Microsoft should launch Windows with Opera

Not sure why MS decided not remove IE from European version of Windows 7, they had a much better alternative – Give users an option to try Opera instead. This would have made the EU regulators happy at the same time done the trick for MS.

If MS does not want to support Opera ( which they should never do), they can give this option on an "AS-IS" basis. Make user click "Accept" to the fact that Opera is a non-MS software and MS will not provide support for it. They can always include a Desktop icon to download IE8 from Internet and install it.

As per latest data it is FireFox which is causing most harm to IE market share. With version 3.5 coming out the scale will shift more towards FF. I on the other hand love Chrome, there is no parallel to it. In no time Chrome is slated to take over browser just as gmail did to web email.

Opera will inadvertently safeguard MS from ever increasing influence of FireFox and Chrome.

Here are my reasons for it

1. Opera is EU company and is the one which launched the complaint. If MS includes Opera than all EU would be happy.
2. Firefox is the biggest market competitor currently. If MS bundles Opera, then MS haters would (possibly) choose Opera instead of Firefox and thus decrease the market share FF has. This again would make MS as the only dominant player with other having less than 10% share each.
3. As the only dominant player MS will again get a chance to dictate web standards.
4. Opera would also possibly weed out Chrome – arguably the best browser currently.
5. Apple safari is already almost non-existent. Opera might help put a death nail.
6. The last reason is the most compelling one --- Opera SUCKS. Yes Opera is no where close to even IE8 in terms of ease of use, let alone Chrome. Some reasons
1. Around 5% sites refuse to open in Opera.
2. Another 5% look real funny in Opera. ( Ok the fact is that all sites are designed to run in IE so not all browsers display them correctly, but look at FF and Chrome – they do a very decent job).
3. Opera hangs whenever it wants.
4. I tried changing the default search engine to “bing”, but Opera will simply not accept it.
5. Too much space is allocated to different (tool)bars reducing the available space for web page. They could have taken a lesson or two from Chrome.
6. On fresh install, it does not import settings from IE – FF and Chrome does it perfectly.
7. It lacks the suggestive URL that Chrome has.
8. It lacks the cool web accelerators that IE8 has. I specially like the Blog, Email and translate accelerators.
9. It lacks the Private browsing mode.

In effect Opera lacks the best features of all current browsers and does not have any feature that it can boast of. People running Opera might conclude that IE8 is a much better option and might come back to IE8. If they switch to Chrome, there is not chance of returning back.

Hence Opera is a blessing in disguise for IE8. I hope MS guys read this article and try out this fuzzy idea.

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Why People resort to Arch Linux

Arch Linux is a Linux enthusiasts dream. It has a rare reputation of being very basic at the same time very user friendly.  It is a minimalistic distribution which allows for great customizations, it very updated ( much better than OpenSUSE or Ubuntu) and has a very good package manager. 

That said, the first thing that will deter people from trying Arch is non-availability of Live CD/DVD installer. Also the default install takes you to a command line type, non-GUI shell. There on you are supposed to read the guide and install everything from XOrg , XFCE/KDE to FireFox extensions. Then, how come such a beginner deterring distribution gaining so much in popularity ? 

Here are some reasons I can think of ::: 

1. Most updated distro ( at least in top 20 on Distrowatch )
2. Every thing is simple/minimalistic and well laid out.  Like making some changes is mostly done by editing rc files with "vi". Good thing is that its all well documented. No chance of any GUI app screwing things up.
3. Very fast and ultra efficient package management System. Pacman is gaining popularity everyday. 
4. Huge number of packages optimized for i686 and x86-64( most modern computers). 
5. As the default install is very minimalistic, so you add only the packages you actually need. Like there is no need for CUPS if you do not have printer attached. 
6. Arch is faster than most other distros. Applications like Open Office and FireFox open much faster in Arch. It is also lighter on resources, uses much less RAM than most other with similar packages installed. 
7. Rolling releases. This means that Arch is always updated, very unlike 6-month update for Ubuntu. You will never have to re-install Arch. The latest release of Arch are just a snapshot of your already updated system. 
8. Here is something where Arch is very user  friendly - If you want to install binary packages, most are there in official repositories, however, in rare circumstances you can either download from AUR or better still compile very easily on your own. ArchBuildSystem is one of the easiest compile from source I have seen. 
9. Very friendly community. Arch Forums are equally good for new users as well as for seasoned ones. But even the Linux Gurus here are very polite and answer the silliest question ( most of mine fall in this category ) with poise or guide me to other forum threads where the question is answered.   

The Last benefit is a little appealing only to Techy at heart. Chauvinistic you might say. 

10. PCLinusOS, OpenSUSE, Mandriva, Ubuntu are all great distros. However, they do all the work for me and I want to DO-IT-MYSELF. I want to dirty my hands. I want to have a feeling that I am not spoon fed. And I want to show-off my latest packages before any other distribution has it in their database. The latest Firefox, KDE, GIMP - you name it and mostly Arch is one of the first to have it in its repos. 

Give Arch a patient try (keyword is patient), read guides, goto Forums and you will also fall in love with it. 

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Oh Its Beautiful

These were the exact words from my wife's mouth when she saw my Mandriva 2009 install. I choose the KDE 4 desktop which is eye-candy in itself, but Mandriva devs have put in a lot of effort and made KDE look much more adoring. Every look is pleasing and speaks of the attention to details paid by devs.

Beginning with the splash screen ( common to both GNOME and KDE ), KDE wallpapers, KDE theme, modified KMenu and all the way to screensavers every thing is a pure visual delight. Mandriva has made sure that all applications are well blended in the theme and look similar.

Mandriva is like Miss World -- Beauty with Brains. Mandriva 2009 takes off from one of their best releases MAndriva 2008.1 and adds to it. I immediately recognized all my hardware and installed the correct drivers for it, Well !! except for the driver for Vaio Motion Eye Webcam. Mandriva One also comes with "out-of-box" support for most media formats, so all my mp3 and you-tube videos play without any intervention from my side. As with any new KDE Linux distribution, Mandriva comes with Office, Firefox and other applications of everyday use and there is no need to explicitly add new applications.

Ok coming back to the beauty again - KDE 4 has inbuilt beautiful Desktop effects provided by KWin, however, KWin is still not as matured as Compiz-Fusion is. Hence, Mandriva 2K9 provides the option to enable compiz-Fusion and get all the amazing effects like Desktop Cube and Fire. I think my wife played with the Fire extension for a long time.

Lastly !  did I mention that default Fonts look amazing in Mandriva ? Oh they are almost like the Fonts we see on Vista.

After having spent 2 hours with Mandriva I asked my wife, is she willing to jump to Mandriva ? Her answer was NOT until she can video chat with her friends using Skype and Sync her Samsung Omnia with Outlook like software in Mandriva. Despite all her beauty, Mandriva still has a long way to go before My wife starts using it as her primary OS.

 

PS: I know that Skype with Video is available for Linux, but I have a Vaio and new Linux Kernel does not have driver for Motion Eye Webcam.

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Thank God Ubuntu comes as Live CD

I have Mandriva 2009 installed on my Vaio Laptop and it works great out of Box.
Till now only two things are not working

1. Motion Eye webcam, and
   
2. Fn buttons

Searching on Google, I found that Ubuntu has packages for these ( where as I'll have to compile them on Mandriva). My next step was to download and burn Ubuntu 8.10 and check it out. I thank God that most modern distributions can be tested as Live CD else Life would have been hell for me.

On booting Ubuntu, it loads to a almost familiar brown themed Gnome desktop. Now this is typical Ubuntu and we do not expect Ubuntu to be WOW looking out of box. However, as people claim it to be the most user friendly desktop - I expect all the hardware to work out of box. At max its ok that restricted driver module detects a non-OSS driver for a hardware; connects to internet and installs the correct driver.
For that connection to Internet is essential, but in my case that basic step was proving to be a trouble. My wireless card which works perfectly in Mandriva, since 2008.1 was not working with Latest Ubuntu.
For some time I could not believe it, but when even after 3 reboots the card did not work. I realized that it is not my mistake. The card in question is detected by Mandriva as

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
Then I connected the wire from modem and eth0 came up beautifully.
I thought now hardware will be detected and the correct driver will be fetched. Nope, Ubuntu again proved me wrong. Fiddling with the Admin software, I came across Hardware Drivers application, on firing it immediately detected the card and showed it as Enabled and configured properly. My joy was short lived, still the wireless card did not show up in Network adapters.
Googling for AR42X on Ubuntu Forums, I came across many such complaints. Amazingly there is no easy solution to this problem, no one has made a package for ubuntu to just work.
The workaround involves cumbersome command line procedure.
Disabling this ..
Enabling that ..
Compiling...
modprobe....

All this just to get wireless working ??
Strange!!.
I am sure that Ubuntu came after Mandriva 2009, why should it lack simple wireless drivers ?
If I have to compile, I am better off compiling driver for motion eye webcam. At least for that I do not have to keep my laptop next to my router.

A little search showed that AR42x is supported out of box by the following major distributions

• Mepis 8
• Mandriva 2009
• PCLinuxOS 2009
• Opensuse 11.1
• Mint 6
  
• Fedora 10

EDIT: as posted by darkchild

AR42x also works out of the box with Fedora 10.

OK some are still in Beta, but the support is good.

I again thank my stars that I did not install Ubuntu, otherwise either I would have to treat my Laptop as desktop till the driver compile not work ( and who knows that self compiled drivers will work properly ) or had to install Mandriva 2009 back.

Thanks again Canonical for providing the option to use a LiveCD.

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Uptime of Linux Desktop System

 

I have religiously avoided the temptation of checking new distributions like the Mandriva 2009 and Ubuntu 8.10. The reason is that I did not want to shut down my OpenSUSE 11 installation. I always just close the lid of my Laptop and resume the session on return. Many a times I have seen my KDE 4.X crash and I had to restart my XServer, but OpenSUSE never asked me to reboot. OpenSUSE testing repos have KDE 4.2 ( testing) and I keep myself updated. As I use a non-stable version of KDE so I have seen many crashes. Good thing is that even after three months of usage, the memory footprint was always very low.

Do let me know if anyone else has allowed there desktop Linux to run for three months or more. Please let me know the distribution you are using and the XServer crash/freeze seen ( if any).

Lets share in a format like

1) Distribution

2) uptime. For more information on uptime use " man uptime" on terminal.

Please Note that I am talking about home desktop machines and not Linux servers. I think in my office the Linux servers are running on RHEL 3 since more than 3 years.

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Prominent public figures in Open Source world

Open source has taken the world by storm. Numerous open source applications are being used by satisfied users. The most prominent and widely used open source products are Firefox, Linux Distributions,Sugar CRM, GIMP, Wordpress, emacs etc. The latest to join this ever increasing bandwagon is Google Chrome. Many people don't know what Open Source (OS) means but are still happily using these OS products.

The wikipedia defines OS as Open source is a development methodology,[1] which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge). Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet, which provided access to diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.

As OS software is influencing the lives of so many people, lets take a look at the commonly known people of OS ::

1. First and foremost the grand daddy of open source movement, Richard Matthew Stallman. He was a Harvard student, who abandoned his studies for his love of programming at MIT Artificial Intelligence lab. He is the developer of emacs, a tool which is a long time favourite of unix and linux programmers. However, his rise to fame started when he started the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation. The prominent software out of GNU include GCC ( collection of compilers) , GNOME and GNASH. Out of these GCC is of utmost importance as it forms the basic of almost every free software including Linux operating system. He also wrote the GPL which is fast becoming the most popular free software license.  
2. Eric Steven Raymond is a prominent unix programmer and had championed the Free Software Initiative.
3. Andrew Stuart "Andy" Tanenbaum is a professor of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Hes is a distinguished author of many computer programming books like Computer Networks and Operating System design and implementation. As part of his book Operating Systems he wrote a small Operating system called Minix. The design principles Tanenbaum applied to MINIX famously influenced the design decisions Linus Torvalds applied in the creation of the Linux kernel.  Sir I was a student of Computer Science and totally realize the importance of your teachings. I am sure that all Computer Engineering students hold you in high esteem.
4. Ok here comes the GOD of Linux- Linus Benedict Torvalds. He is the most prominent name in Open Source world. He is the man who has the guts to take on the Redmond Giant head on in their bead and butter product - Operating System. Apart from Linux kernel, Linus also developed the distributed revision control system GIT. He is an open supporter of KDE over GNOME.
5.   Coming to KDE, although KDE was founded by Matthias Ettrich, today the most common face of KDE is Aaron Seigo.  He is the man behind KDE e.V - the non-profit organization behind KDE.
6. He is undoubtedly the most recognized man in open source world - Mark Richard Shuttleworth. He is the man behind mighty Ubuntu. For most people Ubuntu IS Linux. Dell is shipping Desktops and Laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed. Dell computers running Ubuntu 8.04 include extra support for ATI Video Graphics, Dell Wireless, Fingerprint Readers, HDMI, Bluetooth and MP3/WMA/WMV. Ubuntu provides all the software required for normal working and is touted to become a viable alternative to Windows.

This effectively concludes my list of prominent public figures. However, a few more prominent ones includes Gael Duval of Mandirva fame, Danniel Robbins  of Gentoo Fame and the Legendary Texstar (Bill Reynolds) of PCLinuxOS fame. Texstar specially deserves praise for single handedly creating an distribution and an ecosystem which could take on mighty Ubuntu and be the favourite distribution for a large groups of users.

Please feel free to add any names I might have missed.

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How to Perfectly Kill a Perfect Distribution

PCLinuxOS was the perfect distribution in 2007. It had all the bells and whistles to be an excellent Windows XP alternative. Here the the things I loved about PCLinuxOS

1. Good looking UI ( OK I admit that I love KDE ).
2. Almost mimicking XP look and Feel ( now many of Linux Purist might not like it, but this acts as an important point to help transition a new user from XP to PCLOS - keyword is less learning curve).
3. Almost everything working out of Box.
4. Very fast and responsive.
5. Ultra stable.
6. Works on almost every hardware.
7. Amongst the first to update the repository with updated software, ( Check my blog about GIMP 2.4 release).

When a distribution is able to configure my hardware, is ultra stable, highly updated and provide me with almost all the required software then I think that is the distribution I am looking for. PCLOS had all these abilities and more. That's the reason it was called the distro-hopper stopper. People loved it and it rose to the pinnacle of Distrowatch Page hit rankings. Not only reached; it stayed there for a good 6 months. If we consider that the distribution PCLOS dethroned was mighty Ubuntu, that makes PCLOS achievement even more impressive. On one hand Ubuntu had the backing of Canonical - they were sending free CDs, had tieup with the likes of Dell, had dozens ( maybe more ) developers working;  on other hand there was PCLOS which had a very small dev team and no corporate backing, no big computer assembler backing them.

Yet PCLOS rose to top on account of sheer merit. It had the novelty to generate interest and the quality to sustain it. Kudos to Textar and PCLOS 2007. It was almost perfect.

Alas! that was 2007, however, this is 2008 and almost end of 2008. A lot has changed since then. Specially for me life has taken an altogether new twist. I have changed my company, changed my job responsibilities and even changed my country of work.  And how much has PCLOS changed since 2007 ? I know its repositories are updated but question is how much ? Are they having the latest versions ? Or are they having the version which most of its peers have ? Does it still support almost all latest hardware ?

I had all these questions in my mind and tried PCLOS 2007 on my Sony Vaio. For reference:: Mandriva 2008.1 detected all the hardware except for Motion Eye webcam and the Fn+F7 does not work. Apart from this everything works perfectly. With OpenSUSE 11 and Ubuntu 8.04, additionally I had to download the drivers to get my Atheros wi-fi working. Of the three only Ubuntu failed to resume from hibernation; Mandriva and OpenSUSE have no trouble waking from up upto three continuous sleep. Coming back to my attempt with PCLOS 2007, here are my findings:

1. LiveCD download was fast.
2. The initial boot shows too many options which can be confusing for a new user. I like the Mandriva Spring approach which provides a single option or even the slick options of OpenSUSE.
3. Same old, but still good looking splash screen.
4. A huge number of clicks before I can reach the desktop. I actually counted the number of different screen to 18. God, I had to click the mouse at least 12 times before I reached the desktop. Compare this with class leading Ubuntu where the number of clicks is ZERO and the frustration increases. Lets see some of the clicks and the stupid reasons behind it
1. Configure Network: This gives the option to select Ethernet, DSL etc. Then starts a series of 6 clicks in the end when PCLOS says "Congrats the network is configured". However, the funny and frustrating part is that I still have to click OK for the LiveCD to proceed. My question is when the LiveCD discovered that I want to go for Auto-DHCP from my router, why does it still require user intervention ?
2. Select keyboard ( Oh yes, what happened to hardware auto detection ?)
3. Select Timezone. Comeon man this is just a LiveCD boot. We can do with these questions when I actually try to install it on my hard disk.
4. KDM. Why show KDM in a LiveCD. In a LiveCD all a normal user wants to do is to reach desktop and check the distribution and possibly install. Also the options are Root and Guest. Luckily they have provided the passwords for both users, but would have been handy to have both the user name and password populated when a user is selected. Either way password is displayed on the same page so security is not an issue- it just reduces problems to user.
5. On the desktop, I found the old customized KDE, which amazingly is still good to look at.
6. Next was the time to install on hard disk and again I counted 17 different screens even when I selected to use my entire hard disk. I just hope this is not a deliberate attempt to frustrate users.  
7. On reboot, I found myself quickly on the KDM, there is no option to auto login during install. OpenSUSE does a fantastic job in this respect. Now some people might cry security. Lets remind ourselves PCLOS is intended to be used by home users where there is hardly any risk posed by Auto-login.
8. OK if auto-login is a risk, then what is the option to login as root ? ? PCLOS gloriously provides the option to login as root.
9. I quickly came to the desktop and smiled at the familiar and pleasing KDE presented. However, there is not novelty. Nothing new.
10. Then I tried connecting to my wi-fi. Unfortunately like Ubuntu, PCLOS also failed where Mandriva worked perfectly. I know that PCLOS 2007 has an old kernel, old everything so an update might bring about some change. I connected to my wired ethernet connection and started the upgrade through Synaptic.
11. Synaptic told me that some 600 odd packages needs to be updated and 700 odd MB needs to be downloaded.  Wow! more than the 2007 iso. Still I was happy that I'll get a new and fresh system. Destiny had some other plans for my install. Towards the end of download, Synaptic gave me an error saying that some package could not be downloaded. I tried and then again tried and finally clicked skip. Same thing happened with three more packages and I clicked skip. After the download Synaptic started upgrading my system and all hell broke loose. All of a sudden my system rebooted and I was brought to a shell  saying that "no inittab file found". I know what this means. This clearly means that some error occurred during upgrade and now my system is screwed.

    I have taken a picture of that error as this was the first time the Ultra Stable PCLOS duped me.

12. I agree that I clicked skip on a few packages, but Synaptic should be intelligent enough to not upgrade packages whose dependencies are not met.

This was end of my date with PCLOS. Then I checked that PCLOS repositories are not updated to the latest version of software. For instance KDE 4.1 is still not the default KDE desktop. Yeah, yeah some might say that KDE 4.1 is not suitable for normal use. Unfortunately for those, the distribution managers  of major distributions like OpenSUSE, Mandriva and Kubuntu think otherwise. Guys if KDE 4.1 was really that bad, these high profile distributions would not include them as default desktop. Not just KDE 4.1, even the Linux kernel version in PCLOS repos is 2.6.22 where as the latest version is 2.6.26.

To summarize PCLOS lost on the exact points where it scored in 2007.

1. It does have a good looking UI, but there is nothing new in it. There is no novelty.
2. It is not Ultra Stable.
3. The repos does not have updated software.
4. The hardware detected is exactly same as Ubuntu.
5. Speed wise it pales in comparison to OpenSUSE and Mandriva.
6. It is not class leading in any respect. There is no compelling reason to use it.

I would anytime choose Mandriva over it. For someone who do mind pre-installed binary software OpenSUSE and Kubuntu are better choices.

I know that Tex ( the main person behind PCLOS ), was not well recently and could not devote time to PCLOS. However, isn't PCLOS supposed to be a community distribution ? PCLOS 2007 was released in May 2007, since then all major distributions including Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and Mandriva have done at least two releases. However, PCLOS still prides itself on the successful 2007 release. The only OS I know can easily sustain a Looooong period between releases is Windows XP. Unfortunately PCLOS is not XP.

Guys PCLOS was the perfect distribution in 2007, but times have changes. 2007 is history, wake up now. Wake up before its too late.

EDIT:: I know very well that a PCLOS MiniMe is release, also we have a PCLOS Gnome edition. However, please do let me know in which respect are they class leading ? Why should I choose PCLOS say over Ubuntu ?

1. Minime and PCLOS 2007 share the same repos, Hence, stability wise Minime cannot be more stable. 
2. With Minime I have to download a hell lot of software to make a working system. I guess I'll have to download a lot less with Ubuntu. Also Ubuntu has the ability to tell which driver/software we are missing in order to get anything working. Like if I type "gcc" in the terminal, I get a message that gcc is not installaed and can be installed using "apt-get install gcc", similarly I I play a video, Totem tells me the required codecs and pops a UI to download and instal it. This is also there is Mandriva. I think that these makes life simpler. 
3. MiniMe is good, but does it has documentation to work on Vaio. Luckily Ubuntu has, though not official. A google search for "VCC6 Linux" ( the Vaio webcam), immidiately takes me to Ubuntu Forums. 
4. Ubuntu has more recent software in the repositories. The 8.10 version of Kubuntu will have KDE 4.1. 

OK Lets leave Ubuntu, Does PCLOS even compare to Mandriva? I find the latest Mandriva 2009 RC1 with KDE 4.1 to be very stable. I easily recognizes my wi-fi and is much faster than PCLOS. 

One thing in PCLOS favor is the rolling release, Hence it need not make a 6 monthly release like Mandriva/Ubuntu. A user fo 2007 release will still have all the updated software as a user of PCLOS 2008 will have ( if they release PCLOS 2008). However, my point is that the software version in repos is not the very latest, for instance Firefox 3.01 was released on  July 16, 2008 today is September 4 and PCLOS still has 3.0 ? All the three - Mandriva, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu will have it in their next release which is due in October/Nov. Another rolling release distribution "Arch Linux" has Firefox 3.01 in their Current repositories. Why is PCLOS slow in packaging it ? This is the same PCLOS which release Gimp 4.0 in no time. Its just that the quality is degrading. 

My simple question is why should I try PCLOS when there are much better distributions already available free. Please suggest me the reasons. Merely saying PCLOS rocks has no merrit.

NOTE :: I am not trying to degrade PCLOS, I just want the devs to take a note of the other distributions and do a catchup.

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