Gadget Wisdom

After a lot of consideration between a dedicated hardware blu-ray player and a blu-ray drive, we prepared to take advantage of Newegg’s $49.99 Blu-Ray drive.

At the last minute, we changed to a $129.99 Blu-Ray burner, so we can experiment with blu-ray burning as well as play-back under Linux.

We installed it in a secondary computer, as opposed to our production system, and installed the MakeMKV beta for Linux. It compiled without incident, and was able to rip our test Blu-Ray video to a test drive.

Now, we want to emphasize this very clearly. WE HAVE NO INTENTION OF DISTRIBUTING ANY ILLEGAL VIDEO. Our intention is to be able to exercise our fair use and playback our legally purchased or legally rented videos.

It is a pain in the butt to have to spend this time ripping the Blu-Ray before we can play it. But that is the price we pay for our open-source lifestyle choice.

We figure, for our legally owned(not rented) Blu-Rays, we have two options.

1. Rip the Blu-Ray, watch it, then delete the working files. This seems to make sense, as a single movie rip is taking up 30GB on a drive. How many of those is it worth storing.
2. Do above, but create a lower-quality archival copy that can fit on a single DVD. Our first blu-ray came with a digital copy on a separate DVD that can only be played under Windows, so we might as well discard that disc and replace it with our on archival DVD.

Either of these, again, involve a fair amount of preprocessing and working space, however. In the meantime, however, we have a new movie to watch.

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Hulu, the online movie streaming site, released a version of its Desktop software for linux.

Now, we’re Linux people, so we love that a company has released Linux software. But we can’t help but think back to how this affects Boxee. Hulu asked them to remove support, then unveiled their desktop app, and have now extended it to every OS Boxee supports, even going a step further, because they offer both Fedora and Ubuntu options in both 32 and 64 bit, where Boxee offers only Ubuntu 32.

Since we use Fedora 64, we’re pleased by this and will be testing the product and have a review soon. The lack of stability under Fedora and/or 64-bit has limited our use of Boxee, which is the point. We want to use Boxee regularly, but we can’t.

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Skype, long lagging in its Linux support, after nearly two years of nothing, released version 2.1 in Beta, bringing with it a multitude of new offerings. It shows that Skype is renewing its commitment to cross-platform support.

One of the most important and significant fixes is Pulseaudio support. Most distributions of Linux now use Pulseaudio, so having Skype not cause a conniption when it is use is a major improvement. Improvements in audio and video handling also improve the overall experience.

The reason it took so long was a complete rewrite of some sections of the code, and likely the lower priority placed on Linux support, which got renewed interest now that so many embedded devices and netbooks had been running it. They are working on providing a native 64-bit version, but they currently have a helper application to set up the 32-bit libraries on a 64-bit system so it will work.

They say there is more to come soon. We’ll be testing this new version soon.

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Yesterday, those of you following our tweets know that we continued our Fedora migration plan. The plan was sidetracked when the new Fedora 11 monitoring advised us of a hard drive problem.

SMART, System Monitoring and Reporting Tool, is built into every hard drive, and does not seem to be utilized under Windows(feel free to correct us on this. It might be hiding there somewhere). Linux has always offered a monitoring daemon, but now that is coupled with Palimpsest Disk Utility, a frontend to the disk functions of DeviceKit, so alerts come to the desktop. DeviceKit is a replacement for the older HAL system, and creates a uniform interface.  “This is a simple system service that a) can enumerate devices; b) emits signals when devices are added removed; c) provides a way to merge device information / quirks onto devices.”

So, after letting it do a check to confirm, we swapped out the drive, and used it as an excuse to clean the interior of the computer and add extra ventilation, and resumed installation.

The two machines done are part of our MythTV system, where simple computers take the place of cable boxes, so nothing is stored on the drive except the software. All the video comes over the network from the backend(the last machine to get Fedora 11). But had the hard drive contained critical data, this feature would have prevented a major disaster.

In a disappointment, both machines, which run Nvidia video, did not work with Plymouth by default, but the boot on them is so fast you hardly see the splash screen anyway.

As a final measure, the remaining Fedora 10 machine will now download its updates directly from the internet, allowing us to delete our 30GB Fedora 10 Repository. The Fedora 11 machine will continue to use the assembled Fedora 11 repository.

The remaining machine is the hardest because it is where all the data is stored. Fedora Upgrade Time is a time to think about new hardware. Perhaps a hard drive might need to be replaced, etc. Migration of large amounts of data is difficult. The system must be slowly backed up and emptied, using a combination of optical burns, backup hard drives, etc. It will take a bit more work.

We continue to find new things to love about Fedora 11. The continual improvement to hardware handling is one of them. More to come.

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Arch Linux announced that a previous announcement that they were discontinuing support for the 32-bit/i686 architecture in their distribution was, in fact, a an April Fool’s joke.

On a positive note, some users discovered that they were, in fact, running 64-bit processors, and many of them switched to the Arch Linux 64-bit version. As they put it in their original post, “the overall opinion of the developers is that the x86_64 port is now complete enough to justify this decision and that this is in keeping with Arch’s philosophy of supporting current generation hardware. The x86_64 architecture has been available since 2002 (compared to i686 which is from 1995), and we believe most of our i686 users have x86_64 compatible hardware.”

If you are running a 64-bit processor, why shouldn’t you run the 64-bit version of your operatng system? While 64-bit Windows is still, for some reason, immature and undersupported, it is very mature on Linux, although some software has not be retooled to compile under it…Boxee comes to mind.

Fedora 11, the next version of Fedora we’re so enthused about, they are revisiting their architecture support. The 32-bit version of Fedora will now be built for i586 by default, instead of i386, indicating a removal of official Fedora support for older 32-bit processors. Realistically, anyone who is still running an older processor…you should upgrade. The update should produce speed increases.

The biggest advantage of 64-bit operating system is that it allows addressing of more than 3.5GB of RAM. With RAM becoming more and more affordable(Our first megabyte cost $80, now that’ll get you several gigabytes), the speed boost is a useful one. Further support under 32-bit Fedora for PAE-supporting 32-bit hardware(Pentium II/III/4, or Atom) will allow some support for more RAM under these processors.

And finally, 64-bit OSes can run 32-bit software. Backward compatibility is assured.

So, why not? Someone tell us.

We like John C. Dvorak. He’s a well known tech pundit, very outspoken, and interesting to read. However, one of the most interesting aspects of reading Dvorak is how often we disagree with him.

Dvorak has finally discovered Ubuntu 8.10, four months after the current version was released.

Many of its problems, for me, stem from its inability to run on my overloaded hardware, or the occasional driver that makes the OS impossible to use without hand-tweaking something or other.

To disagree with Mr. Dvorak, Linux has made great strides in hardware support, with both independent developers and hardware manufacturers working to ensure support. The simplest way to ensure you don’t come across a device that isn’t supported under Linux is to check before you buy it. Most devices are. So far, since we switched to Linux, we’ve only found a noname GPS receiver, a Canon Scanner, and a Radio Shack postal scale failing to work under it. But we usually check before we buy. Most minor hardware issues can usually be resolved with a little online searching. Even he admits Linux support is increasing on new hardware.

He does point out many good things about Linux during his exploration of Ubuntu.

• The lightweight nature of it makes it perfect for older machines. Many distributions offer lower memory(RAM or HD) alternatives to programs, such as Abiword instead of OpenOffice, XFCE or Sugar instead of Gnome or KDE, etc.
• “There is probably a Linux program that will substitute for just about any Windows programs with as much or more functionality.” Not sure we agree with him on Photoshop vs. Gimp, but we’re not artists.
• Linux is mostly immune to malware and viruses, as the bulk of such things are written for Windows.
• The Windows registry is ultimately flawed. It is an increasingly unwieldy database that over time, slows Windows to a crawl.

He does note that the Linux desktops are not as polished as Windows. However, we’re not sure whether or not he tried Compiz Fusion, which enables all those nice windows animations. We loved watching them, but we loved speed more, and ultimately turned them off. For productivity use, we’d rather simplify.

Even the French police recognize the wonder of Linux. They’ve saved millions by migrating to Ubuntu. Currently, they are running Ubuntu on about 5,000 workstations with long term plans to have their entire organization (90,000 workstations) running Ubuntu by 2015. Their budget has been reduced by seventy percent without losing any functionality.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment with your thoughts.

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No matter how much we learn, there is always more we can learn. We hate to be regurgitating comments to our own blog posts, but we continue to admit it when we’ve learned something new. But another comment from the head of the Fedora Project prompted us to write this post, on how to get a copy of Fedora if we’ve sold you on the idea of trying it out.

If you aren’t certain whether you want to install Fedora to a computer, you can try a Live CD. Fedora comes in two basic flavors(until the next version, where there will be a change in architectures). A 32-bit and a 64-bit version. We use the 64-bit version, as our processors can handle it. You may need to check. 64-bit only comes into play if you have more than 3.5GB of RAM, but if your processor can handle it, why not use the version that matches your computer?

In addition to the OS installation DVDs, you can get a Live CD which will launch a fully operational version of Fedora off a CD, or install that image to a USB drive so your settings will be saved in between boots. The basic version is a standard desktop which can be used to install the base operating system, after which the remaining packages you want will be installed and downloaded. This is also the design Ubuntu offers.

The nice thing about Live CDs is that you can test drive the OS without committing to it. The standard Live CD,called the Desktop Edition uses Gnome as its default desktop. Fedora offers an alternate KDE Live CD. It also offers some custom spins, which is defined as “a community release that has been created using one of the Fedora remixing tools, preferably either Pungi (regular images) or livecd-creator (Live CD/DVD’s). Custom spins should be strict subset’s of packages available in the official Fedora repositories.” Which means no official spins which add MP3 or DVD codecs can be hosted by Fedora. Current official Spins include:

• XFCE – A version of the Fedora Desktop Live CD that uses XFCE as the desktop instead of Gnome or KDE
• BROFFICE – Fedora will have for the first time the BrOffice.org brand for the office suite. This spin is intended to be a Brazilian Portuguese localized spin that provides the legal brand for OpenOffice.org in Brazil.
• FEL – Fedora Electronic Lab, a high-end hardware design and simulation platform. This platform provides different hardware design flows based on the semiconductor industry’s current trend. FEL maps in new design, simulation and verification methodologies with opensource EDA software.
• DEVELOPER – Live DVD jam-packed with various development applications, such as Eclipse, Anjuta, git, cvs, lynx, emacs, and a hex editor; and build tools like GCC, Inkscape, Koji, createrepo, mock, rpmdevtools, rpmlint and much more.
• AOS – A JeOS spin for building pre-installed, pre-configured, system images. The Spin consists of a small set of packages upon which the appliance building tools can be used. The spin is part of the Appliance Tools feature. This feature consists of a tools and meta-data that make it easier for anyone (ISVs, developers, OEMS, etc) to create and deploy virtual appliances.
• EDU-MATH – Educational spin tailored toward mathematics and scientific applications
• GAMES – A LiveCD with a showcase of games from Fedora. Here’s a list of included games.

Fedora offers direct download of ISOs, torrents, and Jigdo. We mentioned Jigdo in a previous post. It is a JIGsaw DOwnloader. It takes RPM package files and assembles them into an install image. We had wondered why the custom spins and Live CDs are not offered this way, and had sent several emails asking, with no response, till the Head of the Fedora Project(maybe we should name him a Gadget Wisdom correspondent) came back with this answer.

Jeroen van Meeuwen from our Spins SIG was kind enough to send me this information on Jigdo:

“The jigdo method of distribution basically works as follows: for every file in a .iso that you tell jigdo is available from somewhere else, it strips the file (or slice, or piece of the .iso jigsaw) from the .iso leaving you with a relatively small .iso.template (only the parts of the .iso that are not available from somewhere else) and a list of files you can get from somewhere else.

“Now, with installation media, this means there’s a small part of the .iso you need to download in the form of a .iso.template, while the rest (install.img, and all RPMs) is available from any mirror (and you are going to use the closest and fastest one).

“With Live media however, the contents of the .iso is just a few files. Some of them are really small (vmlinuz0, initrd0.img), while others are very large and make up 99% of the size of the .iso (osmin.img and squashfs.img). Splitting those slices from the .iso isn’t very useful, because you would end up downloading a small .iso.template, several very small files, and then one single beast of a file (squashfs.img).”

Hopefully this helps clarify our jigdo availability. Thanks for the question!

So, our assumption that this would be helpful was incorrect, and we learned something new. We look forward to sharing other things we don’t know as we share and enhance our Fedora knowledge.

And for the Fedora Project…give it a shot. You certainly have a lot of ways to experience it, from full immersion to merely dipping your toes in. Hmm…maybe we should become a Fedora Ambassador, although we have yet to get someone to switch to Fedora for good. We came rather close with one person, but he fell off the wagon and went back to Microsoft.

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We’re Fedora users. Sure, Ubuntu is more popular, and openSuse and other distribution are gaining popularity, but we started with Red Hat 6 many years ago, and have had an installation of each of the Fedora distributions since. They are up to Fedora 10, and we are talking about distributions of Linux, for those of you not familiar with them.

Two years ago, Eric S. Raymond, a Linux evangelist, commented:

“Over the last five years, I’ve watched Red Hat/Fedora throw away what a near-unassailable lead was at one time in technical prowess, market share and community prestige. The blunders have been legion on both technical and political levels.”

Now, we can agree that Fedora has had some problems finding its voice. But now, Paul Frields, the Fedora Project leader, declared that since the release of Fedora 10, they’ve counted about 1 million new installations and approximately 2 million unique visitors to fedoraproject.org each month. Checking out the Ranking of various distributions on Distrowatch for the last 12 months, Fedora is #4, beaten by, in order, Ubuntu, openSuse, and Mint. The site is not a fully accurate indicator of usage, but it does provide a baseline to consider.

openSuse, is a project sponsored by Novell. Mint is a distribution based on Ubuntu whose goal is to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including browser plugins, media codecs, support for DVD playback, Java and other components. Fedora doesn’t include these things in the default distribution for legal reasons.

Fedora 10 included many significant changes, including a new graphical boot system called Plymouth, and boot-time improvements. Speeding up the boot process is a major push for all Linux distributions right now, and developers are looking at unnecessary delays they can remove, such as probing for obsolete hardware, and how they can present the startup screen while loading certain things in the background, so the user can start working while programs are continuing to load. Fedora continues to push the envelope with new technologies, and while there are still some issues even we admit it has.

To map our improvements…wireless support has been vastly improved over the last few versions, and has worked out of the box for us with few disconnects. Some elements of any distribution are upgraded versions of software included…such as the latest version of OpenOffice. For these, any problems cannot be blamed on Fedora itself, except in how the various pieces fit together. So far, no complaint on that front. Multimedia support under Fedora is a bit tricky, because Fedora, for legal reasons, cannot include proprietary codecs, including ones for MP3 or DVD. But there are a variety of start guides that take you through adding 3rd-party support.

For video DVDs, which are encrypted, there is no software you can license to play them. There is only a decryption program which is open-source, and thus disapproved of by the DVD industry, despite the fact they’ve offered no alternative. So, it can be done, but it can’t be included in any distribution to avoid lawsuits.

We’re glad that Fedora is regaining users. We’re hoping it means more projects, Boxee, for example, release their software in Fedora-compatible packaging. We’ve thought about migrating one or more systems over to Ubuntu, but we know the ins and outs of Fedora design, and sometimes you stick with what you know.

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