Showing posts with label Operating system. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Operating system. Show all posts
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Pear OS 7 long term review from a Mac user
Today I am going to give my readers a review of Pear OS 7. Unlike my last "short preview," I have a been using Pear OS 7 on a live machine for more than a month now. If you want to know what Pear OS is, it is basically a Mac OS X imitator Linux distribution based off Ubuntu. It is designed to look like OSX running Linux.
I'll start off by saying. If you want a OS X experience, this is not it. Yes, the look is there and it has lot of cool things but the looks are not skin deep. It doesn't have the Mac philosophy behind it. Skinning something and adding icons does not make it a Mac experience.
Now, for my review.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Elementary OS follow up Review
Four months ago, I gave a review of Elementary OS. You can read it here.
Now, here is my follow-up after four months of use.
Now, here is my follow-up after four months of use.
Well, I've been running it well over four months full time as my workplace operating system on a 30" and now a 27" Dell. I installed it on an SSD and just started to work on a new project. I was already deep into my work so I stuck with the build. I didn't have time to muck around and re-install Debian, Ubuntu 12.04 or Linux Mint from scratch. So, I had to endure the quirks of Elementary OS for over four months. My final install was a FX-8320 AMD 8-core CPU, 32GB of RAM and two Samsung 830 SSDs. So I definitely gave it more than adequate specs to run as a workstation.
Here is my follow-up report. The login screen is pretty. There is nothing else to rave about. My complaints in my initial reviews about dock items and short-cuts for my Java based apps was solved. I actually spent way too much time editing desktop.item short cut files and saving out icons so I can have a working dock. My presumptions still stands. End users shouldn't have to fiddle with all this nonsense.
I also got dual monitors working but the issues of apps and dialogs split in the middle is still annoying.
I never used the built in apps and opted to install alternatives.
Well, as my project is coming to a close, this is what I ended up doing:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon
Yes. I got to a point where I could not stand it anymore. I like the concept of the OS but the file manager was crashing every hour. Copies would crash mid-stream. I dropped Pantheon and installed Thunar (an alternate file manager) and it was still crashing. Chrome/Chromium was having lock-ups. Pages with lots of hyperlinks would freeze the mouse. I ran updates, all the updates, purged and reinstalled my browsers.
All my problems were solved when I installed the Cinnamon Desktop Environment. Everything now works as it should. No more File Explorer crashes when I try to mount a volume or browse an external drive. No more browser lockups.
Conclusion
Well, I have to say it was my fault for running pre-alpha software for my main workstation. I must say, I did give it a good four month try. The File Manager needs serious work. I also have this installed on other machines for testing and the File Manager misbehaves all the time.
Lastly, I have to admit, I like the fact you can swap out DEs (Desktop Environment) just like that on any Linux distro.
Original Review: http://fortysomethinggeek.blogspot.com/2012/12/elementary-os-luna-beta-1-short-review.html
Labels:
Elementary,
Linux,
Operating system,
Ubuntu
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Windows 8 Copy Dialogue Box
The only thing I care for in Windows 8 is that nice new copy dialog. I like it very much. It is very pretty and slick.
It shows you in real time the progress of the copies. The graph is pretty cool and shows you the up and down progress. Lot of people will rave about how cool it is and how innovative Microsoft has done with Windows 8.
Unfortunately, this is not new.
It may be built into the OS but the implementation and concepts are not new. I've been doing this for a few years now; using muCommander. muCommander is an old-school norton like mc file manager (Midnight commander) that is cross-platform. I've been running it under OSX and Linux for years.
You can get similar verbosity in the command line with Rsync. Rsync (by default) won't give a graph but it will give you everything else you need. Like all POSIX cli tools, you can pipe rsync and output to an external log for post analysis. Rsync is great at giving real stats when it comes to viewing sequential and random copies (both small and large). If you are good with regex/grep, I bet one can grep and pipe a 3D overlay graph, generate a PDF report using rsync with ImageMagick/Ghostscript. If you now Python, you can generate an .xlsx Excel file of your copy.
It shows you in real time the progress of the copies. The graph is pretty cool and shows you the up and down progress. Lot of people will rave about how cool it is and how innovative Microsoft has done with Windows 8.
Unfortunately, this is not new.
It may be built into the OS but the implementation and concepts are not new. I've been doing this for a few years now; using muCommander. muCommander is an old-school norton like mc file manager (Midnight commander) that is cross-platform. I've been running it under OSX and Linux for years.
I also like the ability to pause /resume my copies and limit the speed with muCommander.
There was also iStat on OSX but that no longer works on Mountain Lion.
You can get similar verbosity in the command line with Rsync. Rsync (by default) won't give a graph but it will give you everything else you need. Like all POSIX cli tools, you can pipe rsync and output to an external log for post analysis. Rsync is great at giving real stats when it comes to viewing sequential and random copies (both small and large). If you are good with regex/grep, I bet one can grep and pipe a 3D overlay graph, generate a PDF report using rsync with ImageMagick/Ghostscript. If you now Python, you can generate an .xlsx Excel file of your copy.
Regardless of who had it first, I still think it is a cool feature. They should implement this natively on other operating systems in the GUI's File Managers. Or use muCommander!
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Ubuntu 12.04
I finally made the switch to Ubuntu 12.04 from 10.0.4 on my personal machines. As for my professional needs, I am still using CentOS. For the past year, I avoided upgrading Ubuntu since they switched to Unity (aka Netbook Remix version 3).
However, as many of Linux users with a Galaxy Nexus know, MTP (Multimedia Transfer Protocol) does not play nice with Linux. In short, I can't connect my phone and transfer files from my Linux box.
ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) MTP usb access was one of the rumored things about 12.04. This and this alone was the reason for me to cast my doubts on the new release of Ubuntu. So, I took the plunge and updated a few machines to 12.04.
Well, that didn't turn out to good either. You still have to muck around with Fuse, MTPFS, and play around with fstab entries. Not my idea of intuitive or fun. The MTP issue extends to other devices like the new Galaxy Tab 2. Don't get me wrong, I could 3 out 20 times get my phone to mount and maybe 1 out of 30 times have a non dropped connection during copies.
There were also rumours of exFAT support for cross-platform filesystem sharing. Again, that didn't turn out to be true either.
Still, I made the plunge and changed. I'm still not a fan of Unity so I run Ubuntu in classic GNOME mode.
Besides running classic GNOME, there are few things that are cool. There is reliable CISCO ipsec and openvpn support. I no longer get dropped connections and could reliably be connected for 12 plus hours.
Another surprising thing for me was better iOS support. Even with iOS 5.1, Ubuntu 12.04 is able to allow me to mount and copy files to an iPad. I can copy movies and spreadsheets into my iPad 3 via drag-n-drop. Again, very surprising that Ubuntu has better iOS support than Ice Cream Sandwich. You figure that Android is Linux, it should play nice with other Linux devices.
Screen grabs are proof enough below.
Copying pdfs is 10 times easier to the iPad than to my Samsung Galaxy devices.
As you can see here, MTP File access is still problematic. In 2012, people shouldn't have to terminal detect USB devices, write fstab entries and manually mount devices in the console.
Other things I like are:
Airprint built in. I can print from my iPad using the UBUNTU as a host print Airprint server. This is default in the CUPS setup.
I dig the wanna-be OSX Time Machine style backup. I like the fact I can SFTP into a remote server and it backs up my files
Now, there are some problems that I haven't been able to sort out yet. I was not able to install 12.04 of some older Dell PowerEdge 2850/2950 rack servers. I'm not alone. Fellow co-wokers could not get it to install. I did not find a JEOS or shell only install options. The CD/USB took me straight to live session. I suppose there may be some special keyboard shortcut at boot or somethng else trivial but I never pursued it. 10.04 LTS will stick on my servers along with CentOS for the time being.
Overall, I am pleasantly surprise and not quite ready to write-off Ubuntu.
However, as many of Linux users with a Galaxy Nexus know, MTP (Multimedia Transfer Protocol) does not play nice with Linux. In short, I can't connect my phone and transfer files from my Linux box.
ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) MTP usb access was one of the rumored things about 12.04. This and this alone was the reason for me to cast my doubts on the new release of Ubuntu. So, I took the plunge and updated a few machines to 12.04.
Well, that didn't turn out to good either. You still have to muck around with Fuse, MTPFS, and play around with fstab entries. Not my idea of intuitive or fun. The MTP issue extends to other devices like the new Galaxy Tab 2. Don't get me wrong, I could 3 out 20 times get my phone to mount and maybe 1 out of 30 times have a non dropped connection during copies.
There were also rumours of exFAT support for cross-platform filesystem sharing. Again, that didn't turn out to be true either.
Still, I made the plunge and changed. I'm still not a fan of Unity so I run Ubuntu in classic GNOME mode.
Besides running classic GNOME, there are few things that are cool. There is reliable CISCO ipsec and openvpn support. I no longer get dropped connections and could reliably be connected for 12 plus hours.
Another surprising thing for me was better iOS support. Even with iOS 5.1, Ubuntu 12.04 is able to allow me to mount and copy files to an iPad. I can copy movies and spreadsheets into my iPad 3 via drag-n-drop. Again, very surprising that Ubuntu has better iOS support than Ice Cream Sandwich. You figure that Android is Linux, it should play nice with other Linux devices.
Screen grabs are proof enough below.
Copying pdfs is 10 times easier to the iPad than to my Samsung Galaxy devices.
As you can see here, MTP File access is still problematic. In 2012, people shouldn't have to terminal detect USB devices, write fstab entries and manually mount devices in the console.
Other things I like are:
Airprint built in. I can print from my iPad using the UBUNTU as a host print Airprint server. This is default in the CUPS setup.
I dig the wanna-be OSX Time Machine style backup. I like the fact I can SFTP into a remote server and it backs up my files
Now, there are some problems that I haven't been able to sort out yet. I was not able to install 12.04 of some older Dell PowerEdge 2850/2950 rack servers. I'm not alone. Fellow co-wokers could not get it to install. I did not find a JEOS or shell only install options. The CD/USB took me straight to live session. I suppose there may be some special keyboard shortcut at boot or somethng else trivial but I never pursued it. 10.04 LTS will stick on my servers along with CentOS for the time being.
Overall, I am pleasantly surprise and not quite ready to write-off Ubuntu.
Labels:
12.04,
Android,
Galaxy Nexus,
iPad,
MTP,
Operating system,
Ubuntu
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