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First Thoughts: Fedora 11

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We plan to offer more thoughts later, as we will be doing some field-testing. We have installed Fedora 11, code named Leonidas on a MSI Wind U100 netbook which we will be taking with us on a trip this weekend, allowing us to explore it before rolling it out to other systems.

Our initial impressions are that F11 is a winner. It has been cleaned up at every level. We installed it from scratch and proceeded to install everything we routinely use on a mobile system, including Firefox(with Xmarks, formerly Foxmarks to store our bookmarks), Dropbox for our Documents and some configuration files, and Adobe Air so we can run our Twitter client. There was a problem with Adobe Air, but a quick net search found us the solution(a symbolic link so Air could find a library). The whole process took very little time.

Plymouth, Fedora’s graphical boot loader, now supports Intel based graphics cards, which are found in a majority of productivity based notebooks and netbooks. Since our previous systems didn’t support it by default, and we saw no need to override that, this is the first time we’ve seen the graphical loader outside of one try. Plymouth is plug-in capable for different boot screens. The default one is merely a circle that gradually fills in until it is complete. We’ll have to take a look at the alternatives there as well.On the other hand, it is a boot screen. We don’t want to spend too much time looking at it, especially if it slows things down to render something fancier.

Fedora also has changed the default volume group name to include the hostname…a minor touch, and the ext4 file system. Anaconda, the Fedora installer, continues to be fairly user-friendly. Fedora has rebuilt many areas of the program, but the feel is pretty much the same for installation.

Into the OS itself, Fedora 11 had a goal of a 20-second boot time. It isn’t quite achieved on a netbook, but it came fairly close. The netbook is the only system we use that doesn’t support the 64-bit architecture, so we used the 32-bit, which has now been rebased as i586 instead of i386 We also enabled Presto to reduce update sizes. On our first update, we had a 91% download savings with no noticeable problems.

The new versions of Gnome and Firefox look subtly different, but we haven’t had a chance to experiment with them yet, beyond configuring things the way we want them. We will report back on this.

Finally, as this is a mobile computer, Fedora 11 boasts new power saving measures, including an update to the handling of relatime backkported from the 2.6.30 kernel, which was just released, but after the Fedora 11 release. We look forward to seeing how these power measures enhance battery life.

So, in the end…Fedora, better than ever, no show-stopping problems we’ve seen so far…and more to come.

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Published on June 11, 2009
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The Latest on Hulu and Netflix

Time to catch up on the latest from these two services.

  • Playboy seems to think Hulu is coming to the Roku Video Player. That would certainly please us. But Roku, the creator of the player, has insisted they have not made any public statements regarding Hulu and they don’t know where Playboy gets their information. Roku currently supports Amazon Video on Demand and Netflix, and promised as many as ten new channels by the end of the year but has not yet delivered.
  • Netflix appears to not recognize Puerto Rico as part of the United States and is blocking the territory’s use of its Watch Instantly feature, something Hulu once did. It explicitly excludes anything outside of the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
  • Hulu has added its own application for playing outside of a browser which works on Windows and Mac(but not Linux). In a ‘nod’ to Boxee, certainly a more developed product, the new product originally advised you to kill Boxee on Macs to avoid conflicts. This has since been changed. Hulu’s Terms of Service state that: “You may not download, install or use the Hulu Software on any device other than a Personal Computer including without limitation digital media receiver devices (such as Apple TV), mobile devices (such as a cell phone device, mobile handheld device or a PDA), network devices or CE devices (collectively “Prohibited Devices”).” It does not prohibit hooking a computer to a TV, but it seems to suggest this is the thing Hulu is trying to forbid, which does not bode well for them.
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Published on June 2, 2009
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Packing your Bag

Five common USB connectors (left to right: mal...
Image via Wikipedia

Recently, we did a post on behalf of Infrequent Flier on the subject of packing a bag with your mobile electronics. We wanted to explore the idea further, as such a bag wouldn’t just apply to air travel…there are considerations for every time you go anywhere. Here are some things to consider when packing your mobile bag.

  • Power
    • Chargers – Every day on the go we use several chargers. For our cell phone, our music players, our notebook. Try to unify these. Instead of four power bricks, use USB-based charging cables. Then you can only bring along a single USB to AC Adapter.
    • USB and Batteries – Several companies, including Duracell and Kensington, make USB portable battery packs, that can be charged via USB, and can charge mobile devices that have USB based cables. Sticking a small one of these in your bag can be critical in emergencies. You may also need to charge standard AA or AAA batteries. There are a variety of USB battery chargers, but we switched to USBcell, the battery has a built-in USB charger. We keep two of them for our AA-based digital camera.
    • Extension cords and Surge Protectors – There will be cases when you wish to share electricity with others. In this case, a cheap dollar store power splitter or multi-extension cord is useful to carry around. We recommend using the Belkin Mini Surge Protector, which has three outlets and two USB charging ports. Two useful add-ons to this would be an extension cord for hard to reach areas and/or a 3 to 2 prong converter in the event you find only two-prong outlets.
  • Cables
    • Network – Wireless is wonderful, but don’t be caught without a small network cable in case you have to physically connect to a network.
    • Earphones – Keep a pair of earphones in your bag. Not only will the people around you appreciate it, but a pair of cheap earbuds cna double as earplugs, reducing background noise so you can relax.
    • Headphone Splitter – Allows you to share the audio output of a device with a friend.
    • USB Cable – A standard USB cable to hook into peripherals should always be in your bag.
    • Retractable Cables – A variety of companies produce retractable cables now of varying qualities that can increase the space saving qualities of your bag. Ultimately though, a regular cable may be cheaper and is certainly more durable in the long run. Do your homework though.
  • Emergency Items
    • Blank CD/DVD – You never know when you might need to burn something or have it burned in a hurry.
    • Live CD/USB – With a bootable operating system on a CD or USB drive, you can turn any computer…for a time, into your personal system. Alternate options include a series of portable applications on your USB drive that would work with any Windows-based computer.
    • DropBox – Dropbox is a file syncing service that is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux that syncs the contents of a folder to its servers and can be used for multiple systems. If your computer goes bust, you can ensure your data was synced during your last network connection.
  • Portable Electronics
    • Cell Phone – We’re not going to tell you what sort of cell phone to get. There are a variety of options. Find the one that is good for you.
    • Portable Media Players – You can go with music, video, etc. You can even now use your cell phone. Again, scale this to your needs. We have two different ones, one small and one larger. The small, a Sansa Clip, is our ‘throwaway’ player. It is cheap, durable, and does what we want it to.
    • E-Book Readers – You can read information now on your cell phone or notebook, but there is a place in this world for dedicated devices. If you feel the cost is justified…otherwise, a good book is much cheaper and is even free at your local library.
  • Goodies and Misc.
    • Refreshments – Sticking a granola bar or some other long-lasting reasonable healthy snack in your bag will pay off in the long run when you are starving and need something quick. Equally useful is something to drink.
    • Pen and Paper – For when all electronics fail…or when you simply want to give your contact info to a less tech enabled person, stick these into your bag.
    • Cleaning Cloth – A microfibre cloth is perfect for cleaning the dust off your screen.
    • Wipes or Hand Sanitizer – You get dirty too.

Now, we are assuming you are lugging around a notebook of some sort. If you are a frequent ‘mobile warrior’, consider downsizing. Don’t lug around a 17″ desktop replacement, go for a 12-14″ screen…or even a netbook with a 10″ screen. These netbooks are inexpensive, and becoming popular for their easy portability. Remember, you can always come home to your fully functional machine.

Go smaller with your laptop bag as well. Try to find the smallest bag that neatly fits all of your things and make the hard decisions about what to leave out. No one wants to carry around too much.

In order to avoid needing to carry a spare battery, consider the following tips:

  • Dim the Brightness of your Screen – Many notebooks have a setting for dimming based on inactivity. Try to maximize your power saving options.
  • Go with an Extended Battery – Many notebooks have multiple battery options. Go with the best one.
  • Avoid using your Optical Drive -  Nothing drains power like the DVD/CD drive on your system. Try to copy the information to your drive before you leave, even if it is a movie or such you wish to watch on the road, you can rip it and delete it when you’re done.
  • Consider an SSD drive – These drives are not quite 100% yet. Their price is starting to come down, and the higher quality drives will eventually be cost-effective for the individual. For now though, the inexpensive ones have some problems, but with proper use(there are many tutorials on this), they can improve your experience. We’re waiting on this one though.

Do you have any suggestions of your own?

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Published on June 1, 2009
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Fedora 11 Delayed by One Week

A Screen Shot of Fedora 8
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To our disappointment, the Fedora 11(Leonidas) launch date has pushed back by one week. As noted on their announcement mailing list….

In a meeting today between Release Engineering, QA, and various team
leads, we decided to enact a 7 day slip of the Fedora 11 release date.
The primary reason behind this slip is the state of our blocker bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=F11Blocker&hide_resolved=1 We cannot begin Release Candidate phase until the blocker bugs are closed or at least in MODIFIED state. We are not there today, which would be our last day to enter RC phase and still have enough time to release on the 26th. We hope to enter RC phase in the next couple days, and hit our new target, June 2nd.

Freeze breaks for critical bugs will still be accepted, however trivial
bug fixes should be pushed as updates via bodhi. Thanks!

Better to have a stable system than an unstable one. Here’s hoping for June release.

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Published on May 20, 2009
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Roundup: Acceptable Use

ABC News Special Report ident, circa 2006
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The MPAA, well known for its lack of insight on the subject of fair use…namely what we are allowed to do with content we’ve purchased,  maintained during a recent hearing at the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress that videorecording a TV set playing back a DVD is an acceptable analog alternative to breaking copy protection on a DVD(Video available here).  These meetings take place every few years. In 2006, professors were granted an exemption in order to break copy protection on DVDs so that they could utilize high quality video clips in classroom teaching.

Elsewhere, research indicates more than 40% of U.S. Households under 35 watch Internet Video on their TVs(note the emphasis) at least once a month. The idea that consumers can get good content to watch from free or cheap online sources and watch it on their TV sets using a variety of methods is not one that is good for cable companies. These companies can either improve their on-demand services and ensure that everything that is free online can be accessed on-demand for free, or pressure their content providers to keep as much content off the internet as possible. Even if they do, there is plenty of web-exclusive content to enjoy.

For those of us trying to enjoy our fair use rights and thinking about downsizing your cable bill, here are some stories we’ve been monitoring:

  • XBMC, the popular multi-platform media center software, has released version 9.04, code-named Babylon. The release incorporates many improvements over previous versions. Check it out.
  • A hack has been released that will allow any computer to emulate the OCUR compliant BIOS, permitting any Windows computer to support digital cable with a Cablecard. The hack can be easily modified, should countermeasures be enacted.  We never understood why the cable companies should care. You are still paying for cable, after all.
  • TV Squad reports that ABC News is increasing its Youtube presence. The site will feature news from several ABC programs, like Good Morning America, 20/20, Nightline, ABC World News, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos.  Another reason to dump the TV.
  • TV Squad also taught us the Food Network offers a website, Food2.com, where they offer video recipes and web only shows for your enjoyment.
  • Boxee, continuing to gather support, has launched a contest for developers to encourage new plugin applications. Recent new plugins for Boxee include the highdefnow HD feed, who has given Boxee users direct access to their files which means you’ll get the smoothest playback from Boxee, without the same stuttering that a flash player might produce. This is a perfect example of content providers working with Boxee to promote their content.
  • Jumping on the Twitter Bandwagon, ABC’s Nightline news anchors are going to host a weekly online news program that uses Twitter for debate and questions. The show, called NightTline will air its first episode Wednesday at 12:30PM EST. It will air not only on the Nightline website, but on ABC News Now, offered as a subchannel on many ABC stations and cable systems.
  • With the signing of Disney to the Hulu family, it leaves CBS as the only major network not offering such content on Hulu, preferring its own media player. Meanwhile, CBS does offer content on Youtube.
  • Speaking of Youtube content for CBS, MGM, Lionsgate and Starz, who made content available last month, most users complain that the content is lacking and limited. But we hardly expected them to put their A-game on Youtube.
  • Time Warner Cable, defeated in its attempts to start metered bandwidth, another method for the cable companies to slow-down the growth of internet-based video, declared that it is not giving up on its hopes to implement the feature, but merely withdrew due to negative public opinion.
  • Netflix, not only a respected DVD-by-mail company, but slowly being known for its on-demand streaming, reported it isn’t particularly concerned about iTunes or Hulu as competition, but the DVD Kiosk, such as Redbox. Cheap $1 rentals are one of the reasons that people leave their Netflix subscriptions. With the gradual closing of video stores, the kiosk is becoming more ubiqitous. The company is concerned that if the kiosk companies get their costs down even further, they could very well be in more stores and locations…practically on every street corner. However, what these machines lack is the extensive library that Netflix offers. Unless you can order any DVD online, and have it delivered into the kiosk to be picked up, in addition to its standard stock of DVDs, then Netflix will always have a place.
  • Netflix also reports more streaming deals will be coming. The company had a “tremendous amount” of consumer electronics deals on the way, We’ll just wait for Linux. If not, the Roku Box still looks good to us, if they can get media streaming from the home computer added to it.
  • PBS Launched an Online Portal for full-length versions of some of its programs. Previously, while PBS had content online, it was not always easy to find. It can be found at pbs.org/video.

There is more to come. We monitor hundreds of stories, but there are only so many hours in the day, and we do have a day job. Coming soon, we will be taking our Streaming Video Guide from a different post, cleaning it up, and updating it into a permanent and regularly updated page on our site.

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Published on May 12, 2009
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Why you Might Rethink Buying a Kindle

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A while back, we commented on why a Kindle might not be so cost-effective.

Today, things change. On Wednesday, the Kindle DX was introduced. It will be an alternative, not a replacement for the Kindle 2. It boasts a 9.7-inch display with auto-rotation, high-speed wireless access to 275,000 books, 3.3 gigabytes of storage(roughly 3,500 books), native support for PDF documents, with no panning, zooming or scrolling necessary.

The product will begin shipping this summer and will cost $489. Three newspapers will offer a reduced price on the Kindle DX in exchange for a long-term subscription: The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. This is where one might reconsider the Kindle, if the reduction is enough to justify the purchase. However, this apparently will only be offered where Home Delivery of the papers are not. That may be offered through the Kindle 2 as well. Details are not yet available.

The Kindle DX eliminates some of the problems with the Kindle…namely that documents are printed on 8 1/2 by 11 sheets of paper most commonly, and the Kindle 2 is half that size at 6 inches. The DX has 2.5 times the surface area. Amazon has reached agreements with three leading textbook publishers that represent 60 percent of the market: Pearson, Cengage Learning and Wiley(But not McGraw-Hill Education.). Thus, the Kindle DX will be a perfect tool for college campuses, where textbook savings(hopefully) can be applied toward the device. Students will try out the Kindle DX this fall at Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, the University of Virginia, Reed College and Pace.

As Techcrunch pointed out, for the 275,000 books that are available on the Kindle, sales are already 35 percent of the same books in print. That is a shocking statistic.  But while we continue to be impressed by the Kindle and its variants, the price tag is still a matter of concern. BusinessInsider pointed out devices you can buy for less than $489, including a netbook, iPhone, AppleTV, Wii, Xbox 360, 22″ LCD HDTV, etc.

Which is our point. When given the choice between a netbook and a Kindle, we opted for the netbook, where we can read the New York Times and most news sources free with a net connection. It isn’t a dedicated device, which has its pros and cons, and it lacks the always-on connection included with the price of purchase(which is certainly an advantage) Web anywhere for life is certainly a pro as well.

On the software side of things, we feel certain a Kindle Reader will come for the PC(although Linux will no doubt take more time), as they already have an iPhone reader and they want to corner the e-book market. Barring that, you can always turn a netbook into an e-book reader with something like FBReader, which supports most non-DRMed formats, and buy your books from non-Amazon sources(More on this in a future post).

What it comes down to is that we love what the Kindle represents, and we are impressed by its continual evolution, but we are staying away for now.

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Published on May 7, 2009
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Moonlight 2.0 Preview is Out and Why You Should Care

Microsoft Silverlight
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Moonlight is a Novell-sponsored Linux implementation of Microsoft Silverlight, which is Microsoft‘s equivalent of Adobe Flash. We hate the idea of websites we can’t use, and like the idea of Linux-plugins that correct this. However, there is one show-stopping app for Moonlight: Netflix.

The Netflix Watch Instantly system is not supported under Linux, mostly because it uses Silverlight. It is particularly odd, as we know it could be supported under Linux. The Roku NetFlix/Video Player is Linux-based. Silverlight itself does not have the market-share Adobe Flash does, and we are thus surprised by Netflix’s choice.

The latest version of Moonlight, 2.0 preview, supports Silverlight 2.0, which is necessary for Netflix, but does not support the DRM stack, which is necessary for Netflix to run. We have high hopes this wll come someday. Until then, we guess we are limited to Flash-based web media.

Moonlight 2.0 Preview is available as a Firefox plugin for both 32 and 64-bit Linux distributions.

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Published on May 5, 2009
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Happy Birthday, Game Boy

Nintendo Game Boy
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The 20th anniversary of the Game Boy‘s release was this week. It was originally a simple device with a green monochrome screen, four buttons (A, B, Start, Select), and a four-way directional pad, much like the original Nintendo.

It was bundled with Tetris, and with that, and a few other games, we spent many an hour during our youth. We still have it in a box somewhere, ready to relaunch a wave of nostalgia, the same way we recently pulled out our Nintendo.

Our gaming time has reduced as we’ve grown older, and limited of late to nostalgia. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing. For the Gameboy, it has launched a wave of portable game players as successors that are still popular today.

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Published on April 24, 2009
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Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope Released

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Ubuntu 9.04 was released this week, a month before the scheduled release of our preferred OS, Fedora.

Like the upcoming Fedora, a lot of the major updates were upstream. Gnome was updated to the latest version, for example. We’ve commented on that before.

“In version terms, Fedora 11 will be ahead of Ubuntu 9.04. Kernel 2.6.29 vs. 2.6.28, Firefox 3.1 instead of 3.0, Thunderbird 3.0 instead of 2.0, OpenOffice 3.1 vs. 3.0 and filesystem ext4 instead of ext3. Both ship with Gnome 2.26, KDE 4.2 and XFCE 4.6. But, we admit, new versions are not always better. Well, they are, that is the point. But sometimes new features result in new problems.”

The main focus of the new Ubuntu isn’t new features per se, although it does include Ext4 and their new notification system, but speed and stability. And all reports indicate they’ve achieved their goals.

We’ll be back next month with our review of Fedora 11, and we’ll see how the two compare when fully released.

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Published on April 24, 2009
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Twitter and IM Clients

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We have been using IM for years, and migrated over to Pidgin some years ago when we were still on Windows as Trillian Pro was not being updated regularly.

So, yesterday, when we discovered a review of the Trillian Astra Beta, we thought we would explore the issue of clients for not just IM, but Twitter. The positives of the new Trillian, themes, notifications and replies, customizations, and email. Check it out.

Fedora has decided to make Empathy the new IM client in Fedora 11 over Pidgin, as it is more closely integrated with the desktop. Pidgin will still be available as an option though. We did a few tests of Empathy, but the version we had didn’t import from Pidgin, and we have years of log files we don’t want to lose, so we’ll hold off on migration decisions for now.  Empathy’s superiority is in design, not necessarily in use.

We used Pidgin for a while not only for IM, but for Twitter, when it first started, except the Twitter plugin was a bit buggy and kept crashing the whole program.

So, we sought to separate our Twitter from our IM. We tried several Twitter clients in Fedora. The only one that supported multiple accounts was Gwibber, and it had limits on how many messages could be displayed. So we went to Adobe Air and tried the immensely popular Tweetdeck. However, it does not have multiple account support, so we migrated to Twhirl.

Twhirl has everything we need. But Twhirl will likely soon be replaced by Seesmic Desktop, which is still in preview releases. We’ll be staying with Twhirl at least until its successor is out of preview. One blogger predicted that Seesmic will blow Tweetdeck out of the water. Everything on Seesmic is supposedly faster. Both Tweetdeck and Seesmic offer grouping functions, something Twitter itself should integrate, allowing those people you are following to be categorized by you. Seesmic is more a competitor for Tweetdeck than a straight successor to Twhirl.

Either way, there are a lot of IM and Twitter options out there. One has to find what works for them. So far, Pidgin and Twhirl work for us. Tell us what works for you.

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Published on April 24, 2009
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