Google Chrome OS Flex and Broader Adoption of Linux

I recently read [Chin, The Verge (2022); Raphael, Computerworld (2022)] that Google is releasing a version of Chrome OS called Chrome OS Flex which can be copied to a USB storage drive and installed on computers that didn't come with Chrome OS. This seems very similar to how many popular Linux distributions work, so I initially wondered if Chrome OS Flex will succeed with the muscle of Google behind it where similar efforts by Linux distributions backed by smaller not-for-profit organizations have failed. At the same time, it seems clear to me that Google will not hesitate to use this as an opportunity to collect more valuable data from people who use Chrome OS Flex. This got me to think more broadly about how much ordinary people who might consider using Chrome OS Flex really care about their privacy (especially considering that such people would typically use Microsoft Windows 10/11, which are known to collect significant amounts of data from users) even after revelations about Facebook's practices, earlier revelations about government surveillance, and so on.

However, upon closer reading, I noticed that the first article makes clear that the target audience is schools & businesses which have many old computers whose Windows versions may no longer be supported. This makes more sense to me than targeting ordinary individuals, because I get the sense that the learning curve even to copy an ISO file onto a USB storage drive and install it onto a computer is steep for most ordinary individuals (despite the significant progress that distributions like Ubuntu & Linux Mint have made in making the installation process easy). By contrast, it seems more reasonable to expect specialists in schools & businesses to learn these things once and then do them for many different computers. Meanwhile, the second article makes clear that while traditional Chrome OS is capable of running many programs built for Windows, Chrome OS Flex will not have such capabilities. This suggests to me that while many schools may take up this opportunity given that few user-facing applications need to be installed on the computer and most user-facing applications can be accessed through web equivalents, this might not be the case for many businesses, so it is unclear to me which businesses will actually take this up.

Ultimately, I don't expect to see much adoption among ordinary individuals even though they aren't forbidden from installing & using Chrome OS Flex. That said, I would be interested to see how adoption evolves in schools & businesses over time.

Review: Manjaro Linux 16.10 "Fringilla" Cinnamon

Main Screen + Cinnamon Menu

I was going to make this post a review of the SpaceFM file manager (RAS syndrome, I know) upon recommendation by a commenter in a previous post. Then I checked it out for a bit, and realized that while it has a lot of potential for graphical customization, I still wouldn't feel particularly compelled to write a full review about that one application. Instead, I'm reviewing the Cinnamon edition of the latest version of Manjaro Linux. Last year, when I reviewed it, it was still relatively tied to Arch Linux. Since then, it has become much more independent, using its own repositories and maintaining a semi-rolling release model (though maintaining ties via the Arch User Repository (AUR)). Given that, I figured it might be time for a new review to see what has changed. I tried it using a live USB made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: Solus 1.0 "Shannon"

The semester has finally ended, and with that, I am officially done with all of my technical classes forever! (I still need to take an ethics class next semester, but that shouldn't be a big deal.) I've had a free weekend, so I've taken advantage of it by reviewing the recently-released Solus 1.0 "Shannon".

Raven + Budgie Menu

If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you may be wondering why I'm reviewing Solus with a version number of 1.0, if I already reviewed SolusOS 1 "Eveline" over 3.5 years ago. The reason is that this Solus is different from the SolusOS of a few years ago. The deal (as far as I can tell, so if I get parts of the story wrong, please let me know in the comments) is that for the previous SolusOS, version 2 was to be released with all sorts of cool things like an independent base, a fork of GNOME 2 supporting Compiz (separate from MATE), and so on, but then the development team ran out of funds to continue development, so SolusOS died at that point. More recently (around a year ago), the lead developer of the former SolusOS project, Ikey Doherty (along with presumably other people involved with the old SolusOS project, but I'm not too clear on that point), started working on a new lightweight DE called Budgie, built from GNOME 3 technologies to maintain compatibility with the upstream code base (in direct contrast to the forking that Cinnamon and MATE had done). He put it into an independent distribution called Evolve OS, but then a trademark dispute briefly ensued; this was quickly resolved by dropping the Evolve OS name and resurrecting the Solus name, and that is the distribution that I am reviewing today.

I tried Solus (which is only usable on 64-bit systems) on a live USB written with the "dd" command, as this is the recommended method; the Solus wiki explicitly advises against using UnetBootin, and I figured that MultiSystem may not be able to handle a new independent distribution like Solus. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Classes, UROP, and Applications Galore

I know I haven't posted here in a while. That's because this is around the time that a lot of graduate school applications are due, so I've been busy getting those done. At the same time, my UROP has been getting busier as I'm trying to wind down my current project, and classes are of course ever-present in the background. Anyway, my applications and classes will be done in about 3 weeks, so at that time I should have more time to write here. Meanwhile, happy Thanksgiving!

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 April 3

There were a whole bunch of comments on this past week's posts, so I'll try to repost most of those.

Ditching KDE Applications

An anonymous reader said, "As a kde user, I feel exactly the same about gnome apps - they start slow and perform badly- so the only gnome application I have is firefox, though konqueror with webkit is what I use more and more. I will add that I prefer KDE over gnome because a) KDE apps are MUCH better integrated with each other b) gnome is tightly controlled by RH and ximian and their agendas as opposed to KDE which I believe is a more community based and oriented desktop and c) these entities have acted and are acting a lot like m$ w.r.t. their dictation of policies and agenda in the desktop arena ( not to mention all the FUD they have spread and keep spreading on KDE)"
Commenter Mitsos had this to say: "There are some ultralight apps out there that are fantastic. Epdfview is a great example as you mentioned, and I use it on my openbox machine. On gnome I'd prefer evince which has an option for continuous display of pages (epdfview doesn't), and you already have the gnome dependencies installed. You could also try out FoxitReader. Viewnior is just amazing. My computer is 6-7 years old now, so apps like that make it fly. I mainly use GTK applications, but nothing keeps me back from using a Qt app like SMPlayer, or KDE apps, like K3b. They all run just fine."
There was a bit of back-and-forth about whether Mozilla Firefox is a GTK+ application or not, so an anonymous reader finally came to the rescue with this clarification and insight: "PV and anonymous, you are wrong in the following way- yes, firefox uses XUL for UI toolkit but currently, AFAIK, XUL only has a GTK renderer. There have been unofficial ports to QT that couldn't keep up and so got abandoned. The problem is that GTK is too tightly tied to gnome - the credentials, the VFS, the notifications and for many other features. XUL has nothing to do with gnome so if firefox is 'well integrated' with gnome, WHY is that ? It has to be because of GTK's assimilation into gnome."
Commenter Barnaby said, "Gpicviewer is another good and light weight one. Talking about KDE, I just wiped my Fedora 14 KDE install that I had around since October a few days ago, even upgraded to 4.6 it was still very slow, and that without effects turned on. It depends on the distro though. KDE 4 in Salix, Kongoni and Chakra is markedly faster."

Review: Linux Mint Xfce 201104

For one of the things that I noticed, an anonymous reader suggested, "Firefox is set to be updated from Mozilla. Open it as root (gksudo firefox), update it and close it again," while for another thing that I complained about, another anonymous commenter suggested, "multimedia keys: sudo apt install xfce4-volumed"
Reader Barnaby (again) said, "Thanks for trying this out. I was initially quite excited as well. I now think the most important thing to take away from their announcement is that they are progressively switching over to a Debian base for all but the main edition. The remaining polish will come as time goes on."
Commenter Ed the Red said, "I love and generally use Debian (over Ubuntu, my second choice), but I'm not sure I would have chosen this particular moment for rebasing a XFCE distro on Debian testing. Debian just released Squeeze as stable a couple of months ago and the big changes that always follow a release of stable have yet to really hit the testing repos. Those changes can cause snafus. It does seem like the big changes that normally hit the Debian testing repos after a stable release are taking substantially longer than normal. [...] Although Thunar is a lot faster than Nautilus (though less full-featured), I've never been convinced that XFCE was that much less memory intensive than Gnome (Xubuntu often uses more than the more full featured Gnome version of Ubuntu). And Mint generally seems less responsive than standard Ubuntu to me. But I was impressed by LMDE, I like it much better than the latest Mint Ubuntu spin, it seems faster. [...]"

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. This coming week, I have one fairly big post coming up, but that's all I have planned, because once again, I'm going to be quite busy with classwork. Once again, if you like what I write, please keep subscribing and commenting!

Comparison Test: Fuduntu 14.9 vs. Fusion 14 "Thorium"

Fuduntu Main Screen

Oh boy. I've been wanting and waiting to do this comparison test for quite a while now, and now I can finally do it! The problem was that Fusion 14 "Thorium" was just released a few days ago, and before that I didn't want to compare a stable release of Fuduntu to a pre-release of Fusion.

So let's look at the contenders. Fuduntu is, despite its name, not based on Ubuntu. It is based on Fedora (version 14.9 being based on Fedora 14 "Laughlin") and it is designed to be user-friendly like Ubuntu as well as optimal for laptops, netbooks, and other portable computers.

Fusion Main Screen + Mint Menu

Fusion is also based on Fedora (version 14 "Thorium" also being based on Fedora 14 "Laughlin"), and it aims to provide a complete and very user-friendly desktop experience with a slight emphasis on multimedia applications.

I made a multiboot live USB of these two distributions using MultiSystem. I did not install either one; I just tested the live sessions. Follow the jump to see what each one is like. Please note that this post is full of images, so now you know what may be causing the page to lag a bit if that happens.

KDE 4.3 - A Second Look

This comes after I (unsuccessfully) tried to install the new KDE 4.4 on my computer. It seems that Ubuntu hasn't come with packages for versions earlier than 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope"; the only packages are those available for 9.10 "Karmic Koala" and the (currently beta) 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx". I use Linux Mint 7 "Gloria" which is the equivalent of Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope", so I found myself out of luck. It is my intention to upgrade this computer to Linux Mint 9 "Isadora" when that comes out; hopefully I will be able to get the new KDE packages then, as I am eager to try them out. Until then, I thought of taking another look at KDE 4.3 (which I had already installed and reviewed), as I thought some of my comments were a bit unfair. I found that KDE 4.3 redeemed the old problems (to an extent) while presenting new problems. I have been doing this for about a week.
First, I want to review and maybe show how KDE managed to rectify the old problems.
The biggest annoyance was the lack of integration of Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and GTK+ applications. I have since learned that there is a theme for GTK+ applications called QtCurve to integrate them into KDE 4.X. I'm not going to do that as I want to have a native look in GNOME as well; it's a shame that KDE can't integrate GTK+ applications even close to as well as GNOME integrates Qt applications. I know a lot of distributions with KDE 4.X have this theme for included GTK+ applications, but as I also use GNOME, I won't be following this.
OpenOffice.org is a nightmare in this regard. As it turns out, the theme management for OpenOffice.org is near-dysfunctional; even in GNOME, I can't even change the theme to one of the included themes (forget installing a new one).
Firefox is a bit better. I installed the KFirefox theme which gives the menu a look combining the Windows Firefox back/forward buttons with the Konqueror look for the other menu buttons and the scrollbars. Sadly, the buttons in the webpages still look like they come from Windows 3.X. Oh well, at least it is a little better than before.
The Facebook Plasmoid still doesn't work. Oh well.
On a brighter note, Plasma has not crashed on me. KDE also seems notably more responsive and snappy (and quick to load) now. Maybe the latest update brought a serious shot in the arm for speed. That's good.
I managed to fix the problem of window labels in the Task Manager showing up across all virtual desktops, defeating the purpose of virtual desktops. There is an option in Task Manager to turn this off, so that in any given virtual desktop, the Task Manager will only show window labels from that virtual desktop. It's a good improvement, but I would like to see it like that by default in the future as in Linux Mint GNOME's default behavior (once the virtual desktop panel application is added to the panel).
I changed the main menu to the "Lancelot" menu, which is a slab menu similar to Linux Mint's MintMenu. I like it as I like all slab menus, but it has some quirks. Every time I unclick and reclick the menu, it resets to the default view rather than showing me the tab I was looking at before I unclicked the menu. It's a little annoying, but I can deal with it. I was hoping for a bit more customization of the menu as well in terms of determining what appears and what doesn't and in what order the icons go, but oh well.
I've changed the theme from the bland default "Air" to the more appealing (to me) "Oxygen". It looks a lot nicer now.
A new quirk I've found is that even though I've disabled these applications from startup, the applications Pidgin and Cairo Dock are still executed upon startup. I'm not really sure how to change this behavior now.
One thing I have done now that I didn't do before was to enable Activities. These basically enable me to keep Plasmoids (except for the panel but including the desktop background Plasmoid) on different desktops, greatly reducing the number of Plasmoids running at any one time. It's a neat feature, but I think only organizational freaks will find use in it.
I'm a little concerned that I can't really set default applications in KDE like I can in GNOME. It doesn't even give me the option of choosing Pidgin as my default IM client (it only gives Kopete as an option); the issue is similar with Firefox vs. Konqueror. Thankfully, OpenOffice.org is listed as an option for default applications.
Finally, I've found a quirk in Dolphin. For some reason, I can't permanently delete anything - I can only send it to the trash, which may not work if I'm deleting a particularly large file (like a Linux installation DVD ISO); it almost makes me want to use Nautilus again (and as I now know, in the newer versions of GNOME, Nautilus, like Dolphin, has split-pane viewing).
For all of these bright and dark spots, my opinion of KDE 4.3 is higher (but only by a little) than before. I'll probably be able to tolerate it a little longer than before - that is, before I get sick of it and decide to switch back to GNOME.
UPDATE: There are two things to update.
I got another weather Plasmoid. This one looks kind of nice, but still doesn't have a forecast.
More importantly, think of the devil... As I tried to use the "Lancelot" menu, it crashed. I guess it had to happen. Thankfully, that's the first time a crash has occurred since the start of this re-review.
UPDATE: Oops. Sorry I forgot this biggie.
For some reason even though KDE has a setting for power management, though I have set the computer to automatically suspend to RAM after 20 minutes of inactivity, this has never happened in KDE (though it faithfully happens in GNOME). I later did a manual suspend action and then resumed the session to find that suspending to RAM also logs the current user out of KDE. That explains a lot. It's a pretty big bug, though, as suspending to RAM can save a lot of power over leaving the computer on in full (even when inactive). A lot of people are used to this in Windows, and GNOME does it beautifully. KDE needs a lot of work in this regard.

Review: KDE 4.3

The desktop environment (DE) that I've been using since I started using Linux is GNOME. Currently, with Linux Mint 7, I'm using GNOME 2.26. I really like GNOME for its simplicity, its lightness on RAM, its great collection of applications, its customizability, and its stability.
However, I took one look at some screenshots of the newly released KDE 4.3 (really, 4.3.2) and I was instantly smitten. I decided to try it out, so after configuring the proper repositories (the Ubuntu/Kubuntu 9.04 repositories don't have KDE 4.3, only KDE 4.2.2), I went ahead and installed it.
First, let's have some history (or, at least, what I remember off the top of my head; you can verify this information in Wikipedia by looking up the articles on "KDE" and "GNOME"). KDE was actually the first DE for the GNU/Linux project. It started around 1996 alongside the development of the Qt libraries. However, around 1999, issues arose over KDE using the non-GPL Qt libraries, so a group of KDE and Qt developers left and started GNOME and the GTK+ libraries.
Now comes the actual review on my 2004 Sony VAIO desktop with a 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 HT (single core) processor, 1 GB RAM, and ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card.
My first impression after booting up and logging in (I haven't bothered to change the login screen from the default Mint 7 "Dew" theme to something more KDE-like) is that KDE takes a bit longer to load than GNOME; it almost takes as long as Windows XP on my computer. This may be because of KDE's higher level of polish and greater number of features, but in any case it is slightly but noticeably slower than GNOME.
Next, I played around with the Desktop a bit. The first startling revelation is that the contents of the Desktop aren't shown on the desktop; one must either open the Desktop folder in one's favorite file manager (more on that later) or create a nice snazzy Plasmoid (yes, that's the name for widgets in KDE 4's new Plasma desktop manager). The Plasmoids themselves are quite nice looking and functional, though the weather Plasmoid is rather lacking in information (it doesn't even have a forecast!). The way to access Desktop icons without opening the folder is to create a Lancelot Part Plasmoid and drag and drop the Desktop folder into the Plasmoid; this will create a permanent housing for the Desktop folder's contents. However, clicking on any file or folder in the Plasmoid will reopen the file manager rather than create a new Plasmoid.
I was intrigued by the new "Social Desktop" Plasmoid (one of the more talked-about features in KDE 4.3) until I found out that this did not mean that I could use Facebook from the Desktop without opening a browser. The "Social Desktop" is its own service (for KDE 4.3 users), while the Facebook Plasmoid itself doesn't work. That's a moderately large letdown right there.
The menu works very nicely; the layout is slightly different from the default MintMenu, but it is intuitive enough.
One quirk I found is with the virtual desktop management. For some reason, even if one switches to a different virtual desktop, windows in other virtual desktops remain on the panel. It doesn't seem buggy, but GNOME actually keeps applications minimized to a panel in a certain virtual desktop in that virtual desktop when the virtual desktop is switched. This greatly reduces the clutter on the panel.
One bug I did find was when KDE's panel (formerly Kicker) crashed on me twice on the same day. This is seriously buggy behavior and frankly unacceptable. I have never had a problem even close to this in GNOME.
One thing I like about GNOME is that it integrates Qt (KDE libraries)-based applications very nicely. Sadly, the reverse (KDE integrating GTK+ (GNOME libraries)-based applications) is not so true. Yes, GTK+ applications still work in KDE, but when running, they look like one is running Windows 95. It's a big disappointment aesthetically, considering GNOME completely carries over the Qt-look from Qt-based applications when running in GNOME.
This extends to even non-GTK+-based applications like Firefox and OpenOffice.Org. It's especially bad in OO.O as all of the icons turn into boxes of text, hiding half of the menu bars due to the long boxes of text. KDE probably wants one to use the native KOffice, even though this isn't even installed by default with KDE 4.3. Even worse, KOffice has much worse feature, font, and cross-product/file type compatibility support than OO.O. This is probably also why GNOME doesn't force AbiWord and Gnumeric on users by default except on lower-end distributions (and even then, AbiWord and Gnumeric have much better support for features and cross-software compatibility than KWord and KSpread). This isn't as much of an issue in Firefox, but GNOME integrates Firefox much better than KDE does. KDE probably wants one to use the native Konqueror browser (though it doesn't even come with KDE 4.3 by default), but GNOME doesn't usually require the native Epiphany browser like this; furthermore, versus Firefox, in terms of customizability and proper rendering of pages, Konqueror is on par with Internet Explorer 5 - it just isn't there.
One very bright spot is the selection of games (not real games, just diversions a la "Solitaire"). The selection of games is much nicer in KDE than in GNOME, and I would definitely play those just to keep myself busy for a few minutes when not doing something else.
The other, more important, bright spot is the file manager Dolphin. Nautilus (GNOME's file manager), take note. Dolphin has a lot more support for different types of viewing, like Mac OS X Finder-style split-pane viewing combined with tabbed viewing. It has a preview pane which allows one to really see a big (not tiny) preview of the document in question before opening it.
I will be keeping KDE 4.3 on my computer, but after spending a week with it, I'm ready to go back to GNOME. There are simply too many compatibility issues with non-Qt-based applications to continue with KDE, and the speed and stability isn't really what I'm used to from a Linux system. That said, I will still use Dolphin and all of the neat KDE games (in GNOME), but I will wait to truly switch to KDE.