Fortysomething Geek

Mac OS 7 had this back in the mid 1990s. Now, you can have this same feature on Ubuntu 14.04 in 2014. Mac OS calls it labels. This is basically the same principle.

I gotta say, this is a cool system add-on. It is handy for organizing work. Unfortunately, it is not built-in the OS. You will need top download and install it from the link below:

Link:http://foldercolor.tuxfamily.org/

So Ubuntu 14.04 has been released and it promises to have better support for HiDPI (Retina) displays.

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.

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Here is something you don't see too often.

Here, I have Pear OS 7 which is a Ubuntu based Linux distribution running on my Thinkpad. Pear OS is known for being Cupertino inspired. It is pretty much an OSX themed Linux disto. Inside Pear OS, I have Mountain Lion 10.8.2 running inside a VMware Virtual Guest.

I cloned a few of my old Macs on my Macbook using Fusion 5. The clone VM guest was on a USB drive I had and I was wondering if my VM guests would start up in Linux on a different machine. To my surprise, double clicking the .VMX file, the VM guest launch and ran inside Pear OS running VMware player for Linux. It ran with no problem. I thought there would be some sort of check to prevent this but apparently not.

Pear OS is an Ubuntu 12.10 based Linux distro with a Mac-like skin.
They just released version 7 and I took it for a spin. It definitely apes a lot from Cupertino.

From start up, login, launcher, Finder, to even Mission control, this distro is a definitely Apple-inspired. It even has a time machine app called "Back in Time."

Overall, it doesn't work quite like OSX. It is still using GNOME 3 with a skin.
Still, it is an interesting release.

Link: http://pearlinux.fr/


Screen shots for your perusal:







On a 2560x1440 display.






And here is how it looks on a 27" iMac.

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.

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable 
 sudo apt-get update 
 sudo apt-get install cinnamon 

A reader asked me about Linux and Thunderbolt. Well, I tried it out today and I am here to report some basic findings.

My motherboard is a Gigabyte Z77 Dual Thunderbolt ATX motherboard GA-Z77X-UP5-TH.

I connected an Seagate STAE121 Thunderbolt Go-Flex adapter along with a Samsung 830 SSD. Here are some preliminary benchmarks.




I did a quick 7GB copy which took around 4 seconds to copy from an Intel 240GB SSD.

Elementary OS recently released their Luna Beta 1. It is one of the new and controversial Linux distro due to it's mac-like aspirations.

Here is my take and short review.

My background: I use OSX and Linux extensively. I run a variety of CentOS/RedHat servers and I use Ubuntu 12.04/Linux Mint 13 over a dozen different workstations including a Thinkpad I tote along with my Macbook. I normally don't like using Ubuntu off-shoots and derivatives (except Linux Mint) but I've been tracking eOS (Elementary OS) for a while due to the cohesive design philosophies. On Ubuntu/Mint, I usually run Cinnamon on multi-monitors setups or Windowmaker on single monitor PCs. Unity looks horrid on two large monitors (30 in and 27). I pretty much hate Unity so you now know my bias. Hence, I have settled with Cinnamon Desktop. I am pretty much happy with 12.04 (running Cinammon) or Linux Mint 13 so I don't have a burning desire to test out new distros.

So why did I install eOS? As a Mac user, I like the idea of a well design UI with consistency. After all, I run WindowMaker in Linux because it works for me. I like polish and eOS promises to be those things. Visually, it is the slickest looking distro on Linux. There are only a few apps I need to run on Linux and I'd like a desktop environment that is fast and free of clutter. eOS is also a fresh take.

Furthermore, eOS is based of Ubuntu so you can easily install Debian apt packages the same as you do on Ubuntu.

Now for my review:

Overall, the distro is very rough around the edges.

I first tested it via VirtualBox and liked it enough to try on a dedicated full SSD drive install.

And then the problems arose. First of all, I could not get dual spanning monitors to work on a dual 23" Dell setup. The same machines run Linux Mint and Ubuntu just fine. I tried the normal and proprietary drivers. I don't have the patience to modify .xorg files to get it working.


Secondly, my build (originally done on a AM3+ FX AMD board) would not boot on an Ivy Bridget i7 rig.

I normally install an OS on a single SSD and try to run them on different machines via front panel docking into the internal SATA buses. It simply would not boot on my new Gigabyte Z77 Thunderbolt motherboard with a Nvidia Kepler GPU. I'm certain I could have fix it but I didn't want to go through the hassle. I wasn't ready to do another new install on the i7 rig. I've been having bad luck with new OSes deleting bootloaders off my other drive on same machine.

However, I was able to boot the same build on a Thinkpad T420. It ran just fine on my Thinkpad.

Take note, I firmly believe in the notion of one disk build running off multiple machines. I've been doing this for over a decade on macs and this is something that needs to work on other platforms. I like the idea of taking one SSD and shuttling it from work, client location, to home with all my apps, servers, SSH keys all one one drive.



Performance wise, I could not tell the difference running natively with 32GB of RAM & SSD versus running it with 4GB inside VirtualBox off a standard hard drive. UI responsiveness was the same running natively or virtualized. This is a good thing because it will be fairly responsive on mid-range machines. I'm running some IDE and Java apps so nothing fairly intensive. Windows, scrolling, and opening apps was fairly fluid. I couldn't tell you how fast it ran on my i7 3770K rig because I couldn't get it to boot but I think it will be fairly fast.

Now for the quirks. I accept the fact eOS has little customization and I get that. There is no need to add or modify themes if the built in ones work. And they do for the most part. I wouldn't change much in the UI of eOS. Unfortunately there are some customizations I need to have working. There are apps that I run that don't have Debian apt equivalents so they don't install into your normal Ubuntu App menus. This is fine in Ubuntu because you can manually add them and if you use a OSX like clone Dock like Cairo, you have the option of locking apps to the dock. You can't seem to do that with non-apt install apps on eOS Plank (their name for their dock). For example, I run Sublime 2 and various WINE Windows apps that I like to be permanently affix as a launcher in my dock. Plank is based off Docky so I can probably customize it via a hidden ~/.config/*.dockitem text file but I don't want and need to go through that hassle. It should just work.

Some of the built in apps aren't quite there yet. The calendar app doesn't have CalDAV support. I couldn't figure out how to add additional new mail accounts in their Geary Mail client. You can't quite theme (solarize) your terminal which I understand because of their UI mindset. Overall, this is definitely a beta release and I can accept those limitations. As with Linux, if there is something you don't like, you can easily replace it. I quickly replaced their text editor, Scratch, with a customized themed gedit to my liking.

The OSX comparison.

If you used Mac OSX for some time, you can't help but notice the glaring similarities in philosophies. Would I call it a rip-off? No but the similarities are uncanny. Most notably, the Window Manager borrows quite a bit from Expose/Spaces.

Here is Window workspace switching. You can even configure similar hot-corners. Also, what they call "Exposed windows" works very similar on the Mac's version of Expose. Except, you can do both switching and tasking windows at the same time on OSX.

And on a Mac below. An extremely powerful and thought out concept.



Instead of showing workspaces below, OSX shows it on top with a floating modal for the current desktop. As for exposing windows, it is done at the same time in one swoop.
The OSX implementation is more intuitive and advance in the fact you can re-arrange the order of workspaces (Apple calls it spaces) and drag-n-drop apps from one workspace to another. As you can see above, I drag the calculator app from my current workspace into Desktop 2 (cursor not shown in screenshot). Also, OSX has the ability to have different wallpaper/color backgrounds in different spaces which is handy. Different backgrounds comes in real handy when you are re-arranging the order of virtual spaces. The key strength of OSX is also multi-gesturing instead of using hot corners or keyboard shortcuts. The whole experience of switching and tasking is incredibly fluid on OSX. Multi-touch gestures isn't quite there in Linux yet.

This small comparison isn't mean to be a critique on eOS part. I like their direction but if you plan to lift some ideas from someone, you should go full tilt and improvise on what made the original so good.

There are other Mac-like nuggets like the Mail client and even the system preference seem OSX-like to me. I wont go into details but you can definitely find those screenshots online.

The App Launcher is a modal floating panel in the left mid corner. It is different and I don't have much to say about it. It does the job and it is something different to acclimate yourself to.

Like I mentioned earlier, I could not get dual spanning monitors to work on real hardware but I was able to test out spanning display in Virtualbox and there were some issues. Apps would snap into their respective workspace if you tried to move them across monitors. Screenshot below shows what happens when I tried to move my mail client across.


Minimize wouldn't minimize but move over to the other monitor. There were other issues but I wont bore you with a dozen screenshots regarding spanning display. Surely, these are pre-production bugs.

Overall, I like it but I think I'll wait for the final release to make a final judgement. It definitely looks very slick and performs very fast but there are little things that annoy me right now. Here are a few: To make a new folder in the File Manager requires a contextual right click. I prefer a toolbar button for this and other functions.
There is no minimize window button (you can add an invisible one from reading a few blog posts). There is simply fullscreen and close.



To minimize, you click on the icon on the dock and it makes it feel as if the OS was designed for single app full screen use. I say this because if you have multiple browser windows or text files, one click of the docked app will minimize all of them. Then there is fact that you don't have multiple docked previews of your browser windows in the dock corroborates with the idea of the Single App UI. It feels like they want to make it too clean and simplified.

Lastly, I like to use the mail client but how do I add another account? I don't feel like googling for answers for something so simple and you shouldn't have to in this day and age. It needs to be that intuitive.

I just recently unloaded a trusty X120e on Craigslist. It served me well for over a year and it is now time for a newer Linux machine. A Thinkpad T420/T430 is now calling my name.

This post is going to be a long-term review of the Thinkpad X120e.

Released in March 2011, the X120e, along with the HP DM1, were the first wave of AMD based Fusion ATOM killers. Unlike a typical netbook, these had better performing GPU (AMD calls them APU) and larger screen size. Before the "ultrabook" craze, there were cheap netbooks and the Macbook Air. Since I already have a Macbook Pro, it made no sense for me to get another one. With a project that required Windows 7 and Kinect, this machine landed on my lap. Since, I've been using this as a secondary/third computer.

I've been through various netbooks starting from the original Asus EEEPC 701, Acer Aspire One to a Dell Mini 9. The typical netbook resolution at 1024x600 was a god awful. So this was an improvement at 11.6" and 1366x768 resolution. Furthermore, it didn't feel as crippled and dog slow as the Atom based CPUs.

A bit bulkier than normal, it still was very light weight at 3.4 lbs. Some notable feature include an SD slot, 3 USB ports, and HDMI. Very much like any typical netbook except this was a Thinkpad. Some people wouldn't call it a real Thinkpad but to me, it was close enough The red nubby trackpoint and black plastic is what makes it a Thinkpad for me. I am a big fan of the Thinkpad no-nonsense spartan black business look. Plus, there was the legendary Thinkpad reputation of their keyboards. The chicklet keyboard is one of the best I've used with decent amount of travel.

Battery life under Linux is about 5 hours. I hardly ever use Windows 7 but when I checked, the indicator always indicated 6.5 hours with aggressive power management.

As for upgrades, I added 8GB RAM and a 120GB solid state drive SSD. Despite the low-end CPU, the machine was rather snappy for my occasional use (database queries, shell scripting, and connecting to overseas VPN for downloading large files). I didn't play any games or watch any movies on it so I can't comment on multimedia capabilities. With the SSD, Ubuntu boots into login in about 15-20 seconds.

I had no problems with Ubuntu 10.10 and 12.04. Everything pretty much installed without a hitch. The microphone works, SD mounts, it goes to sleep, WIFI connects, HDMI works. In other words, none of the typical Linux laptop nightmares. The only major complaint is the inability to power 1080p resolution in a dual display setup. It does not have enough processing power to run 1366x768 built in display and an external 1920x1080p at the same time. I could run 1024x768 along with a HD monitor. The other solution is just to run an external monitor and power down the built in LCD.

If you are looking for something medium budget, this or the newer 130e may be worth some consideration.

In my day job, I tend to keep up to date with relevant technologies and one of the latest web buzzwords today is noSQL. CouchDB, Cassandra, mongoDB, and many other noSQL alternatives have been gaining popularity with the young folks. Like usual, it is my job to keep abreast. I've been keeping myself entertained with mostly mongodb because I think it is one of the easiest and quickest to learn.

If you are looking to explore mongoDB, there are some great GUI tools to get you started. Installing mongoDB is pretty trivial so I won't cover it here.



On OSX, one of the best program I've come across is MongoHub. It is a very pretty and intuitive application. Within a few minutes, I was able to get some tangible progress in evaluating mongoDB. It has the ability to import MYSQL table schema into a mongoDB collection. I imported a working mySQL db I have been working on and I was able to quickly make JSON queries just from glancing at the mongodb reference.

Instead of the normal “SELECT db_column FROM table WHERE db_col = value AND db_col2 =value2” , you use BSON like this:

db.COLLECTION.find({'key': 'value'})

Since we are not using the console, there is no need to invoke the mongodb find command, it is all gui driven. For my imported DB collection, I simply typed in my query expression like: {'City' : /^Con/i }

Instead of playing with some “Hello World” tutorials, I already had a working set of data for evaluation within 5 minutes of installation. There was no need for test records or test data, I had real working data that I was already comfortable with. Another 20 minutes, I was able to write some PHP scripts to query and display records.

MongoHub can be found here:
http://mongohub.todayclose.com/


I haven't found anything in Linux comparable to MongoHub but these two solutions worked for me: PHPMoAdmin and JMongoBrowser.

Once you have the PHP mongo driver installed, you can run a web-based admin script. It works and you can create collections and schemas rather quickly. It is PHP based and there was no configuration or mucking around.

PhpMoAdmin:
http://www.phpmoadmin.com/




The other GUI is JmongoBrowser. It is cross platform and Java based. Again, it works but there is nothing to write home about.

JmongoBrowser:
http://edgytech.com/jmongobrowser/



Both phpMoAdmin and JmongoBrowser installed in Ubuntu 12.04 without issues. They also run on MacOSX.

With the advent of fast SSDs capable of reading/writing 200-500 Mb a second, is there a need for ramdisks? I decided to try it out in Ubuntu 12.04.

If you are wondering what a ramdisk is, it is simply using your physical RAM memory as a temporary storage drive. Instead of writing to disk, you are writing files to memory.

And the results of my testing?

Well, I'll let these pictures speak for themselves:

1st. Ramdisk. Average read 1.2Gb/s. As in Gigabytes per second. An entire full DVD movie worth of data would take less than 5 seconds to copy.


2nd,Corsair F120 Sandforce based SSD. Read speed bench at 234 Mb/s which is no slouch and faster than any platter drive. The same DVD would take roughly 22 seconds.


Compared to a standard platter HDD drive, a DVD would take 81 seconds at 60Mb/sec. A 10Mb/sec USB stick would take 486 seconds or 8 minutes to copy.

I tried a Virtual Box VDI image in ramdisk and an ubuntu 10.10 image loaded in less than 6 seconds.

Here is how you make a ramdisk:


Or, you can simply copy files to /dev/shm/ but you risk saturating all your available ram. By using tmpfs, you can set a limit. In my example, my ramdisk is 1GB.

It should be noted that ramdisks are not persistent. They will need to be recreated upon reboot. You lose the data in ramdisk when your power down.

I am currently exploring options for a real-time ffmpeg transcoding system that will write and read quite a bit to disk. I also have another use case scenario with imagemagick/ghostscript writing large temp files of PDFs. A ramdisk may be the way to go.

There is another interesting use of ramdisk. To run a completely private and secure micro servers like tor-ramdisk to evade police authority. Data would simply disappear upon a power down. If the authority seized your equipment, all the data would simply vanish and make it harder for forensic analysis.

Now, I just need a laptop with 32GB of RAM.

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.