Review: Edubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal"

GNOME Main Screen

Before I get on with the rest of this post, I need to apologize for not having posted anything this week. It turned out to be a good deal busier than I anticipated, and even otherwise, there wasn't a whole lot to write about, at least at the beginning of the week. I did say in the latest "Featured Comments" article that I would review the latest release of Ubuntu — version 11.04 "Natty Narwhal". That is still happening, but for reasons that will become clearer, I will not write reviews of Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Lubuntu just yet, but will wait a day or maybe a little more.

JAVA Session Welcome Screen

With that aside, I find it interesting that having written this blog for almost 2 years and having reviewed Linux distributions for almost as long, I have never formally tried and reviewed Ubuntu or any of its official other editions (Kubuntu, Edubuntu) or officially-sponsored community derivatives (Xubuntu, and hopefully soon Lubuntu as well). I've reviewed quite a few other derivatives, most notably Linux Mint, but I've never tried straight-up Ubuntu itself. I guess that's because I've always sort of taken Ubuntu for granted; I installed it on the laptop of a member of my family, I've seen people put it on their computers, and I've used it at the Athena clusters here at MIT. Well, that's changing today, with a review of Edubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal".

Why Edubuntu, and not Ubuntu? As mentioned earlier, one reason will become apparent when I publish the review of Ubuntu. The other main reason is that I haven't really seen Edubuntu reviews on the Internet; that could be because of its specific target audience, but in any case, I think it deserves a review, especially given that it is an official Canonical product. For those who don't know, Edubuntu, as you might be able to guess from the name, is a packaging of Ubuntu with lots of education-related software included out-of-the-box.

Thanks to Canonical's efforts in this regard, I was able to test it in two ways: I was able to try it out online from the comfort of my current Linux Mint system, and then I tried it through a live USB made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Revisited: KDE 4.6

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I recently tried reviewing KDE 4.6, and it didn't turn out so well due to the combination of my installing KDE 4.6 in a live session and my using Linux Mint to try it out. (Also, I have said this before in previous articles, but again, my primary distribution is Linux Mint with GNOME, so that bias will show in this article somehow or another. Please do keep that in mind when reading this.) One frequent suggestion was to use Arch to test it next time. Although installing Arch may not be so bad, getting it configured to work right post-installation, while ultimately very rewarding, is time-consuming and pretty difficult, and I don't think I have either the time or skill to do that. Then I had an epiphany (no pun intended): use ArchBang. It comes as a live CD and, after installation, it has a nice Openbox setup with things like sound and network settings configured properly out-of-the-box. It also comes with a whole bunch of GTK+ applications, so it's ideal to see how well KDE plays with another DE/WM side-by-side.

I tried doing all this in VirtualBox on a Linux Mint 10 "Julia" GNOME live USB, because MultiSystem, the multiboot live USB creation tool, seems to have messed up VirtualBox on my installed Linux Mint 9 "Isadora" GNOME system. I allocated 1024 MB of RAM to the guest OS, used a 10 GB virtual hard drive located on my physical hard drive for installing ArchBang, and went on my way. The installation procedure was fairly straightforward; it was a text-based ncurses-esque interface. After installing, I restarted the virtual machine and then ran the following commands in sequence in order to update the system: "su", "pacman -Syu", "exit", log out, log back in, "su", "pacman -Syu" for good measure, "pacman -S kde", and finally "exit". I also edited the ~/.xinitrc file to start KDE instead of Openbox by default. I then logged out and logged back in. Follow the jump to see what KDE 4.6 is really like.

HP + Linux = Ending the Microsoft Addiction?

HP has been best known for its peripheral computer devices, especially printers and scanners, though it is also well-known for its desktop computers, and, to a lesser extent, laptops and netbooks. Its printers and other peripherals are held in high regard for fully working with Linux distributions out-of-the-box, but it has never officially supported Linux among its product portfolio. Sure, it has sold business-/enterprise- and server-grade computers with SUSE (SLED, not openSUSE), but those are tucked away in dark corners of its website; even Dell, with its on-again, off-again, relationship with Ubuntu, does sort of advertise its Ubuntu-based machines. Well, that's all about to change at HP.
Today, HP first announced a couple WebOS-based phones and a new WebOS based tablet to compete with Apple's iPad. WebOS is HP's mobile operating system based on Linux; as far as I know, other than using the Linux kernel and base GNU tools, WebOS is not related to Android, and the two will probably compete in the mobile marketplace. But the most exciting part came later: HP announced that not only would WebOS come in phones and tablets, but it would also make its way into its printers and PCs. That's right: HP is introducing its own Linux-based competitor to Microsoft Windows. Sweet! This could, after all, be the oft-proclaimed year of the Linux desktop.
Of course, with this new announcement comes new responsibilities; now HP has absolutely no excuse for their peripherals not fully supporting Linux, considering many of them will run Linux under the hood. Then again, as I said earlier, HP has been pretty good to Linux so far in terms of peripheral support.
But there's another aspect to HP's WebOS announcement. If you noticed, WebOS is supposed to be a mobile platform; yet, it's being ported to conventional desktops as well. This is similar to how Ubuntu's Unity interface, originally designed for netbooks and similarly small screens, will become the default interface for desktops as well, and how future versions of Google Chrome OS will likely be very much like Android scaled up for netbooks. In addition, it looks like GNOME 3 was also designed with small form factors in mind, what with the Activities feature and the panel only being able to show the active task, and this has been scaled up for traditional desktops. I think there's a new trend here of creating new interfaces designed for mobile devices and then scaling them up for desktop use, and I think for that reason it's true that the future of end-user computing is in mobile devices. A while back I wrote a post about how Microsoft's push for Windows 7 on netbooks was misguided and that it should scale up the Windows Phone 7 interface instead to make better use of hardware resources, similar to how Apple scaled up the iPhone's iOS for use in the iPad instead of trying to cram in Mac OS X. Well, now that we're seeing mobile OSs being scaled up to full desktops and not just netbooks, I don't think Microsoft is just misguided anymore — I think they're dead wrong, and I think it's already costing them.
The only concern I have though is that WebOS on desktops and laptops may be relegated as a lightweight "instant-on"-style OS secondary to Microsoft Windows, similar to what Asus did for a while on its laptops and netbooks. Then again, HP seems to be pretty darn serious about WebOS for desktops, and not just because consumers want something fast; they recognize that consumers also want the same polish found in modern mobile OSs, so I don't think WebOS will be playing second fiddle to Microsoft Windows on future HP desktops/laptops.

Review: Sabayon 5.4 KDE

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I've already reviews Sabayon 5.2 and 5.3 KDE, so I don't think it's necessary to repeat the history and roots of Sabayon. Suffice it to say that it's an easy-to-use binary variant of Gentoo that includes everything and the kitchen sink.
According to the Sabayon developers, Sabayon 5.4 brings to the table a new theme, many bugs fixed, and a couple changes in the included applications. Follow the jump to see how it fares. I tested this in VirtualBox with 1024 MB of RAM allocated for the guest OS, as this is how much RAM my old computer had when I tested Sabayon 5.2 on it directly (i.e. from a live USB instead of from VirtualBox).

FOLLOW-UP: Windows 7 on Netbooks?

A couple of months ago I had written a piece on what I believed Microsoft's strategy should be with regard to putting Windows 7 on netbooks and tablet PCs. I believed then that Microsoft should try to scale Windows Mobile 7 up onto netbooks and tablets as opposed to trying to scale Windows 7 down onto netbooks and tablets. While I still believe that this plan would deliver optimal performance, a new review (Sasha Muller, PC Pro) of ViewSonic's two new ViewPad tablets suggests that the latter option may not be as bad as I once thought. The 10.1" ViewPad dual-boots Android 1.6 (as the newer versions do not support its hardware) and Microsoft Windows 7. As expected, Android is amazingly quick on the hardware, but more surprising is the fact that Windows 7 is actually quite usable on just 1 GB of RAM, an Intel Atom processor, and a 10.1" screen. I therefore congratulate Microsoft on a job well done in scaling Windows 7 down to a touchscreen tablet PC; I now believe that Windows 7 could actually work (and that it may not just be empty Microsoft rhetoric) on 10.1" and 11" netbooks, as Windows 7 doesn't have to deal with the added requirements of a touchscreen. Bravo.

Windows 7 on Netbooks?

As per my usual habits, I was browsing Wikipedia's article on Asus and clicked on the link to the article on the Eee PC. I read that Microsoft is working with Asus to optimize Windows 7 for the next generation of the Eee PC.
While I don't like Microsoft, I believe they shouldn't be shut out of the development process entirely. That said, I believe they are misguided in their efforts. (I also truly hope that Asus doesn't drop Linux support on the Eee PC.)
I believe that Apple (whom I also don't particularly like for some of its products and practices) really hit gold by releasing the iPad with essentially an enlarged and enhanced version of the iPhone OS. There was a big controversy at the time of development whether the iPad should have a shrunken-down, stripped version of Mac OS X, an enhanced version of the iPhone OS, or an entirely new operating system altogether. Ultimately, the second option won out, because it is easy to scale up a simple OS than scale down a complex OS. Also, the iPhone OS already had touchpad capabilities, while this would have had to be worked into Mac OS X somehow for compatibility with the iPad. As a result, the iPad is really fast (as it also has much better hardware than the iPhone) and is quite easy to use.
On the other hand, I really don't enjoy using netbooks with desktop OSs like Windows XP, desktop Ubuntu, or desktop Fedora. (Full disclosure: I really don't like netbooks, period. The minimum size I can easily use is about a 12" screen-size laptop.) These OSs are all quite sluggish on netbooks' minimal hardware and look really cramped on small screens. On the other hand, OSs like Ubuntu Netbook Edition (formerly Ubuntu Netbook Remix), Fedora for netbooks, and Jolicloud OS are optimized and hence fly on netbooks.
This, I believe, is the path Microsoft should follow in its development plans with Asus. It already has a mobile OS in the form of Windows Mobile. It could probably just scale that up for netbook use - as mobile phones have much less powerful hardware than netbooks, Windows Mobile would just positively scream on netbooks. On the other hand, Windows 7 scaled down for netbooks would suffer from the same problems that plague standard versions of Windows XP, Ubuntu, and Fedora on netbooks (e.g. sluggishness, a cramped UI, taxing hardware requirements). Hence, the push for Windows 7 is misguided.

Linux in "Mainstream" Tech Articles

[Thanks to blogger Glyn Moody for quoting the WSJ article about open development.]
Yes, Linux gets a lot of good press in, well, the OSS media. That's only to be expected. However, things get a lot more mixed in the mainstream tech media. These outlets are for laypeople and thus basically only focus on Microsoft products and their implementations.
For example, this article (Jason Notte, TheStreet) talks about netbooks versus laptops. When it talks about how far netbooks have come, it refers to Linux in a disparaging way, calling the original Linux-equipped netbooks "toys".
Now, it is more likely that the netbooks themselves (in terms of the hardware) were toys. However, it is entirely possible that this site was calling Linux a "toy" OS.
This is patently absurd, but I won't list all the reasons (servers, Internet, phones, media) why. That's for another day. I will say that there still are a significant number of (new) netbooks sold with Linux, and their sellers do admit that the return rate for their netbooks does not vary with the OS selection.
Again, the bias against Linux is a bit more debatable based on the wording.
This article, from the WSJ, however, is a lot more obviously against open development. The article does not explicitly take a side, as it is a news piece rather than an opinion piece, but the article's word choice makes it clear what the opinion of the WSJ editors on this is.
To summarize, a company making a robotic brain called the Arduino is open-sourcing the hardware with no restrictions and putting up the processes and specs on the Internet.
Yes, the article may also use the word "peculiar" (when referring to the open-source business) because it really is peculiar to the average reader, but it's probably also because the model runs directly counter to the closed nature of the WSJ's (and News Corp's) own business model.
Furthermore, rather than simply call derivatives of the original work "copies" or some other neutral work, the article calls them "knock-offs". This connotes illegality of copying (despite surrounding words maintaining the legality of this, which is true) and inferiority of the copy no matter what. It suggests that imitators can never possibly innovate past the capability of the original innovator.
Of course, the original founder makes note of his first-mover advantage, saying that when imitators are spreading copies of his products, he is already at work for the next generation of hardware. This is great and it shows that he is willing to continually innovate rather than be lazy and take a monopoly to continue to profit; he also genuinely cares about letting others collaborate in the process, enough so that he open-sourced the hardware anyway.
Maybe I'm just overreacting to the natural curiosity and skepticism at the open-source business model by those unfamiliar with it, but these were just my initial thoughts on the subject matter anyway.

"FUD of the Year" from Microsoft

Well, folks, it's another day and another round of FUD from Microsoft. However, this really does take the cake for "FUD of the Year".
(For the uninitiated, "FUD" stands for "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt". It's a really slick marketing move where a company uses vague phrases to create fear in consumers of an opponent's product without fighting it in concrete, rational terms. Microsoft is not the only company to do it but has been the most high-profile, arrogant, and lying software company to do it in the last few decades.)

Microsoft has felt the need to give the employees at Best Buy a presentation on why Windows 7 is better than Linux. My take on the concept itself will come at the end, but in general, this would be fine IF it didn't resort to a presentation filled half with outright lies and half with statements so vague that it may apply to Windows 7 easier than to Linux.
For those too lazy to actually click the link and to make setting up a context easier, I'm reposting all images from that site here.
For this one, it's funny that they don't mention Mac OS X (especially with v10.6 Snow Leopard coming out), but more on that later.
Also, how can Windows 7 run better on a netbook than Linux? New versions of Linux (like Linux Mint 7 Gloria with Compiz effects) can run well on computers (like mine) that are 5-6 years old (also like mine: 5.5 years old). These computers have lower specs than today's netbooks and don't have a chance of running Windows Vista or 7, yet Microsoft has the audacity to make this claim. Care to back that up with some numbers, Microsoft? I thought not (unless someone else has the time and patience to look it up, which I'd be more than willing to look at).
Follow the jump to read and see the rest of this nasty FUD.