ZDNet is reporting that Canonical is intending to make the next release of Ubuntu, 12.04, a LTS (Long Term Support) release with intention of then expanding Ubuntu beyond desktops and laptops into smartphones, tablets and smart TVs, with a target of 2014 for an all-platform release.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, in an interview said, “This is a natural expansion of our idea as Ubuntu as Linux for human beings. As people have moved from desktop to new form factors for computing, it’s important for us to reach out to out community on these platforms. So, we’ll embrace the challenge of how to use Ubuntu on smartphones, tablets and smart-screens.” The full announcement is expected at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, which starts tomorrow and runs for a week in Orlando, Florida.

Having already been in discussions with partners for around 18 months, it seems that this is more than wishful thinking, but one can’t help feel that the whole Palm-HP-WebOS debacle bodes badly for any company wanting to get in on the smartphone and tablet space. If HP can’t make it happen with a solid OS and Zen of Palm, what hope has Canonical? When quizzed about this, Shuttleworth said that he saw “Android as its primary competitor…..We’ve also already heard from people who are already shipping tablets that they want Ubuntu on the tablet.” And of course, “Ubuntu already has a developer and customer base.”

While there’s no doubt that the mobile space is still maturing and there’s plenty of change still to come,  I have a hard time seeing Ubuntu on anything but a small niche of tablets and an even smaller niche of smartphones. iOS and Android have their foothold and Microsoft will be a solid third if Windows Phone 7 continues to deliver and Windows 8 delivers as expected. A fourth player is going to have difficulty making inroads, especially one as relatively unknown as Canonical and Ubuntu.

Smart TVs are a more plausible destination as the internal software is of less concern to the consumer. Most people buying a TV are looking at the exterior brand such as Sony, Samsung or LG, and not what’s inside, although this may change if a “Powered by Roku” or “Google TV inside” campaign runs. Plenty of change to come in this space too.

I wish Ubuntu every success.

For several years, I’ve had an original Buffalo LinkStation NAS as my main fileserver. Being on 24×7, it’s gone through several fans and at least one hard disk, but it’s now time to retire it in favour of a LinkStation Duo which will give me more space, RAID capabilities and faster transfer speeds.

Naturally, as my main fileserver, it’s backed up. However when I copy the files to the new Duo, how do I know that they’ve all copied correctly and none have been missed? There are hundreds of thousands of files and checking each one by hand would be pointless.

Linux has lots of tools that tell me how much disk space is used, such as du, df and filelight, but they don’t always report back consistently between filesystems. Mostly for reasons of speed, they report the total size of the file blocks used to store a file and as block sizes can vary between filesystems, the total number of blocks used for a set of files will be different. For example, I have two folder sets that I know are identical and du -s on one reports 210245632 and on the other 209778684.

Fortunately, there’s an extra command line flag that will change the behaviour to take longer and sum the actual bytes. In this case, du -sb will return 214813009920 bytes on both filesystems. On the whole, I can be reasonably confident that if the total number of bytes used is the same between two filesystems, then all the files have copied correctly.

But what if the total number of bytes don’t match? How can I find the missing or truncated file? After thinking and tinkering, what I want is to get a list of files with each filesize from the old and new filesystems and then compare the two. And here’s how you do it (each section here goes on one line).

find /home/old_folder -type f -printf '%s %p\n' |
sed 's/\/home\/old_folder\///' | sort > old.txt

find /home/new_folder -type f -printf '%s %p\n' |
sed 's/\/home\/new_folder\///' | sort > new.txt

diff -wy --suppress-common-lines old.txt new.txt

If you aren’t used to Linux, this can look a bit scary, but it’s not really. The first two lines create the text files with all the files and the third line compares the two. The the first two lines are much the same in that they do the same commands but on different filesystems. There are three sections, find to list all the files, sed to chop the directory path off, and sort to get all the files in some sort of order. Here are some explanations.

find – finds files
/some/folder – where to start finding files
-type f – only interested in files (not directories or links)
-printf ‘%s %p\n’ – only print the filesize (%s) and the full pathname (%p) on each line (\n)

sed – processes text
‘s/x/y/’ – means replace x with y. In our instance, it’s replacing the leading folder path with nothing. It looks worse than it is because the slashes in the path need to be escaped by a preceeding backslash, so you get these \/s everywhere.

sort – sorts text
> file.txt – copy everything into a text file.

One of the clever things about Unix-like operating systems is that you can pass information from one command to another using a pipe. That’s represented by the | symbol, so the find command gets the information on files and files sizes, passes it to sed to tidy up which then in turn passes it on to sort before sending it to a file.

After running this set of commands on the old and new filesystems, all that needs done is to compare the files. Let’s look at the third and final command.

diff – compares files line-by-line
-w – ignore whitespace (spaces and tabs)
-y - compare files side-by-side
–suppress-common-lines – ignore lines that are the same
old.txt new.txt – the two files to compare

So what might the output of the diff be? If all the files copied correctly, you’d get absolutely nothing. Other possibilities are that the file partially copied or didn’t copy at all. Here’s what the output might be like.

598 i386/compdata/epson3.txt | 500 i386/compdata/epson3.txt
598 i386/compdata/onstream.txt <

The numbers at the beginning of the entry are the number of bytes, so the first line shows that the epson3.txt is only 500 bytes long in the new file but 598 in the old. The second line shows that onstream.txt is present in the old file but not in the new, as the arrow points to the old file.

To close the story, did I find that I had lost any files? Yes, I did. I discovered a couple of small files that hadn’t copied at all because of non-standard characters in their filenames. The filenames were acceptable to Windows but not Linux and I’d used my Linux PC to do the copying. Fortunately, the files were saved and all the scripting was worth it.

Read more on Linux at Geek News Central.

In this computer day and age, you want to make sure pictures, documents and more are backed up on a daily basis. Especially with hard drives that fail every day and notebooks that get stolen every day. Even if you get your stolen computer back, the thieves might have done damage like wiping the hard drive or dropping the machine altogether.

I back up my machines to different sources. I have 2 home backups and one cloud backup. The cloud backup can also be a great way to share pictures through an iPhone, Android or iPad application. Nonetheless, if my computer drive dies, if there is fire or water damage, if someone steals my computer, I don’t lose the data.

Advantages to Cloud Based Backup

• Off-site data retention
• access to data from multiple computers or mobile devices
• software that will start backing up files when computer is idle
• High encryption on backup
• Cloud based service runs their own backups – Your data gets backed up by them, too!
• Prices are low – There are some services that are free to a certain level.

MyPCBackup

My PC Backup

MyPCBackup was ranked #1 by Top 10 Online Backups. With unlimited backup, you can make sure all your pictures, documents and more are safe. They have an option to sync multiple computers through a folder on the machine.  They also offer a money back option and full customer support.

Mac users won’t be able to use this program, which is a major downfall to this program. The “1 PC, 1 Mac” per household ratio is growing. There is also no mobile application so you can view your backup files.

Carbonite Online Backup

Carbonite Online Backup

One of the more popular online backup systems is Carbonite, this unlimited backup lets you view your files from any computer, or through an iPhone, Blackberry or Android application.  Carbonite also has accidental deletion option, which means if you delete a file that was backed up, you have 30 days to restore it.

Carbonite also works on PC and Mac systems. Therefore, you could backup all your items from the old computer, switch the program to Mac and download the files. There is full customer support if needed.

Mozy Online Backup

Mozy Online Backup

Mozy online backup is also a PC or Mac backup. You can access your data from an iPhone and Android (no Blackberry) application. They also offer on-site backup, which means you can set up a USB hard drive and Mozy will backup to that as well. Full support and they also offer the ability to restore a file up to 30 days after deleted.

Mozy does not offer unlimited backup, though. $5.99 /month  for 50 GB and $9.99 for 125 GB. For a standard computer, you might not fill that spot – unless you take tons of pictures or create video like myself.

DropBox

Dropbox

You might not think of Dropbox as a online backup. However, with their open API, there are a lot of things that Dropbox can become. You can use it to sync with other computers, so it’s a great collaborative tool.

Keep in mind, it doesn’t tout itself as an online backup. You do get some great options, like short-term backup recovery.

They do have a free service for the first 2 GB, then pricing options after.

iBackup

iBackup

iBackup is a backup for not only PCs and Macs, but also Servers. You can also back up your MySQL, Linux box Exchange, Oracle and iPhone. Therefore, it’s a full corporate backup solution. It gets pricey fast, but if you need 1.5 Terabytes of data that has to be backed up, this is a great solution.

They also have a “30 version” backup – If you change a document 29 times, then realize you need to start from the beginning, you can go into your account and pull up the first version. That can help if someone messes up a document and you don’t realize it right away.

—

There are  other online backup options, too. This includes items like PogoPlug or Drobo, where the files are stored at your home site. Elephantdrive, Livedrive, KeepIT are some other online backup tools.

Since it’s your data, you should research each program and see if it’s right for you. But if you have important data and need to back it up, then these options might help you with that solution.

There are also some great software solutions if you want to backup your computer to another computer. If you are on a Mac, then Time Machine is a feature you can set. Everything from backing up folders to making a full image of your computer to restore at a moments notice.

Most important – Back it up now, because you never know if you’ll get a chance to back it up later.

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MPAA loves to Sue and little else.
Seizing Domains to Continue.
Verizon keeping iPhone users connected.
2 Million iPad 2′s.
Facebook Open Source Servers.
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Gmail Updates.
GoFlex Sim Review.
100 Atari Games for Ios
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Time Warner off to Court.
WHS 2011 Available.
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Skype Linux Update.
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Verizon 2yr contracts only!

I recently upgraded my home network from 100 Mb/s to 1 Gb/s by replacing the switches. The main house switch is an unmanaged 1U rack-mounted switch, with a second desktop switch. Out of pure interest, I took the opportunity to do a little bit of speed testing to see how much of a difference upgrading the switches made in terms of actual data transfer speeds.

A few basics to avoid confusion  – b/s is bits per second and B/s is bytes per second. All of the reported figures will be in MB, so converting b/s to B/s:
Fast Ethernet = 100 Mb/s = 12.5 MB/s
Gigabit Ethernet = 1 Gb/s = 125 MB/s

100 Mb/s and 1 Gb/s refer to the speed of the underlying technology but data transfers at these rates are never achieved because of protocol overheads and such. As a baseline, if I write a large file (8 GB) to my PC’s local disk, I get a data transfer of between 50-55 MB/s.

On my network, I have two Buffalo Linkstation NAS devices, one with a Fast Ethernet interface and one with a Gigabit Ethernet interface. 2 GB’s worth of data would be written to each of these devices with different Ethernet switches in place to see what actual data transfer speeds would be achieved. The following Linux command was used five times in each situation and the result averaged.

time dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile bs=16k count=16384

I also carried out two further tests:

1. With Gigabit Ethernet only, I wrote to both NAS devices at the same time. The data transfer speeds were unaffected.
2. I connected the two Gigabit Ethernet switches in series and wrote to the NAS. Transfer speeds were reduced by 1 MB/s on the Gigabit NAS to 20 MB/s. The change on the Fast Ethernet NAS was minimal.

There are several things that can be deduced from the information shown in the table above and the other tests.

1. Actual data transfer rates are considerably less than the theoretical maximums.
2. There’s no performance difference between rack-mounted and desktop switches.
3. The write speed of the NAS can be a limiting factor.
4. Gigabit Ethernet switches give large improvements with Gigabit Ethernet devices.
5. Gigabit Ethernet switches give small improvements even with Fast Ethernet devices.
6. Keep the number of switches in the network path to a minimum.

OpenSuSE 11.4 was released back on 11 March so this weekend I took the plunge and upgraded my main PC from 11.3 to 11.4. And less than two hours later, I had the best ever SuSE running on my PC.  Here’s how I got on…

SuSE offer two methods of upgrading, the first being an on-line update and the second being the more traditional iso image download, burn and boot. I chose the latter as the guidance on SuSE’s website suggested that this would be more reliable. It also means that if the upgrade does fail and I needed to carry out a complete install from scratch, I already had the media to hand. Before booting from the DVD to upgrade, I backed up all the user files from the home partition and made copies of the important files – fstab, hosts, passwd, groups, auto.nas and so on.

Booting from the DVD, the installer goes through the usual licensing screen before analysing the existing system. As I had 11.3 previously installed, the installer gave me the option to upgrade, which I choose. After more analysis, it gives a summary of the changes required before asking permission to proceed – which I gave.

About 35 minutes and 250-odd packages later, the PC rebooted, loaded Linux and displayed the login screen. I entered my username and password, and the screen faded to the X desktop, with all my icons and widgets still there. Sweet!

Even more surprisingly, all the 3D window effects worked out of the box. That’s never happened before – normally you have to download drivers from nVidia or ATi before all the graphic goodness works smoothly. To be fair 11.3 was a “nearly” release. While the applications and tools worked, the 3D effects were a bit hit or miss. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. But 11.4 hits it on the head.

The 3D eye candy is very slick. I run a 3 x 2 virtual desktop and the scrolling between the desktops is super-smooth, making it feel like one giant desktop. Windows glide in and out as they open and close. But by far my favourite effect is when you have overlapping windows and you want to bring one to the foreground. The upper window slides down the screen and then slips behind the lower window, bringing it to the front. Think of taking off the top sheet from a pile of paper and putting it to the back. So cool.

I’ve taken a couple of screenshots but (a) it’s really hard to catch the window closing when pressing the PrtScn button and (b) there’s no sense of the animation.

To finish off the installation, I added the ubiquitous Packman repository to load up all the unofficial multimedia goodies, such as DVD playing and video encoders.

Although it’s only been a few days, I’ve not encountered any problems at all with 11.4 and I’ve discovered that several of 11.3′s bugs have been fixed. Most of the major packages have been updated and OpenOffice.org has been replaced by LibreOffice (which is a whole sorry story in itself). Everything seems to be working fine.

If you want to try SuSE without messing with your current setup, there are live DVDs available for download. I run the KDE desktop rather than Gnome.

While it may be a little premature, I think this is the best SuSE ever.

The latest version of OpenSuSE Linux, 11.4, has just been released and it’s chock full of new features. The replacement for OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice, gets its first major outing, KDE gets bumped to 4.6 and Gnome comes in at 2.32.

There’s a also a pile of updates to applications, including Empathy, RhythmBox, Amarok, Totem, Evince and Shotwell. For developers, GTK 3 is included so Gnome applications can be upgraded to the new framework.

I’m running 11.3 so I’ll be downloading from the mirrors tonight and upgrading over the weekend. I’m looking forward to the new eye candy provided by the KDE Plasma Desktop Workspaces. Ok, so I’m shallow.

If you want to try OpenSuSE, there’s a live version as well, in both KDE and Gnome flavours. Give it a whirl.

Some of you may recall that early last summer, I left my long-term Linux partner OpenSuSE for Canonical’s Ubuntu – the post is here. I thought it was going to be forever but I’m afraid it hasn’t worked out and SuSE has taken me back.

The original problem was that I couldn’t get SuSE 11.2 to install on new hardware and while Ubuntu 10.04 happily installed onto the new motherboard and harddrives, it’s been the legacy hardware that has been the root of the problem. Specifically, applications that wanted to access my SCSI scanner had to run as root, I completely failed to pull DV video from a video camera over Firewire and I couldn’t configure, never mind watch, my TV card. Scouring the newsgroups, I wasn’t alone. Perhaps naively, I thought that these problems would be fixed with Ubuntu 10.10 but alas, they persisted.

During the Christmas holidays I’d finally had enough – I can’t remember what finally caused me to snap but I downloaded OpenSuSE 11.3, burnt the DVD and rebooted. This time I didn’t encounter any of the previous problems from 11.2 and the installation went smoothly. It was like coming home – everything worked. Scanner – check, DV – check, TV – check.  And although returning to KDE desktop from Gnome, I have decided to keep some of the Gnome-based apps in preference to the KDE equivalents. gPodder is now my default podcatcher and Amarok has been replaced by RhythmBox.

It’s interesting times for OpenSuSE. In November, parent company Novell was sold to Attachmate but allegedly it’s business as usual. Version 11.4 will be out in a few weeks too.

There’s no doubt that some parts of Ubuntu were very seductive, such as package management, but I’m sorry Ubuntu…you’ve been dumped.

Sigh. I love Linux but there are times when you realise it’s never going to take over the world…

I was working with Amarok, but the program crashed completely every time it hit a certain file in my audio library. This wasn’t a big deal but being a helpful soul, when I was presented with the option to send crash information back to the coders, I clicked on “Ok.”  And this is where it all went wrong.

First of all, after showing the stack trace (whatever that is), the crash handling dialog tells me that it’s not much use without the debug symbols, but the package to do that isn’t installed.  Did I want to install the necessary package?  So I said, “Yes,” still being a helpful soul.

Next, an error pops up saying that it can’t find the package and could I add a repository via the package manager?  Of course, the error message doesn’t tell me either the package that’s needed or the name of the repository needed. Being an ever-helpful soul, I figured out by myself that I need to enable the debug repository in the package manager, after which the crash handler was able to load the package and add the debug symbols. Hurrah!

So I hit  “Next” and I get presented with a username and password dialog for the KDE bug database. Apparently I can only log crashes if I’ve registered with the bug database. At this point I gave up being a helpful soul and closed the dialog.

So, for Amarok and KDE developers, here’s a clue. If you want feedback from your users on what’s going wrong with your applications, don’t make it so hard to give the information. Having agreed to give the feedback, that should be it, job done. I should not have to install a package, configure a repository and get a username for some website I’m never going to visit.

Even Dr Watson wasn’t this stupid.

Have you ever downloaded some data off the ‘net only to find it’s in a compressed or archive file format that your PC doesn’t have a helper app for? Or you’re fixing up a friend’s PC, you download some drivers and ditto, you can’t get them unpacked?

If so, you’ll be interested in WobZIP. It’s a web site where you can upload an archive file and it will uncompress it for you.  Once uncompressed, you can either download the files one by one, or else the site will bundle the files back up into a zip archive for you to download.

The site is still in beta but claims to support the following archive formats – 7z, zip, gzip, bzip2, tar, rar, cab, iso, arj, lzh, chm, z, cpio, rpm, deb and nsis.  Obviously quite a few of those formats are Unix and Linux, but there’s a fair collection of DOS / Windows ones too.  As it’s a website, it doesn’t care what OS you’re running either. From the FAQ, WobZIP uses the open source 7-zip program as the decompression engine.

Cleverly, there’s also a feature to unpack or uncompress from a URL so you don’t always have to download to your PC and then upload back to WobZIP – you can just enter the URL and it will go and get the file for you.  Also, it will scan the unpacked files for viruses.

Put this site in your bookmarks.  You may not need it right now, but you will one day.

The latest version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, 10.10 will be released tomorrow (if all goes to plan). Otherwise known as the Maverick Meerkat, this release focuses on improving the desktop experience and stability rather than radically updating it.

As usual, the kernel has been updated along with the Gnome desktop and there has been one change to the default apps (Shotwell for F-Spot in photo management) but apart from that, it’s pretty much upgrades and improvements.  Allegedly boot times have been improved as well, but 10.04 already booted pretty quickly.

If you haven’t figured out from the post title, Ubuntu releases aren’t numbered by simply incrementing versions.  The numbers are the year and month that software was released in thus October 2010 is 10.10.  The last release, Lucid Lynx, came out in April of this year so is 10.04.

As a further joke, this release is coming out on 10/10/10 which in binary is 42, homage to Douglas Adams’ answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

I’ll report back on how my upgrade goes.

Some of you will know that I’m a Linux user from my previous posts.  I’m not a distro-tart: I tend to stick with a particular Linux distribution rather than swap between the different flavours.  I started out over 15 years ago with an early Slackware release before moving to Red Hat around version 5 (1998?).  I then hopped over to SuSE for 7.3 (2001?) and have been with SuSE ever since.  After I moved to SuSE Linux, I ditched Ms Windows and never looked back.

A few weeks ago, I decided to upgrade my PC for a bit more oomph.  It was basically a complete rebuild as my motherboard was still AGP graphics, so everything’s new – new ASUS mobo, AMD AM3 processor, DDR3 memory,  all SATA drives, ATI (PCI-e) graphics, the works.  None of this stuff was cutting-edge but none of it was complete rubbish either.  All the gear had arrived in the post and Sunday afternoon was free – I was ready to go.

New drives meant new install of SuSE 11.2….or not.  First of all, I couldn’t get SuSE to see the SATA drives until I changed some BIOS settings.  Then the bootloader wouldn’t install unless I only had one HDD and disconnected the two mirrored drives.  And even then, when I rebooted after the initial install, I got buckets of SATA data errors and the OS failed to boot.

After tinkering with BIOS settings and kernel modules for a couple of hours I gave up.  Life’s too short.  I bunged in a Linux Format magazine coverdisk that had Ubuntu 10.04 on it.  Twenty minutes later, I had a working system, with all my drives, including the RAID mirror and it had also installed the proprietary drivers for the graphics card.  No fuss, no muss.  Boy, was I relieved!

I sometimes feel that it’s a bit churlish to complain about an OS which is essentially free, i.e. no cost.  In my defence, I have previously supported SuSE and Red Hat by buying the box sets, but in this day and age, if Linux wants to have any chance to succeed against the Redmond machine, it has to just work.  I’d consider myself somewhere between a power user and an expert and if I can’t get it to work on a fairly ordinary system, there’s no hope.

I’ll probably replace Ubuntu (which uses the Gnome desktop) with Kubuntu (which uses KDE) tonight to keeps things a bit more familiar but I’m afraid it’s goodbye SuSE, hello Ubuntu.

Ok back in the saddle here in Hawaii looking forward to spending a couple of weeks at home. Special Insider coming out in a few days hope you will become an insider. Lot’s happening on the home front and it is a very exciting time to be a new media creator. Tune in today.

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Last night, I downloaded some music from Amazon for the first time and I was both irritated and pleasantly surprised by the experience.  I’d gone to Amazon because I’m not an iPod owner and wanted to get some DRM-free music for playing via a DLNA media server and also my Palm Pre.

(I know this is a tech site but just in case you are interested, the tracks were “Heartbreak” by M’Black.  It’s a pumping euro dance track with a great vocal from Nicol – it’s going to be my summer theme.)

But I digress.  As I was downloading a number of tracks, I had to use Amazon’s MP3 downloader, which I didn’t like the sound of as I run Linux.  However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Amazon offers the downloader for four flavours of Linux, including OpenSuSE 11.2….except that I’m still on 11.1.  Tried the 11.2 version but didn’t work – too many missing dependencies.  If there’s two things wrong with Linux, it’s fragmentation and dependency-hell.

So I had to borrow my wife’s laptop and download the Windows version which worked flawlessly.  The downloader also added the tracks to the iTunes software library on the laptop (she is an iPod-owner) but I found you could easily turn that off.  The tracks were left in a download directory as well, so it was then simply a case of copying the tracks to the media server and Palm Pre for my listening pleasure.

Overall, I can see that if you are Windows user, the experience is flawless and gives the benefit of DRM-free music, quickly added to either iTunes or Windows Media Player libraries, but also direct access to .mp3s for copying to media servers or other music devices.  As a suggestion for improvement, it would be good if the album art was included in the download.

As a Linux user, slightly disappointed that you had to be on the latest version and if you weren’t, the options were limited.  Great that Amazon is at least supporting Linux in some shape, though.

Ubuntu Desktop

I have an old Mac Mini that I wasn’t using, so being bored I decided to install Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu is a well know distribution (distro) of Linux. The latest distribution is 9.10 also known as Karmic Koala, (all Ubuntu distribution are named after animals.). The first thing I did was I downloaded the latest distribution of Ubuntu as an ISO. An ISO is simply a single image of all files needed to install an application, in this case Ubuntu. I then burned the ISO to a CD using the burn option available in Disk Utility on the Mac. I did burn it at a lower speed then normal, which is recommended. I then placed the CD in the Macmini and restarted it, while holding down the C key when the chime rang. The first screen that came up asked me if I wanted to run Ubuntu without installing, install Ubuntu, check disk for error, or start from first hard disk. I decided that I wanted to do a full install, so I made that choice. (If you make that choice remember that you are erasing all data on the partition that you install it on.) The next choice I had was whether I wanted to use the full hard drive or a partition. I chose to use the full hard drive, hit the continue button and the installation ran without any problem. Once the installation is finished I set up my login name and password. I removed the CD and restarted the computer, Ubuntu started up without any problem.

I love Ubuntu, it is one of the easier distribution of linux to use. Ubuntu comes with Open Office, Firefox, Pidgin Internet Messanger. already installed. It also has audio, video and image applications already available. The great thing about Linux today especially Ubuntu is you can stick with what it comes with when you download it. However most likely there are going be some programs that you will want to change. Unlike in the past a lot of applications can be downloaded direct from the Internet and installed automatically. However, by learning either Terminal commands or using the Synaptic Package Manager you have a lot more options. If you run into trouble or have a question, there is help available either through IRC, a very active forum or a wiki. Most of the people on the forum are helpful, although they do expect you to do some work on your own behalf.

If you are sick of the Windows vs Mac battle or if you have tried a Linux distro before and decided it wasn’t worth the effort, I recommend giving Ubuntu a chance it is easy to install and use. However, if you want everything done for you and don’t want to do any work, then Ubuntu or any linux distribution is probably not for you. Do you use Ubuntu or another distribution of linux. If you use another distribution of Linux, which one and why

So the latest SCO filings quietly stated that the man most linked to the long running SCO litigations, Darl McBride, was no longer with the company.  His role as CEO and president had been eliminated.  One might have thought that this was an indication that the other people in charge at SCO were cooling to the whole thing.  In case you are not aware, SCO is currently in bankruptcy in what is arguably a direct result of the litigious course they have followed.

This is not the case with McBride himself though.  He is still pushing for SCO to aggresively continue to try for a big payday from IBM.  He is using his shareholdings, and the backing of some other shareholders, with the objective of  “…putting together an alternative plan … that will ultimately get SCO its day in court.”  What this actually means is anyones guess at this stage, but McBride has a long history of grandios pronouncements.

It is hard to believe that this is still going on, or that McBride still actually believes that there is any chance that SCO is going to prevail in any way, or even that SCO has any shred of moral high ground in this case.  Having followed this case closely over the years there must be some severe self blinding going on here.  If there was any secret information that needed to come out, the time for it to come out passed 2-3 years ago.

As always, Groklaw has all the best dirt.

I really do hate traveling as I am so spoiled when I am back in the studio in Hawaii. This show I talk a bit about Twitter and trust, do you trust the people you follow? Look forward to the meetup tomorrow night with show fans. Early show again on Thursday evening so join me for the live recording.

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Listener Links:
Where’s broadband in US.
Synergy
Facebook Pawned.
Oldest computer to be rebooted.

Show Links:
Japanese RIAJ is reading RIAA playbook.
Discount on Apple TV.
Zune HD Discount!
AT&T MMS Roll Out Early?
Google forms own consumer advocacy org?
VEOH Wins against Universal!
Aircraft tracking by Satellite.
Cyber Criminals going after Small Companies!
Windows 7 and Cablecards.
NY Times serves up Malware.
Bing goes Visual!
T-Mobile to buy Sprint?
Master Gene Found!
Windows 7 Upgrade to take more than day?
Bank Robbery or Identity Theft?
New Cannon Camera rave reviews!
Get the dual monitor!
New iPod Touch Yawn?
802.11n finally a standard?
Ladder Safety device!
Kill you Phone remotely!
Is cell phone tracking going to be our demise?
Google Search Tips.
Google Fast Flip.
Fun shuttle image!
Are you cleaning your showerheads?
Linux Admins tend your servers.
Why is NASA seeding clouds?
AT&T and Gaming shocking statement.

Less is more.  Less trouble equals more value.  Lower learning curve equals increased value.  That would be the theory of Microsoft in the recently leaked training notes for their operating system (as covered by www.appleinsider.com).  To install Microsoft Windows 7 means that the PC user has less to learn compared to switching to a Mac, making it is more valuable.  Switching to Mac OS X involves a steeper learning curve so stay with what you know.  It’s worth it.  Ok.  Sort of.  Isn’t that like saying, “Stick with the old.  Stay with what you understand. Change is too difficult.”  Washington’s premier spin-masters and New York’s newsrooms should be proud

Let’s talk straight.  Investigate and choose an operating system and applications that will best fit your present and future. In learning to drive a car I took part in a driving class.  I drove for several months with another adult driver.  I was monitored by my parents for several years. And now for 20 years I have driven cars.  The training was worth it.  Now I’m living in a developing country and learning to drive all over again.  Learning is inevitable.

In my former job I often worked in Photoshop.  The tasks involved cropping, resizing, adujsting, and re-coloring photos for publication.  For every photo I would do many of the same exact steps which involved several dozen clicks and commands.  One afternoon I decided to train myself in Photoshops ability to record and automatically apply those steps.  It took me several hours and much failure, but in the end I reduced my labor by 75%.  The hours of training were more than worth it.  Less to learn does not mean increased value.  Learning the features increased the value for me.  It may be that switching to another operating system, Linux, OS X, or Windows may do the same for you.

If a person has little to gain in terms of functionality then stay with the familiar. If your current operating system and portfolio of applications has everything you need while offering efficient productivity, then stay with the familiar.  Value is based on price, need, ability, and finally time available for learning.  When I see a person will gain ability and increase their enjoyment in working on their computer then I recommend a switch.  Even though I love Macs, based on the previous criteria, I do not recommend them to everyone.  But of course we can’t expect Microsoft or Apple to be that balanced now can we?

This will be like the US Tour de Todd as I will be all over the place over the next week. No meetups as I will have little time between each stop. I will have another early live show with hopefully no issues on Monday around 9pm Eastern

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Show Comments please call 1-619-342-7365 or e-mail geeknews@gmail.com

Show Topic Notes:
Six-Core Intel Nehalem
Zeo’s Sleep Coach
Linux get USB 3.0 Drivers First!
Sharp LED Light
Amazon EC2 Outage Issues.
Virgin Mobile in US to sell Prepaid Mobile Broadband Cards!
Sad Stats on Low Income Broadband Penetration.
Outlook Users can now Sync to Google
Scoble Building43 Info
Building43.com
Get your Facebook Username Saturday at 0000 EST
How to remove Google Penalty.
Microsoft Money R.I.P.
Data Centers Behind the Scenes
Microsoft Anti-Virus Program for free?
Periodic Table to get new Element
Japanese Crash a Spacecraft into the Moon.
Endeavor launch count underway!
Fair Use Defense thrown out in New P2P trial!
UK P2P users largely ignore warning letters!
Class Action Suit against RIAA?
DJ’s Greed lands them in Jail
New Chinese PC’s can be Hacked Easily!
Trojans targeting Mac’s
Doom for your iPhone (I’m in)
Digital TV day of Doom is here
Earth to play bumper planets.
Technicians find bad stuff on PC get ready for Jail.
Play Free Poker watch the fed banking lock down.
Student Programming work can be posted online. (This case may be Unique)
Fake User name in Texas may become Illegal.
Sirius / XM bills going up to pay Artist
Elsevier Reveals more on Fake Journals
DVD Jon gets over on Apple Big Time!
Teen figures out longtime illness on her own!
When your time is up your time is up!

Headed back to Honolulu, I have loved my time in Texas but ready to get back to Hawaii and spend time with the family. The last month has been a long one for my wife and I and I am looking forward to the weekend. Be safe out there and enjoy this show.

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Listener Links:
Amazon goes Postal
Text While Driving Poll Results
GPS System close to failure?
Study Ball $115.36

Show Topic Notes:
Jetpack Project
Laptop cooler using Ion technology
1.6TB Storage on DVD sized Disk?
Cool SATA HDD dock
Urine is the new Water on the ISS
Robots on Mars work to free Opportunity!
Amazon allows Delivery of Data via Fedex.
Mogulus is now LiveStream.com
Faster Google Searches for those logged in.
Pet Gadgets now in vogue!
Brilliant Bill lay pipe for fiber during road projects!
Media companies want more money from Pirate Bay.
Cable companies want to experiment on Public.
CES expanding Apple section by 21,000 square feet!
Hubble is now loaded for more science!
Limelight buys Kiptronic!
Crater on Mars reveals water history on Mars.
21 Satellites per year for next 10 years to be launched!
Judge Reviewing Pirate Bay Biased Judge removed for same Bias.
FCC can search your home without a warrant!
24hrs of Video uploaded every minute on YouTube!
Netflix now on Windows Media Center!
Linux for Power Windows Users.

My loyal and dedicated podcast recording PC died on Tuesday and I had to revive it with some new guts. So while I get it dialed in let me know how the sound quality was tonight. I have a decent list of content for a Friday show. Thanks for staying subscribed.

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Listener Links:
Unmask Blocked Calls
FTC Privacy Suggestions
Cool Pic from Helicopter
iPhone Card Counting Application

Show Notes:
Wordwide Linux User Count
Mark Cuban Startup Funding Round 2
Brain Scan Study I hope was Free
Have Hangover? Have Gatorade
Pirate Bay No One is in Charge
Mind Reader
32 Free PC Applications
Open Source at White House?
More proof of Water on Mars
30 Websites to visit if your Laid Off
Pirate Bay calls for ceasefire!
Android Paid Apps
Vista Server SP2
Brits to use WhiteKnightTwo for Sat Launch
Step into my Proton Cyclotron
More Bars on your Cell Phone
Comcast dazzles with more Speed
Facebook does about face on TOS
New Mac Mini?
iPhone App Shelf Life
Top 21 Twitter Clients
Dawn gets a boost around Mars
Legislation requires ISP keep Personal Data 2 Years
ICANN delays the TLD rollouts
Big Paycuts at HP
Facebook removed 5,500 sex offenders
T-Mobile $50.00 Unlimited Plan
No More Texting while Walking Legislation

First show of 2008 back in the saddle and ready to head to Vegas. Lots to cover tonight and I appreciate your iTunes Reviews of the show!

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The 2008 CES coverage starts next week you will want to check here at least daily for new coverage. I will be live blogging many of the events and we may even live stream some CES Coverage.

Listener Links
Pocket Projector
WiFi Virus
1981 PC Hacked!
Generation Lost
Webware Hits and Misses
Peru OLPC

Show Notes:
TSA Facecrimes
Tree’s not breathing as much CO2?
Bypass Disabled IE
20 Best iPhone Apps
Linux Switch Tips
IPv6 Coming
Bizarre Google Maps
Cool Space Image
Facebook OWNS your Data
Banned for Life for taking Picture
Dell LCD Crystal Monitor
DRM and HD Monitors out of Control
Powramid Kreative Power
Belkin RockStar
N95 and YouTube
New DUI Tool
Om Malik Best Wishes
Podcasters and FOIA
Survive CES 2008
Become a Celebrity
Scoble and Facebook Data
Plaxo Blows It
Youngest Exoplanet
Deep Impact Flies By Earth
NASA gets their Money

I am your special guest Jeffrey Powers from Geekazine to help Todd out. Tons of news including Top 10 Gadgets for Geeks this Holiday Season.

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DoorBuster Day Deals:
Wired Top 10
CNet Top 10
ZDNet Top 10
About.com Top 10
LinuxDevices.com Top 10
Scientific American 20
BBSpot Top 11
TopTenSources.com for Geeky Girls
WindowsforDevices.com Top 10

News:
AMD Spider Debuts Monday
Hush Technologies HS1
KDE 4.0 Final Stretch
Amazon Kindle Sells Out in One Day
PSStore and PS3 Firmware
Verison FIOS Boasts 50 Mbps
OLPC Extended to Dec 31st
Remote Controlled Nanoparticles Deliver Drugs to Tumors
Half Million Databases Have No Firewall
Firefox Leaving 80% of Bugs for 3.0 Release
Google Asking People to Perfect Maps
T-Mobile to Sell iPhone Without Contract
T-Mobile Replaces Faulty Sidekick
How Facebook IS turning the Blogging Community around.
G-Mail Crashing Browsers
Worlds Smallest Projector
White Dwarf Embodies New Category of Star
Leopard Tweaks
California Sues E-Voting Vendor
Free Software Files Copyright Lawsuits
How to Make a Green Tree Greener

Caught My Eye:
This Ladybug Cleans
Titanium Toothbrush
The Whole Internet on One Page
GoldMail
Procrastination Flowchart
Space Invaders Alarm Clock

I discuss a very disturbing email I received and also cover some of the hurricane preparations here in Hawaii along with all of the usual Tech News

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Listener Links:
Hurricane
Metric
The Bartenders Show
Parsec Awards

Show Notes:
ISP Throttling
World’s Oldest
Hitachi 1 Terabyte Review
Best of July
China Toy Recall Boss no More
File Sharing Kids
AACS DRM Tentacles
Skype on iPhone
Fallen Astronaut
Death Valley Od Things
iPhone Bill
Broadband ISP Fear
Pligg the Open Source Clone
Podcast NYC
Cool Way to take a Picture
Google Traffic Loss?
Multiple Windows Patches coming Tuesday
Alexa Junk Data
SCO Stock Dives
Walk and Make Money with Google
Search Engine Privacy
ISS and Shuttle News
Hotmail Storage Boost
Linux Command Line Tips
Sony Mini HD Camera
Google Gmail Storage
China Astronaut

If you won a gift certificate and have not received it please drop me a e-mail. Great show tonight with some great listener feedback. Thanks for all the ongoing support and thanks for being part of the Ohana!

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Listener Links:
On-Demand Book Services
Panraven Contest
iPhone Wallpaper
StreetAdvisor.com
www.truckertomhd.com

Show Notes:
FCC rant
copyscape.com
Dvorak and Web 2.0
Departing for Mars
Verizon & Rural Cellular
Update iTunes
Light Switch Bad Idea
Windows iPhone Display
Progress to ISS
Blogger Journalist Protection
Google Phone
SuperNova.org Relaunch
Google Suggest a Site
Facebook on Netvibes
iPhone Theft and Dateline
Sony Cybershot Recall
Anywhere.fm
Second Life See Ya
Stealing Web Content
Fusion to run Windows on Mac
Apple 30″ Monitor Defect
50 Quick Linux Commands
Doc Searls and Fiber Maze
Internet Radio Equality Act
Apollo Image Archive
Feds raid Mod Chip Sellers
Public Internet and Telcos
Aging Infrastructure
Shuttle Repair

Source

Great Friday show I have this thing packed from one end to the other with great stories, links and commentary. Thanks to all the Ohana out there — your support keeps this train rolling.

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Special Links:
Tech Podcast Round Table this Saturday!
Podcast Awards Voting

Listener Links:
ViaTalk
Synthetic Snot
Toronto Facebook
Cyber Squatters Loose
Fledging Blogger Check him out!
Bypass AT&T iPhone Activation

Show Notes:
Google Earth Pics
Tech at Target?
HDMI Cable Part III
Email Self Destruct
Vanishing Swimming Pool
Top 10 Gmail Applications
Wireless HDMI
NASA Sabotage
uTorrent Mobile
Grim Reaper Cat?
Backup Google Apps
XP on a Stick
SK Telecom to buy Sprint?
NYC Cabbies and GPS
Dvorak and Mac
Apple Anti-Theft
FBI – SL and Gambling
BSOD Craziness
VelvetPuffin
Twitter Financed
SP2 why Secret
Microsoft Open Source?
Microsoft Silverlight
HotSwap Used Cars
YouDeparted.com!!
Sprint and Google Mobile Portal
Kids Cell Phone Tracking
Mojave Accident Scaled Composites
Vista Activation needed over Driver Update?
Updating EULA Notifications
Lifelock Circus
SnagIt to OneNote
DTV Transition and Elders
Google Bid for Spectrum WWW III
Space Walk Images
Dell + Linux = Growth

Live from the homestead in southern Michigan, join Todd and his very special guest. Every listen to a podcast where the host has had 4 hours sleep in the past 48 hours well you get to on this show.

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Listener Links:
Mobile Podcast Survey
New York Times Reader
Engineers
Your Life on the Net
Life Online With Bob Parsons

Show Notes:
Powerful Flashlight
Xbox banning’s
Linux on Microsoft Claims
Google Fair Use Win
XM Radio Censors?
Hydrogen Fuel
25 Hour Days
52 Mac Tips
WordPress 2.2
RIAA IP Tactics
AACS Key Hacked Again
4 Billion Market Cap Loss on Rumor
Google Cross Language
Orbital Express
Shuttle to Pad
Progress arrives at ISS

Extremely late Podcast from Jacksonville Florida, I cover my ordeal with United and what has been happening the past 4 days including some rapid fire tech stories.

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Listener Links:
www.tzome.com
hackedgadgets.com

Show Notes:
Dirty Bomb Cleanup Technology
Deep Impact
LCD Versus BB Gun
HDMI Cables
Monitoring Domain Searches
Homeless by Choice
APOD
XM and Sirius
10 Linux Commands
Banned Digg Sites
Charter Sad Tech Support
Balmer and Vista
MSN Digg Site
Worst Workspace
Jobs Blast Teachers and Unions
Apple Patches Bugs
Firefox has Bug
Sony PS3 Movie Offering
MPAA Hypocrites
Sat Launch

Mixed bag of tech talk tonight along with some links to some really cool sites. The amount of listener feedback has been amazing thanks for your continued support.

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Listener Links:
Computer Tutorials
Open Source Alternative Applications
BoxNet Zoho Integration
Buy your own lights for Boston
www.spresent.com
ScrapBlog.com
Linux Accounting Package

Show Notes:
Mint
YouTube takes down Legal Videos
Hacked Sites Grow
VOIP whats next?
Super Bowl Ads
Doug Kaye on Amazon S3
Mux.am
RSS Search Engine
ISS Space Walk
2 Million Dollar PR Mistake
Home Security Tips
4 Computers and a Idiot
Space Map
Moon Panoramas
Vista ReadyBoost
Robin Good Podcast Picks
Vista Upgrade vs Clean Benchmark
Google Web Tools
Google Search tracking

If you have dedicated servers and are slightly inexperienced in setting them up and securing them. Here is an article that should help you out. [thinkhole.org]