Saturday, October 28. 2006
Palm, an uncommon mobile bliss
Let’s face it, in these times any day when you don’t have to deal with technology is better than those you do, but for when you must use technology for your daily life you want it to work without a hitch. I often find myself in larger corporates shaking my head at their new roll-outs of another popular type of mobile device. When I enquire as to what they are using it for, it’s always the same, contacts, calendar and email (nothing special at all). Upon probing why they chose this particular OS it seems that aesthetics seem to mostly be the reason (is there anyone not sucked in by marketing these days)!
Anyway, as it happens (much to my own personal glee) the reps that are using these devices are demanding they get something that actually works, particularly as a phone (strangely enough) and as a result they are being phased out and replaced with other alternatives. While I’m on these sites I’m often away from a computer and are forced to work completely mobile with my Treo 650 and take great pleasure in pointing out how well the setup works (which I assure you by now, they all know it too well) which makes it even more gratifying (big grin). When asked about the unsightliness of the Treo 650 Antenna I simply reply that it’s a small price to pay to get a device that cause’s me no hassles and works the way one would expect. I can now of course also point to the Treo 680with it’s antenna-less design.
On my palm I use all native applications with the exception of email, for which I use Novell Groupwise Mobile Server(basically Nokia Intellisync Suite) for palm. It gives me push email, attachments, filtering rules to dictate only to push when I have unread messages addressed directly to me, bandwidth optimisation options and it keeps in sync with my desktop mail’s contacts, calendar etc via the cellular network. This simple working setup, I tell you, is an uncommon mobile bliss.
Saturday, September 2. 2006
Dissapointing Protection from Krussel Leather Cases and replacement screens
Now I don’t normally write articles with a negative spin, but I have had some dissapointing experiences that I thought I wanted to share. I have personally owned a number of palms, from the Palm Personal to my now Treo 650. In short I love palm, it’s simple… very simple and I like it, the amount of times I’ve now seen Windows Smartphone owners come up to me and say their phones are not a bad PDA but they are a real crap phone is getting more and more common.
In any case since I love my Palm’s so much and have had a few mishaps with screens on Palm IV’s, Tungsten C’s and Treo 600′s I really wanted to protect them with a quality case. With that in mind I searched around and found Krussels ‘pitch’ to be very interesting, the multidapt idea is brilliant and I have used it extensively on my belt and in my car. In particular I wanted a case that the phone did not have to be removed from to use it as I felt it was safer that way if I dropped it.
The upshot about the Krussell cases is that the case moulds to the phone well but the multidapt system is problematic.. let me explain.
I first bought a Krussell case for the Treo 600. It was great, did everything I wanted, that is until the multi-dapt clip that attached to the clip on the leather case broke. As it happened I had a replacement for that piece but it had also chipped the plastic clip that was attached to the actual leather case. I soon found that this no longer attached properly and I had to resort to super glue. So that was all fine and I figured if that was the worst that would happen a bit of super glue was a small price to pay. Unfortunately the chipped piece that is normally permanently attached to the leather case then came off. It looked like it would snap back in so I pushed it in but then it too would not stay fastened and the Treo’s screen broke. Obviously I was not very happy but all kudos to palm they fixed it under warranty free of charge!
So I figured I had better not risk more glue and ordered a new case from Krussel. I then gave that phone and case to one of my staff and bought myself a nice new Treo 650 and said case. As luck would have it my staff member broke his Treo 600 screen again by having clip issues with his Krussell case. So we get it fixed. And you guessed it, it happened again. In the meantime my case and phone have been fine, that is until about two weeks ago where you guessed it, same problem again and I have a broken Treo 650 screen out of warranty.
I thought I’d try my luck and see what Krusell’s web site said, perhaps (like Belkin) there was some kind of Gaurantee for the phone but alas, they do not and interestingly they specifically state that the mult-dapt connectors are not included in their warranty. Needless to say I will not be buying any more cases with the Krussell Multi-Dapt system!
As for getting a replacement screen I am astounded at how difficult it has been to achieve this from one particular place, and in fact I have not yet achieved a replacement screen but more on that later!
Saturday, September 2. 2006
Suse Linux Enterprise Roadshow
Recently I had the opportunity to head along to the Suse Linux Enterprise Roadshow put on by Novell here in Auckland. Showcasing the now officially released Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 there were three representatives from Novell and two other vendors (Intel and IBM). It was again abundantly clear that vendor support for Novell is a strong advantage when choosing a linux enterprise distribution and (no surprise here) all eyes are still on Novell to continue to raise the bar with their Linux Desktop in particular. Among the demonstrations was an impressive Xen virtualisation live migration demo which worked flawlessly and of course Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 which touted impressive 3d features ‘even though running on 3 year old hardware’ and minimalistic 3d graphics cards by todays standards.
Another thing that stood out was the absolute passion some of Novell’s employees have for their product, in particluar Andreas Girardet had a very real world attitude to his presentation which gave a sense of reality and fact seldom found amongst the hype of today’s software launches. Even if I did not know half of what he was talking about I would have no doubt in what he was presenting being correct.
Also among the nicities of such an event was a well packaged Suse Linux Enterprise DVD kit including full versions of both the desktop and the server product other free merchandise such as code 10 hats and a brilliant buffet breakfast and morning tea. All in all that was fairly worth the effort for the ridiculously high $30 parking ticket that Sky City insists on charging these days. I just wish they put a homing beacon on your ticket so you could find your car afterwards.
Also it seems after Intel’s presentation that the guy’s and gals at Novell have become the first Operating System of any brand to support Intel’s new Core 2 Duo CPU’s which promise to multiply the effective CPU speed by large numbers, though I took it with a grain of salt considering I saw statistics at HP’s VMWare show recently that showed AMD’s CPU’s outperformed intel with Virtualisation by some extremely large numbers. In fact in some situations Intel did not even rate on the graph, and I see know reason for HP to fudge those in AMD’s favour.
Thursday, August 17. 2006
Are you qualified to bash linux
Are you qualified to bash GNU/Linux?
Despite the pervasive growth of mind share and even market share of GNU/Linux in various areas of use, and despite all the hype around GNU/Linux reaching the top this year with releases of Ubuntu Dapper and Novell SuSE 10, I can still see some people complain that GNU/Linux is just too hard to install and use and that it is a nightmare they don’t want anyone to experience. They are usually advocating either sticking with Windows or switching to Mac which, as the argument goes, has the benefit of UNIX and the ease of use they require.
When reading these complaints and arguments I am usually left considering those who say this as simply misinformed. The usual sources of this (mis)information are things other people said about GNU/Linux (i.e. heresay), Microsoft propaganda or a personal experience. Well the last one can be valid, but not in the context I am talking about, not when this personal experience is based on ignorance or is just too old to be a valid measure to draw conclusions from.
One thing people should know about GNU/Linux and Free Software in general is that it is rapidly evolving. It is actually evolving more rapidly than anything in the world of computing. If you tried GNU/Linux only few months ago and were disappointed there is an awesome chance that if you try it now things will be different.
Many people who say that GNU/Linux is a geeks OS that is a nightmare to install and maintain have either heard this false rumor from someone else as misinformed as they are now or are basing this conclusion on an experience that, quite frankly, holds no weight today. If you tried it a year ago you have experienced far past of GNU/Linux, not the present. You simply cannot base your conclusions on that past experience anymore when talking about GNU/Linux today.
This said, I am not suggesting that everyone should go try GNU/Linux every month, but I do suggest not to go spread false conclusions you based on an outdated experience you may have had with it. If you didn’t try GNU/Linux today or very recently, you pretty much don’t have a lot to say about its present state. If you do want to talk about it then make it clear you are talking about GNU/Linux *then*, not today. This way you are acknowledging the source of your conclusions and the fact that they don’t apply to the present state.
Another way people can draw false conclusions about present GNU/Linux is, quite simply, by trying a wrong distribution. If you never used GNU/Linux before and then just jump straight into Slackware, for example, on your first try, and get burned by the difficulty you might have installing and using it, you just can’t go around saying that GNU/Linux sucks because the distribution of your choice didn’t work for you. It would be better if you get informed a bit. Just as well as you found out about Slackware you can find out about easier to use GNU/Linux distributions such as Ubuntu. Ask anyone on any GNU/Linux forums what distro would they recommend for someone just getting started and you’ll get the right answers, and you’ll be on your way to the GNU/Linux experience tailored for *you*.
In summary, the two major points I am trying to make are (1) that GNU/Linux is rapidly evolving and getting better and (2) it has a lot of flavors to choose from of which not all are suited for beginners. Failure to acknowledge both of these two points will lead you to absorbing and spreading false conclusions about GNU/Linux.
So in the end, you may ask, why the heck do I care? Why is that any of my business? Well, for one I am, admittedly, a GNU/Linux and more broadly a Free Software advocate. I believe Free Software is a way for computer users that we are to finally take control over our computing life in our own hands instead of being constantly dependent on the ones controlling the software we run on our own computers. The latter has multiple kinds of consequences, the lack of control and freedom of users over their own computer software and practical flaws that proprietary software frequently exhibits.
And spreading false information ultimately leaves none in the better.
Thank you
Danijel Orsoli
(Source nuxified.org)
Saturday, August 12. 2006
Package repository for Musicians
It’s been a while since I wrote (busy with work and all that), just thought I’d mention I’ve stumbled upon a nice repository for us musicians. I was looking for an easier way to install some of the very nice Audio Applications available for linux today such as Ardour, RoseGarden, Muse, and Hydrogen, (just to name a few). It also includes a choice of SuSE 10.1 reatime audio kernels (optimised just for us SuSE people ;})
It doesn’t look like these guys are putting up bleeding edge code all the time either (the last thing you want is your PC freezing or something in the middle of a recording) so if it’s the very latest you’re after this probably won’t suit you, otherwise if you’ve never tried these out before, what are you waiting for!!!!
If you’re wondering how to install it, install SMART (available from here) and then follow the below instructions.
Once SMART is installed, open it and choose edit, channels. Choose new, provide channel information <OK>, then choose APT-RPM repository.Enter and ALIAS and a name of your choosing, in the base URL enter http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/apt/SuSE/10.1-i386 and in the components enter jacklab (in lower case) <OK>
That’s it! I’d recommend (if you haven’t already) to update all your channels by clicking the blue circular arrows. Once that is complete you can press CTRL-F to search (FIND) your desired package. The ones above and many many more will be automatically downloaded and installed to your computer….. and for free of course!
In true SuSE language, have fun!
OpenDocument format winning around the world
OpenDocument Format (ODF), the open file format
for office documents, is continuing to gather support from governments around the world.
On Thursday the ODF Alliance announced that more than 280 organisations
and industry bodies have joined up to support the format. One of the
latest converts is Malaysia, whose official standards body voted this
week for ODF. This should mean that Malaysia’s public sector will start
using ODF from the end of this year.
“The news from Malaysia continues momentum towards ODF that we are
seeing around the globe,” said Marino Marcich, executive director of
the ODF Alliance, in a statement. “For instance, France and Belgium have recently identified ODF
as the kind of open format on which they would standardise. Denmark and
Norway have recently indicated that they are moving toward using
software based on open standards, and India is also piloting
deployments of ODF software within governmental departments.”
Closer to home, Bristol City Council has also joined the Alliance. It
says that it wants to simplify the process of sharing information.
“Most of today’s electronic office documents have been created by a few
commercial software programs, and more often than not each one has its
own format which cannot be used in conjunction with others without
recourse to a time-consuming and limited conversion process,” said the
Council. “In order to process a document, users need the same program
(and corresponding versions) or a filter that allows the document to be
opened and modified. OpenDocument Format does away with this need.”
ODF has been approved as a standard by OASIS; ISO also approved it in May of this year. It can be used royalty-free by anyone.
Microsoft has proposed an alternative format called Open XML in answer
to objections that the Office file formats are not sufficiently
open. Faced with growing opposition over its refusal to support ODF,
the company announced earlier this month that it will create a tool that will allow people to use Microsoft Office to open and save ODF documents.
“Clearly there is a strong demand from customers for access to a truly
universal, open, standards-based file format,” said Marcich. “If
Microsoft’s ODF translator really works, it — along with converters
that are being developed by others — can be a tool to help customers
transition to an environment where ODF predominates.”
file:///mnt/data1/Documents/Personal/Blog/Q%27s%20Technology%20Blog_files/blob.jpeg
Status of OpenOffice.org and version 3
It’s been nearly a year since OpenOffice.org 2.0 was released, so I sat down with Louis Suárez-Potts, chair of OpenOffice.org’s community council and community manager, at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, Ore., last week to see what’s on the OpenOffice.org development roadmap. Suárez-Potts says that development is moving along nicely, but it will probably be a while before we see OpenOffice.org 3.0.
Suárez-Potts says that OpenOffice.org is concentrating on smaller releases that add features to the OpenOffice.org 2.0 architecture. He says that 3.0 is “on the drawing board,” but that the project is moving away from the “proprietary logic” of “big” releases, and focusing on incremental releases instead.
Suárez-Potts says that the project released OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 recently, and should have a 2.0.4 release in a couple of months. The 2.0.3 release isn’t a huge leap in functionality, but it is more than a bugfix point release. For example, Suárez-Potts says that 2.0.3 adds additional features for PDF export, better integration with database structures, and an online update feature that allows users to check for updates online.
However, the update feature doesn’t actually download and install the update, as Firefox does now with its online update feature. Suárez-Potts says that a full update feature is something he’d like to see for the future, but he also noted that it’s a complicated feature to implement, and that many users get OpenOffice.org through other vendors — such as Linux distributions — that wouldn’t make use of the update feature.
OpenOffice.org and ODF gathering steam
In keeping with the dominant theme of this year’s OSCON, Suárez-Potts emphasized the importance of open data, and highlighted the importance of the Open Document Format (ODF) for OpenOffice.org and other applications. Tony Coates may have put it best on his blog, saying, “Your data will outlive your applications.” The OpenOffice.org and ODF folks have planned for this well by developing a well-documented open standard that can be used by many applications. Suárez-Potts says that with proprietary standards, “You have the kiss of death.” If the company behind a proprietary format goes out of business, or simply stops supporting that format, “that’s it, all the data that you had? Gone.”
As of now, Suárez-Potts says that ODF is supported by StarOffice, KOffice, SoftMaker, Writely, IBM Workplace, and a number of others. Of course, ODF isn’t a perfect solution for sharing data just yet. As Marco Fioretti pointed out last September, macros still pose an obstacle for sharing data between applications because, unlike ODF, they are not application-agnostic.
Suárez-Potts says that the OOo team is aware of the problem with macro support across ODF-supporting applications, and he would like to see some work done to standardize macro support between programs to make it easier for people to migrate with minimal difficulty. He cautions that care would need to be taken that macros aren’t supported too well, to avoid enabling Microsoft Office macro viruses in OpenOffice.org.
ODF is also pushing adoption of OpenOffice.org, according to Suárez-Potts. He says that many governments are looking to ODF as a way to ensure that they are able to access their data in the long run, and showing particular interest in OpenOffice.org as the “reference implementation” for ODF support. Suárez-Potts also says that OpenOffice.org is starting to get attention from third-party vendors who have traditionally provided add-on applications, such as accounting packages and accessibility support, for Microsoft Office.
OpenOffice.org extensions
One of the features that has contributed greatly to Firefox’s popularity is the ability to add new functionality through Firefox extensions. Suárez-Potts says that OpenOffice.org too has made it possible for developers to add functionality through extensions. The idea, says Suárez-Potts, is for OpenOffice.org to be “lean and capable, and added to easily,” rather than trying to add every feature directly to the OpenOffice.org codebase.
OpenOffice.org extensions haven’t caught on yet — Suárez-Potts says there really aren’t many popular extensions for OpenOffice.org at this time — but extension development will be a major topic of discussion at the OpenOffice.org Conference(OOoCon) 2006 that will be held from September 11 through September 13 in Lyon, France.
However, legal Web site Groklaw reported last week that early screenshots of this tool show that it doesn’t include a feature for saving a document in the ODF format.
Source ZDNET
Saturday, July 29. 2006
Good news for XGL users with ATI graphics adapters
Today marks a big step forward with the ATI Proprietary linux driver reaching version 8.27.10. The big change? XGL startup issues pertaining to display (0) not starting correctly, and a number of long awaited OpenGL issues. Also released only a few hours before was a patch for SLED10′s xorg server for (you guessed it) display startup issues when using XGL and plain old xorg. Note that ATI’s update is in the display driver, while Novell’s is for Xorg itself. That should keep us happy for a while, the Novell update is available now at Novell, and ATI’s at ATI. Watch this space though, I’d expect Novell will be updating their auto install ATI driver to match this shortly as this kind of significant update couldn’t possibly be left out!
Thursday, July 27. 2006
If SuSE Linux took over the world
As Linux captures more and more of the market share, what will
happen? Many Windows zealots claim that Linux is secure only because it
is obscure. What would really happen if Linux was on 95% of desktops?
Would there be 120,000 known viruses for Linux like there are for
Windows? Would Windows only have 500 known viruses? Or would Linux be
even better than it is now?
As a Linux user, I hear all sorts of bogus claims about how Linux
would be just as vulnerable as Windows if the tables were turned. I
want to know what everyone thinks about these kinds of claims.
Just to illustrate, I’ll take you through some points of logic concerning what I think about all this.
- First, there will obviously be many more script kiddies, hackers,
and other types of hackers. This means that there will be more
malicious eyes looking through the code to find ways to breach systems
running that code. - Also, however, you will have almost the entire programming
community who would be using Linux machines. In Microsoft’s own survey,
they found that 86% of IT personnel who had experience with Windows and
Linux preferred Linux. Especially if 95% of people are already using
Linux, you are going to have a huge load of programmers using it.
Because of the amount of programmers working on the code, there will be
faster development of higher quality code. - The number of programmers working on Linux projects would be
astronomical compared to the number of programmers working on the
Windows code. Truly, Microsoft would be at an even more massive
disadvantage than they already are. - Because of these things, I think that more vulnerabilities might be
found faster, but that patches will be available almost immediately. I
think that the development of open source projects would be hugely
accelerated. Patches would be available immediately for known
vulnerabilities in the Linux platform. I always hear about “when they
write viruses for Linux”. Well, should this extremely hypothetical day
ever come, the vulnerabilities being exploited for such a virus would
be released within hours of the virus hitting. Thus, the virus would
have to spread at about the speed of light to penetrate enough
computers to cause any big outages.
I really think that people who say that there are no viruses for
Linux because it is the minority need to realize that viruses don’t
work on a platform because of how many people use that platform.
Viruses work because of poor code and an even worse operating system.
The inherent design of how Windows works is flawed. You can send
unauthenticated messages to any window that is open, allowing a
programmer to take control of any program you have on your system. Want
to shutdown any known firewall or antivirus on a Windows machine?
Enumerate the windows open on the desktop and send known antivirus
windows a kill message, and then enumerate the processes and send known
antivirus processes a kill message. In a tenth of a second, you’ve
completely rendered security software on Windows completely useless. If
you really want to get nasty, delete the registry keys and files
associated with these antivirus and firewall software applications,
essentially uninstalling them. How do I know this works? I have
personally written programs that do this very thing. Why would this
work? Because the fundamental design of how the windowing system works
is flawed. You can send any message you want to any open window and it
will accept it. Who decided that that ws a good idea?
Quite often, I hear, “Microsoft will never go away.” Well, their
market share is slipping. They have seen their best days. They are only
going down from here.
Full article at http://www.suseblog.com/?p=138
Microsoft and the new Open Document Format…… problems!
At one point or another, everyone has tried to open a document of someone’s sent to them that just won’t open, or at least not without some nifty trickery by someone. This may have been because you use Windows and the sender used a mac, it may be because the sender used another office suite on windows such as Wordperfect Office, Lotus Smartsuite, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org or even another version of the very office suite you’re using. Not so recently some clever minds got together and decided enough was enough and set a precedent by coming up with the idea of an ‘Open’ document format. In theory, any office suite supporting this should be able to share it’s documents with any other program and not see any difference in quality of font, layout and many other issues that can present themselves. Overseas at present, there is a big amount of discussion on this, large government organisations have actually made a move to support the new formats to avoid vendor lock-in and just as importantly to ensure when historical documents need to be examined in 30 years they still have the ability to actually open them (trust me it is a problem).
Enter Microsoft. Well we all know whom makes the most money out of an office suite, some people know it as MS Office, others just know the products as MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint and MS Access. Microsoft has been saying for some time that they would support the open document format (and why shouldn’t they, the very meaning of the word ‘Open’ means they have full access to all the programmers code that they would require to achieve such a task, this makes it very simple indeed. Knowing the historical motivation of Microsoft and that their office suite is the source of most of their income, I find it hard to believe they would actually come up with a real solution here as it may be perceived it would effectively enable someone to easily migrate away from their flagship product.
Well a guy name Rob Weir has done some extensive testing of this plugin and has found some interesting results. Before reading this you should note that sources say Microsoft has been working on integrating Open Document Format into MS Office since 2005, I’d imagine with their budget and staff this should be ample time to get something working at least half reasonable wouldn’t you?
To test conversion quality, Rob downloaded OpenOffice.org and also has Word 2007. First he created an ODF document in OpenOffice.org, (that is the original so it is how the document is supposed to look) and this would be the preferred test as the OpenOffice.org suite has ODF support built in and all the code of course is available for Microsoft to copy, line by line into their own suite if they so wish. He then opened this ODF document in Word 2007 using Microsofts plug in, (which incidentally they are not including in their product off the shelf, you have to download it). The result (in PDF format) is here. The result is abysmal. Obviously there’s something wrong if MS can’t achieve something as simple as this in that kind of time frame. Honestly there is no excuse here at all, period.
Now for an interesting comparison Rob created a Document in Microsoft Word without the ODF plugin and using the native MS Word file format of which there is no documentation, source code etc available and no help from Microsoft but the result
is completely awesome by comparison, go figure!
Possibly of most concern about Microsofts ‘Committment’ to ODF is the following:
In MS Office you can’t save to ODF first of all, it’s not on the menu, lots of other formats are, but not the ODF format. You can’t use your usual keyboard shortcuts for opening and saving ODF files. ODF documents suffer a performance penalty because ‘they are not natively supported’ You can’t make ODF your default format…. ever!
If that wasn’t too technical for you and you want to read on in more detail (with screenshots), more information can be found here.
Thanks to the folks at Groklaw for the heads up!
SuSE Linux Enterpise Desktop 10
What better for my first post than an article on Novell’s shiny new SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (or SLED10 for short). The gold version of this was released to the public just a few days ago though I have been using the beta’s and RC’s for a while now. This final release marks an outstanding advancement in Linux Desktops and servers in both the quality of products and the available support through Novell and their resellers. Though I know there will be more online improvements to come it is a great deal improved over those betas (and incidentally we have now standardised on this distribution at work).
One of the most comforting and unique parts about Novell’s Linux distibution is the longer product life cycle that their Operating Systems maintain. This means for the business that the OS tends to get more and more stable and you are not faced with unexpected bugs or problems each time you are required to upgrade. It’s also nice to note that some of my bug fixing via OpenSuSE has gotten into the final product, so the people at Novell do listen and this is further proof that the uniqueness of the Open Source methodology allows me to request or submit features, bugfixes and enhancements the way I’d like to see them. There’s no ‘Too bad, wait for the next service pack’ here! If anyone want’s a copy and doesn’t want to download it, I’ll be happy to burn you one and flick it your way, just drop me a note.
For those of you familiar with the product, it seems that the ATI and NVIDIA drivers have been included as part of the online update section so those headaches appear to be over too.
And for those whom haven’t seen the product and are wondering what’s so great about it, other than the simplicity that far exceeds Windows, the compatibilty with more hardware out of the box than the upcoming Microsoft Vista yet has, the eye watering XGL and Compiz that doesn’t need fancy graphics hardware from the 29th century (like some other nameless OS), the fact it includes a choice of Office Suites, a Flowcharter, an amazing graphics package, great CD/DVD writing software, compatibilty with various operating systems and servers (including Microsoft, Novell and Macintosh Servers), out of this world media management and almost any other package you would want included right in the box for only NZ$100 then I suggest you start clicking some links!
Have fun!
