I decided to give the Mandriva implementation of it a try, in hopes that it would work better than the "native" Moblin distribution.
Installation was easy, I just selected task-moblin in the Control Center / Install & Remove Software utility. That downloaded and installed something like a hundred packages, which took another 10 minutes or so. Once that was complete, I just logged out, and then on the Login screen I clicked the "pencil and paper" icon, chose Moblin from the drop-down list, and logged in.
I was surprised at the Moblin desktop that came up. Although it says Moblin 2.1, the background and icons were clearly still those from the 2.0 release. Also, there is a gap in the icon bar where the Bluetooth icon appears in the native Moblin 2.1 desktop. I did some poking around, and got more confused rather than less. This really does look like a strange mix of Moblin 2.0 and 2.1, but at least it seems to have most of the Mandriva KDE menus integrated into the applications section - but not all of it. It seemed to function better, or at least more reliably, than the Moblin 2.1 distribution I tried the past couple of days, at least nothing hung or crashed on me as I was testing it. After a good bit of investigation and testing I decided that this might really be a better and more reliable implementation than Moblin's own distribution, so if and when Mandriva finishes updating everything to the Moblin 2.1 standard, it could be a good alternative if this style of "social networking" desktop is what you need.
Then came the unpleasant part. Ok, I'm done looking at Moblin, I'm ready to go back to the normal Mandriva KDE desktop. Just logout and select a KDE session, right? Well, of course, this is Moblin, so there is no "Leave/Logout/Reboot/Shutdown" button. Hmmm. Well, at least I remember that Moblin 2.1 reacts to Ctl-Alt-Del by rebooting, so I can do that. Not. No reaction. Sigh. All right, start a console terminal window, and kill the X server, that will log me out... except I can't find one in the application menus! This is getting irritating.
Ok, so I have to hit the power button, let it shut down and power off, and then start over. That works, except.... GRRRRR! Mandriva has this nasty habit of setting itself for automatic login without me telling it to, so when I rebooted it came right back up into Moblin! Now I'm mad. I could probably do a safe mode boot, or boot one of the other Linux partitions, and fix it from there, but I don't want to do that. There has to be a way to get out of this mess.
After a good bit more digging around, I finally remembered (stumbled across, actually), Applications / System Tools / Configure Your Computer / System / Open a console as administrator. Whew. From there I could kill the X server, which logged me out, and then select the KDE desktop again on login.
I will say this again about Moblin. They might think it is "cool", or "chic", or "new wave" to make a system without a Logout/Shutdown selection, but it is a mistake. You think you are being very "modern", but what you are doing is making things less obvious, and therefore more difficult, for a lot of people. It wouldn't hurt anything, other than perhaps a few over-inflated egos, to add one more bizarre hieroglyphic to the menu bar, and put "Lock Screen / Logout / Suspend / Reboot / Shutdown" on there!!! End of Rant.
To summarize, Mandriva 2010 is, as expected, a worthy successor in their long line of distributions. It installs easily, it supports all of the hardware that I tried it on with ease, and it works well. Their Moblin desktop seems to work better than Moblin's own distribution, but that is rather thin praise. If you have been using Mandriva Linux previously, you are likely to be pleased with this one.
jw 12/11/2009
Wednesday 11 November 2009, 11:53 AM
Logitech buys LifeSize for $405m
A few weeks ago I met with Craig Malloy, co-founder and CEO of high-definition videoconferencing specialist LifeSize Communications, as the company was introducing its Skype-compatible Passport product. Naturally the conversation touched on Cisco's recent purchase of Tandberg. I asked Craig, somewhat flippantly, 'What if someone came waving $3 billion at you?', to which he replied, 'I guess we'd be acquired'. As it turns out, $405 million did the job, as this is the sum that Logitech is paying, in cash, for the company.
LifeSize and Logitech clearly fit well together: Logitech is a $2.2 billion peripherals company with 8,000 employees and a sales footprint in over 100 countries; LifeSize is a $90 million HD videoconferencing specialist with about 300 employees and a customer base that takes in enterprises, SMEs, healthcare, education and government. We've reviewed LifeSize kit and been impressed with its value for money compared to traditional 'telepresence' offerings. With Logitech's muscle behind it, LifeSize — which will retain its name and operate as a separate division under Malloy — looks well placed to improve its position in the business videoconferencing market.
Following Cisco/Tandberg and now Logitech/LifeSize, some observers are asking whether the remaining independent videoconferencing specialist, Polycom, will be the next to be snapped up. With 2008 revenues of $1.1 billion, it'll be a lot more expensive than LifeSize, that's for sure.
In a statement, Steve Leyland, Polycom's general manager EMEA, said: "Today’s news is further evidence that visual communications is on the cusp of going mainstream. Polycom is the market-share leader in the industry with the most comprehensive solution for video-enabling businesses of all sizes, and remains focused on delivering the best open, standards-based solutions to our customers. Polycom is well positioned to lead this market from a technology, financial and execution standpoint. We see this as creating additional opportunities for Polycom and our partners as the only independent video solution provider of scale".
LifeSize and Logitech clearly fit well together: Logitech is a $2.2 billion peripherals company with 8,000 employees and a sales footprint in over 100 countries; LifeSize is a $90 million HD videoconferencing specialist with about 300 employees and a customer base that takes in enterprises, SMEs, healthcare, education and government. We've reviewed LifeSize kit and been impressed with its value for money compared to traditional 'telepresence' offerings. With Logitech's muscle behind it, LifeSize — which will retain its name and operate as a separate division under Malloy — looks well placed to improve its position in the business videoconferencing market.
Following Cisco/Tandberg and now Logitech/LifeSize, some observers are asking whether the remaining independent videoconferencing specialist, Polycom, will be the next to be snapped up. With 2008 revenues of $1.1 billion, it'll be a lot more expensive than LifeSize, that's for sure.
In a statement, Steve Leyland, Polycom's general manager EMEA, said: "Today’s news is further evidence that visual communications is on the cusp of going mainstream. Polycom is the market-share leader in the industry with the most comprehensive solution for video-enabling businesses of all sizes, and remains focused on delivering the best open, standards-based solutions to our customers. Polycom is well positioned to lead this market from a technology, financial and execution standpoint. We see this as creating additional opportunities for Polycom and our partners as the only independent video solution provider of scale".
Wednesday 11 November 2009, 8:50 AM
Mobile business social network tools coming on BlackBerry
The APIs that RIM is opening up for the BlackBerry platform leapfrog what’s available on other mobile platforms, with free push updates, unified advertising and payment options and not just the standard ‘where you are’ geolocation but the innovative ‘when will you get where you’re going’ option. The other thing RIM is doing to attract developers is offering deep integration with the standard BlackBerry apps like the inbox, the calendar and BlackBerry Maps and two of the first apps to take advantage of that will both offer social network tools appealing to BlackBerry’s core business users – Xobni and LinkedIn.
I had a chance to take a closer look at the apps after they were demoed in the keynote at the BlackBerry Developer Conference this week. Both have been in development for some time, both have been much requested by users – and the new integration options and new development tools are key for getting them to market.
The LinkedIn BlackBerry app will be available at the end of the year. Like the existing iPhone LinkedIn app it lets you browse your contacts or search for profiles of people you could connect to by keyword, which is apparently a third of all activity on the LinkedIn site; but it’s the first mobile app with the ‘People you may know’ feature from LinkedIn site which suggests possible connections for you to make with an eerie degree of accuracy.
It also puts invitations to connect with other users into the BlackBerry Message inbox alongside email and text messages, with the number of unread LinkedIn messages showing on the BlackBerry home screen alongside the number of unread emails.
That’s convenient but it’s not that different from getting invitations sent to you as normal email apart from the fact that accepting them opens the LinkedIn app rather than the usual LinkedIn Web site, which is both quicker and more efficient to work with.
Much more useful is the integration with the Calendar and Contacts apps. When you have a meeting invitation, you’ll be able to look up the other attendees on LinkedIn by clicking on their email addresses and opening their profiles. LinkedIn vice president Adam Nash told me it’s common for people to check each other out on LinkedIn before a business meeting and this makes it even more convenient. In the future he’s hoping to bring the ‘In common’ results from LinkedIn search, showing the connections and groups you share with people, to the BlackBerry app; “it’s all about how do you start that conversation?” he said. The more you know about someone before you meet them and who you know in common, the easier it is to deal with them and putting those tools right into your calendar and address book makes it easier to remember to use them; that’s a really good match to the typical business BlackBerry user.
Xobni is also about staying in touch with people. Like the existing Xobni Outlook plugin in, the BlackBerry app (due as an alpha in December and shipping early next year, initially for the Bold, Curve and Tour handsets) will search through your email to find the people you’re in contact with. Unless you’re very diligent, most of them aren’t in your address book, so you have to look for a recent message from someone before you can mail them again (or remember where you put the business card). And just adding everyone you’re in touch with to your address book leaves you with a lot of names to scroll through – the Simon I email the most isn’t the email address that comes up first when I type Simon into my BlackBerry (or my Windows Mobile phone).
Install the Xobni app and you can choose to pick contacts from Xobni rather than the BlackBerry contacts list by scrolling up with the BlackBerry trackball or trackpad. Xobni remembers everyone who has emailed you, or been cc’d on a message or even been mentioned in a message – and the store is very compressed, Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte told me, so thousands of contacts can be stored in very little space, not just the usual last 30 days of mail. You can search by name, domain name or keyword and the list you get is ordered not alphabetically but by ‘Xobni Rank’ – how recently or frequently you’ve exchanged messages with them.
Xobni extracts phone and fax numbers as well as names and email addresses, and connects to Facebook and LinkedIn for any extra contact information it can get, including a photo - and it integrates with the BlackBerry apps so you can also phone or text a Xobni contact.
Bonforte claims Xobni uses information like the email address, time stamp and headers, and maybe even your calendar, to detect which country ambiguous phone numbers should be allocated to. If the number doesn’t look quite right, you can see the original message that Xobni derived the number from to check.
If you’re emailing about arranging a meeting, Xobni can attach a list of the next few times when you’re free; another excellent use of BlackBerry integration. Bonforte is also planning calendar integration similar to LinkedIn, to give you information about who you’re meeting with, but based on email exchanges you’ve had with people connected to them.
As with LinkedIn, Xobni is an excellent match to the BlackBerry demographic; in fact the reason the company is working on a BlackBerry app is that it found half of its users have BlackBerrys, and the expectation is that they’ll be ready to pay for these features.
The LinkedIn app will make it easier to use the connections you already know you have and to make more. Xobni will take over the work of managing the contact information for the people you’re already communicating with. It’s been a useful tool on the PC, but you can do what it does by hand; on a BlackBerry, with only 30 days of email, when you've already decided that it’s urgent enough to need to contact someone, having their details magically appear out of your old email could be phenomenally useful. If they work as promised, these will be exactly the kind of app RIM is hoping for to make the BlackBerry stand out against all the other smartphones promising to bring your social network together.
Mary Branscombe
I had a chance to take a closer look at the apps after they were demoed in the keynote at the BlackBerry Developer Conference this week. Both have been in development for some time, both have been much requested by users – and the new integration options and new development tools are key for getting them to market.
The LinkedIn BlackBerry app will be available at the end of the year. Like the existing iPhone LinkedIn app it lets you browse your contacts or search for profiles of people you could connect to by keyword, which is apparently a third of all activity on the LinkedIn site; but it’s the first mobile app with the ‘People you may know’ feature from LinkedIn site which suggests possible connections for you to make with an eerie degree of accuracy.
It also puts invitations to connect with other users into the BlackBerry Message inbox alongside email and text messages, with the number of unread LinkedIn messages showing on the BlackBerry home screen alongside the number of unread emails.
That’s convenient but it’s not that different from getting invitations sent to you as normal email apart from the fact that accepting them opens the LinkedIn app rather than the usual LinkedIn Web site, which is both quicker and more efficient to work with.
Much more useful is the integration with the Calendar and Contacts apps. When you have a meeting invitation, you’ll be able to look up the other attendees on LinkedIn by clicking on their email addresses and opening their profiles. LinkedIn vice president Adam Nash told me it’s common for people to check each other out on LinkedIn before a business meeting and this makes it even more convenient. In the future he’s hoping to bring the ‘In common’ results from LinkedIn search, showing the connections and groups you share with people, to the BlackBerry app; “it’s all about how do you start that conversation?” he said. The more you know about someone before you meet them and who you know in common, the easier it is to deal with them and putting those tools right into your calendar and address book makes it easier to remember to use them; that’s a really good match to the typical business BlackBerry user.
Xobni is also about staying in touch with people. Like the existing Xobni Outlook plugin in, the BlackBerry app (due as an alpha in December and shipping early next year, initially for the Bold, Curve and Tour handsets) will search through your email to find the people you’re in contact with. Unless you’re very diligent, most of them aren’t in your address book, so you have to look for a recent message from someone before you can mail them again (or remember where you put the business card). And just adding everyone you’re in touch with to your address book leaves you with a lot of names to scroll through – the Simon I email the most isn’t the email address that comes up first when I type Simon into my BlackBerry (or my Windows Mobile phone).
Install the Xobni app and you can choose to pick contacts from Xobni rather than the BlackBerry contacts list by scrolling up with the BlackBerry trackball or trackpad. Xobni remembers everyone who has emailed you, or been cc’d on a message or even been mentioned in a message – and the store is very compressed, Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte told me, so thousands of contacts can be stored in very little space, not just the usual last 30 days of mail. You can search by name, domain name or keyword and the list you get is ordered not alphabetically but by ‘Xobni Rank’ – how recently or frequently you’ve exchanged messages with them.
Xobni extracts phone and fax numbers as well as names and email addresses, and connects to Facebook and LinkedIn for any extra contact information it can get, including a photo - and it integrates with the BlackBerry apps so you can also phone or text a Xobni contact.
Bonforte claims Xobni uses information like the email address, time stamp and headers, and maybe even your calendar, to detect which country ambiguous phone numbers should be allocated to. If the number doesn’t look quite right, you can see the original message that Xobni derived the number from to check.
If you’re emailing about arranging a meeting, Xobni can attach a list of the next few times when you’re free; another excellent use of BlackBerry integration. Bonforte is also planning calendar integration similar to LinkedIn, to give you information about who you’re meeting with, but based on email exchanges you’ve had with people connected to them.
As with LinkedIn, Xobni is an excellent match to the BlackBerry demographic; in fact the reason the company is working on a BlackBerry app is that it found half of its users have BlackBerrys, and the expectation is that they’ll be ready to pay for these features.
The LinkedIn app will make it easier to use the connections you already know you have and to make more. Xobni will take over the work of managing the contact information for the people you’re already communicating with. It’s been a useful tool on the PC, but you can do what it does by hand; on a BlackBerry, with only 30 days of email, when you've already decided that it’s urgent enough to need to contact someone, having their details magically appear out of your old email could be phenomenally useful. If they work as promised, these will be exactly the kind of app RIM is hoping for to make the BlackBerry stand out against all the other smartphones promising to bring your social network together.
Mary Branscombe
Wednesday 11 November 2009, 8:31 AM
The Crabble stand for your phone
Sometimes something comes along that is so simple yet so very useful that you can’t believe you didn’t think of it first. The Crabble is one such object.
Once upon a time smartphones came with docking stands which held them up at an angle on the desk so you could easily see the screen. Those days are almost entirely gone, but the need to see the screen remains.
I like to glance at my phone to see a text as it comes in or any other alert that is issued. Sometimes I simply use it as a digital clock. There are also people who like to use their phone as a digital photo frame. And those who like to watch a bit of video while they are travelling.
I suggest all such people take a look at the Crabble.
It is a plastic stand, small enough to carry in a wallet that can hold any phone at angles between 45 and 90 degrees. It has a pair of silicone bands on its feet which help stop it slipping around – especially useful if you want to use it on a moving train.
I’m currently using the Crabble with my HTC Hero, but have tested it with a few other devices since it has arrived and it works with them all.
The only caveat is that ground clearance is just 7mm – not enough to provide space for power cable connectors and barely enough for an angled headset adapter. I can’t use it with the HTC Hero in tall format, for example, as its power port is on the bottom edge.
The Crabble feels well built and robust – I doubt it’ll break easily. You can choose between a variety of colour schemes, and it’ll set you back £4.99. More information here.
Once upon a time smartphones came with docking stands which held them up at an angle on the desk so you could easily see the screen. Those days are almost entirely gone, but the need to see the screen remains.
I like to glance at my phone to see a text as it comes in or any other alert that is issued. Sometimes I simply use it as a digital clock. There are also people who like to use their phone as a digital photo frame. And those who like to watch a bit of video while they are travelling.
I suggest all such people take a look at the Crabble.
It is a plastic stand, small enough to carry in a wallet that can hold any phone at angles between 45 and 90 degrees. It has a pair of silicone bands on its feet which help stop it slipping around – especially useful if you want to use it on a moving train.
I’m currently using the Crabble with my HTC Hero, but have tested it with a few other devices since it has arrived and it works with them all.
The only caveat is that ground clearance is just 7mm – not enough to provide space for power cable connectors and barely enough for an angled headset adapter. I can’t use it with the HTC Hero in tall format, for example, as its power port is on the bottom edge.
The Crabble feels well built and robust – I doubt it’ll break easily. You can choose between a variety of colour schemes, and it’ll set you back £4.99. More information here.
Tuesday 10 November 2009, 2:48 PM
Moblin 2.1 Final Release
It's been about a week since the final release of Moblin 2.1 suddenly showed up on their web page. I've been distracted with Ubuntu Karmic and Mandriva 2010, though, and although I loaded it on the ASUS N10J, I haven't had time to really take much of a look at it. But it seems like "now or never", with the openSuSE 11.2 release imminent, and Fedora not far behind that. So, here we go.
The Moblin download is an ".img" file, which can be written to a USB drive or a CD. Instructions for various ways of doing either are on the Moblin web site. Once you have done that, you can either boot and run directly from the Live media, or you can install from that onto your hard drive. First impressions are good at this stage, as Moblin is one of the fastest Linux distributions I have ever installed, by a pretty good margin. It's the kind of thing where you turn around and say "wow, done already?".
The first thing I noticed when I booted the installed Moblin system was that the graphics look considerably nicer than they did in the 2.0 release. The second thing I noticed was that if you are more than about 13 years old, the graphics are likely to look quite childish to you. The third thing I noticed was that they are still using the same bizarre hieroglyphics for the main menu. I just don't get this, what use are icons which are so obscure that you have to move the mouse to them and read the associated text to figure out what they represent? Or perhaps I'm missing some obvious connection that should tell me why two concentric circles mean "Internet", or a jagged line means "Status"?
The good news here, at least, is that there is a new icon in this release, for Bluetooth connections. I have tested that with a bluetooth mouse, and it is easy to use and seems to work just fine. Well done. This was the first place that I came across the new "On/Off" switches, in this case to enable and disable Bluetooth, and it was easy, obvious, and worked well. Click it off, the bluetooth mouse stops working; click it back on and it takes a few seconds for the computer and mouse to pair again, and then it works just fine again. There is also a large "Send file from your computer" button, which I suppose would be used with other computers, mobile phones and the like. This is where I think the Moblin interface is at its best, when things are clean, clear and simple, and not insulting or obscure.
The other place where I noticed major changes is on the Networks panel, where there is now a list of detected WiFi networks, with the signal strength and encryption status of each, and On/Off switches for WiFi, Wired, 3G and WiMAX connectivity (and Bluetooth thrown in here as well), as well as an "Offline Mode" switch, which serves as a sort of "Master" switch to cut off all external connections. Again, I think this is good design, and it seemed to work just fine for me. I was able to connect to my home wired and wireless (WPA2) network with no difficulty at all.
The Sound panel has also had the same kind of On/Off switches add, for Mute and Alert Sounds. I also cross-checked these with the Fn-keys on the ASUS, and they worked as they should, the mute switch goes on and off as I enable and disable sound using the Fn-key, and the volume goes up and down as I adjust it that way as well. Nice.
Unfortunately, that's about it for the "whizzy new parts and improvements". Once the shine was gone from those, I was still left sitting in front of a netbook that I didn't really understand or have much use for. As I have said previously, if "social networking" is the center of your netbook use, perhaps Moblin is right for you. But I'm not even sure about that, because it seems to me, as Adrian pointed out the other day, that while Moblin has been fixing things that should have been done a release or two ago, they still haven't filled in many of the holes in what it really should be use for. Setting up your "social networks", for example, gives you a choice between last.fm and twitter. Period. I don't see any of the other well-known networks, such as Google, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo or whatever. I don't see any sort of chat/VoIP/video clients.
Perhaps I am too old, or "social networking" is too foreign to me, and I just don't see what to do or where to do it. But I can't imagine that a system that should focus on that is still missing so much of the functionality. If it really is missing that much, then I can't imagine how anyone would actually manage to use it for much of anything. Maybe I'm wrong. I've said this before, if you are using Moblin, and find it useful, please feel free to comment with all the details of what you are doing and how.
I will also add a brief rant that I have made before about Moblin. There is STILL no Logout/Reboot/Shutdown button(s). It seems to be assumed that "anyone" would know that the only way to shut down is to push the power button, and the only way to reboot is to hit Ctl-Alt-Del, and it will do the right things in an orderly way in either case. The entire concept of Logout/Login, and even user names, seems to be unknown in Moblin. Also, customization seems to be lacking. Not only can I not change those idiot hieroglyphics to something more obvious, or even to just plain text, I can't even seem to adjust simple things like the date and time format in the title bar. Much to my amazement, when I went into Applications/System/Date and Time, the time was presented to me in 24-hour format, which is what much of Europe expects... but there was no way to specify that for the desktop display, and sure enough when I went out of there, the title bar still had AM/PM time format. Sigh.
For my own part, I tried to continue using Moblin for some of the every day things that I do, and started running into the same kinds of crashing and hanging programs that I had found in the previous release. So I gave up, left the installation in place so I can go back to it if/when I think necessary, and went back to the variety of "real" Linux installations that I have on that machine.
jw 10/11/2009
The Moblin download is an ".img" file, which can be written to a USB drive or a CD. Instructions for various ways of doing either are on the Moblin web site. Once you have done that, you can either boot and run directly from the Live media, or you can install from that onto your hard drive. First impressions are good at this stage, as Moblin is one of the fastest Linux distributions I have ever installed, by a pretty good margin. It's the kind of thing where you turn around and say "wow, done already?".
The first thing I noticed when I booted the installed Moblin system was that the graphics look considerably nicer than they did in the 2.0 release. The second thing I noticed was that if you are more than about 13 years old, the graphics are likely to look quite childish to you. The third thing I noticed was that they are still using the same bizarre hieroglyphics for the main menu. I just don't get this, what use are icons which are so obscure that you have to move the mouse to them and read the associated text to figure out what they represent? Or perhaps I'm missing some obvious connection that should tell me why two concentric circles mean "Internet", or a jagged line means "Status"?
The good news here, at least, is that there is a new icon in this release, for Bluetooth connections. I have tested that with a bluetooth mouse, and it is easy to use and seems to work just fine. Well done. This was the first place that I came across the new "On/Off" switches, in this case to enable and disable Bluetooth, and it was easy, obvious, and worked well. Click it off, the bluetooth mouse stops working; click it back on and it takes a few seconds for the computer and mouse to pair again, and then it works just fine again. There is also a large "Send file from your computer" button, which I suppose would be used with other computers, mobile phones and the like. This is where I think the Moblin interface is at its best, when things are clean, clear and simple, and not insulting or obscure.
The other place where I noticed major changes is on the Networks panel, where there is now a list of detected WiFi networks, with the signal strength and encryption status of each, and On/Off switches for WiFi, Wired, 3G and WiMAX connectivity (and Bluetooth thrown in here as well), as well as an "Offline Mode" switch, which serves as a sort of "Master" switch to cut off all external connections. Again, I think this is good design, and it seemed to work just fine for me. I was able to connect to my home wired and wireless (WPA2) network with no difficulty at all.
The Sound panel has also had the same kind of On/Off switches add, for Mute and Alert Sounds. I also cross-checked these with the Fn-keys on the ASUS, and they worked as they should, the mute switch goes on and off as I enable and disable sound using the Fn-key, and the volume goes up and down as I adjust it that way as well. Nice.
Unfortunately, that's about it for the "whizzy new parts and improvements". Once the shine was gone from those, I was still left sitting in front of a netbook that I didn't really understand or have much use for. As I have said previously, if "social networking" is the center of your netbook use, perhaps Moblin is right for you. But I'm not even sure about that, because it seems to me, as Adrian pointed out the other day, that while Moblin has been fixing things that should have been done a release or two ago, they still haven't filled in many of the holes in what it really should be use for. Setting up your "social networks", for example, gives you a choice between last.fm and twitter. Period. I don't see any of the other well-known networks, such as Google, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo or whatever. I don't see any sort of chat/VoIP/video clients.
Perhaps I am too old, or "social networking" is too foreign to me, and I just don't see what to do or where to do it. But I can't imagine that a system that should focus on that is still missing so much of the functionality. If it really is missing that much, then I can't imagine how anyone would actually manage to use it for much of anything. Maybe I'm wrong. I've said this before, if you are using Moblin, and find it useful, please feel free to comment with all the details of what you are doing and how.
I will also add a brief rant that I have made before about Moblin. There is STILL no Logout/Reboot/Shutdown button(s). It seems to be assumed that "anyone" would know that the only way to shut down is to push the power button, and the only way to reboot is to hit Ctl-Alt-Del, and it will do the right things in an orderly way in either case. The entire concept of Logout/Login, and even user names, seems to be unknown in Moblin. Also, customization seems to be lacking. Not only can I not change those idiot hieroglyphics to something more obvious, or even to just plain text, I can't even seem to adjust simple things like the date and time format in the title bar. Much to my amazement, when I went into Applications/System/Date and Time, the time was presented to me in 24-hour format, which is what much of Europe expects... but there was no way to specify that for the desktop display, and sure enough when I went out of there, the title bar still had AM/PM time format. Sigh.
For my own part, I tried to continue using Moblin for some of the every day things that I do, and started running into the same kinds of crashing and hanging programs that I had found in the previous release. So I gave up, left the installation in place so I can go back to it if/when I think necessary, and went back to the variety of "real" Linux installations that I have on that machine.
jw 10/11/2009
Monday 9 November 2009, 3:26 PM
Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic Koala) on Netbooks - Part 4 (Xubuntu Xfce)
In Part 1 of this series I looked at some general netbook concepts, and the "standard" Ubuntu distribution. Part 2 I looked at the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which is probably the best known of the netbook-centric versions. Part 3 was devoted to Kubuntu Netbook, which is the new kid on the block, and is based on the ongoing KDE Netbook development. For this final part I will look at Xubuntu, the Ubuntu distribution based on the Xfce desktop.
While Xubuntu is not a specifically netbook-oriented distribution, I have been happily using it (or other Xfce distributions such as Linux Mint Xfce Community Edition) for quite some time now. Its advantages are that it is generally lighter weight and faster than either Gnome or KDE desktops and I find it to be generally a little bit easier to configure. The Xubuntu distribution seems not to be regarded within the Xfce community as one of the best, but it is certainly good enough to be a good starting point to see if you are going to like it. It is also worth mentioning that both the Xubuntu and Kubuntu distributions are in fact more than just the standard Ubuntu distribution with whichever alternate desktop package installed. There has been significant additional work done to fully integrate and customize the desktops with Ubuntu, so you can't get the same "experience" by just installing the standard Ubuntu distribution, adding the KDE/Xfce packages and then selecting the session on login.
When you first log in to Xubuntu, you will see top and bottom panels on the screen, somewhat similar to the standard Ubuntu/Gnome panels. I choose to customize them in a way similar to what I described in Part 1 for the standard distribution, but as even a bit more extensively. The changes are based on my basic feeling that there is more space horizontally then vertically on a netbook screen, so you are generally better off with side panels rather than top/bottom panels.
Customizing Xfce panels is done by right-clicking anywhere on a panel and choosing "Customize Panel" (Duh). The interesting thing is that once you are into the Panel applet, you can customize any of the panels, not just the one you click on - and add or delete panels as well, for that matter. My goal was to end up with a panel at the bottom of the screen with whatever icons had text associated, meaning the menus, task bar and digital clock; a panel on one side with the "status" icons, such as the notifier, audio and desktop selector, and a panel on the other side with application launchers, such as Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP and such. Each panel is set to a fixed position at the center of its edge of the screen, is "normal width" rather than full width, and Autohide is enabled. Rather than bore you with the details of doing that, I'll leave you with one tip - you can move icons between panels by simply right-clicking, select Move, and then drag them to whatever panel you want. I find the end result of those three panels very pleasing; the only part that I might eventually change is not Auto-hiding the application panel.
The default Xubuntu desktop contains icons for Home, Filesystem and Trash, which I find unnecessary and distracting. Have we become such slaves of reproducing the Windows desktop that we feel we HAVE to have a trash bin on the desktop? In any case, you can right-click on the desktop, choose "Desktop Settings...", then select the Icons tab, and un-check the Home, Filesystem and Trash in Default icons. I leave Removable Devices checked, so that I have convenient access to USB drives.
Xubutnu comes with a somewhat different set of applications and packages preinstalled than either standard Ubuntu or Kubuntu. One obvious difference is the absence of OpenOffice.org; I find this a bit of a pain, but since I'm talking about netbook installations here, one could easily argue that to be a good decision. For that, or whatever else you might decide you need and can't find, you can always go to the Synaptic Package Manager and get what you need.
I think Xfce does a good job of giving you what you need, and staying out of your way so you can work. Although Xubuntu is not targeted specifically at netbooks, with a few simple changes it becomes a very good fit.
jw 9/11/2009
While Xubuntu is not a specifically netbook-oriented distribution, I have been happily using it (or other Xfce distributions such as Linux Mint Xfce Community Edition) for quite some time now. Its advantages are that it is generally lighter weight and faster than either Gnome or KDE desktops and I find it to be generally a little bit easier to configure. The Xubuntu distribution seems not to be regarded within the Xfce community as one of the best, but it is certainly good enough to be a good starting point to see if you are going to like it. It is also worth mentioning that both the Xubuntu and Kubuntu distributions are in fact more than just the standard Ubuntu distribution with whichever alternate desktop package installed. There has been significant additional work done to fully integrate and customize the desktops with Ubuntu, so you can't get the same "experience" by just installing the standard Ubuntu distribution, adding the KDE/Xfce packages and then selecting the session on login.
When you first log in to Xubuntu, you will see top and bottom panels on the screen, somewhat similar to the standard Ubuntu/Gnome panels. I choose to customize them in a way similar to what I described in Part 1 for the standard distribution, but as even a bit more extensively. The changes are based on my basic feeling that there is more space horizontally then vertically on a netbook screen, so you are generally better off with side panels rather than top/bottom panels.
Customizing Xfce panels is done by right-clicking anywhere on a panel and choosing "Customize Panel" (Duh). The interesting thing is that once you are into the Panel applet, you can customize any of the panels, not just the one you click on - and add or delete panels as well, for that matter. My goal was to end up with a panel at the bottom of the screen with whatever icons had text associated, meaning the menus, task bar and digital clock; a panel on one side with the "status" icons, such as the notifier, audio and desktop selector, and a panel on the other side with application launchers, such as Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP and such. Each panel is set to a fixed position at the center of its edge of the screen, is "normal width" rather than full width, and Autohide is enabled. Rather than bore you with the details of doing that, I'll leave you with one tip - you can move icons between panels by simply right-clicking, select Move, and then drag them to whatever panel you want. I find the end result of those three panels very pleasing; the only part that I might eventually change is not Auto-hiding the application panel.
The default Xubuntu desktop contains icons for Home, Filesystem and Trash, which I find unnecessary and distracting. Have we become such slaves of reproducing the Windows desktop that we feel we HAVE to have a trash bin on the desktop? In any case, you can right-click on the desktop, choose "Desktop Settings...", then select the Icons tab, and un-check the Home, Filesystem and Trash in Default icons. I leave Removable Devices checked, so that I have convenient access to USB drives.
Xubutnu comes with a somewhat different set of applications and packages preinstalled than either standard Ubuntu or Kubuntu. One obvious difference is the absence of OpenOffice.org; I find this a bit of a pain, but since I'm talking about netbook installations here, one could easily argue that to be a good decision. For that, or whatever else you might decide you need and can't find, you can always go to the Synaptic Package Manager and get what you need.
I think Xfce does a good job of giving you what you need, and staying out of your way so you can work. Although Xubuntu is not targeted specifically at netbooks, with a few simple changes it becomes a very good fit.
jw 9/11/2009
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