Monday, December 20, 2010

Google Chrome OS Tentatively Released

Google's Chrome OS has been tentatively released in a "pilot program" for testers who will receive a Cr-48 Chrome Notebook. To receive the notebook, one must apply to beta--err pilot test the forthcoming operating system.

Google has apparently already signed deals with Acer and Samsung to release laptops in 2011 with Chrome OS pre-installed, and I believe that the Cr-48 will be commercially available as well. That will more than likely be the Cr-49 or 50, after the testing has been completed, but you get the idea.

So as you probably know, Chrome OS is a cloud-based OS. in other words, it's really no more than a self-contained Internet browser. It's designed purely for people that use their computers exclusively for internet access. Any applications that need to be run will be cloud-based apps accessed through the browser.

Ignoring my previously stated skepticism of cloud-computing and Google's cloud-based apps, my question here is will there be a market for this OS and more specifically, a market for the coming Chrome OS notebooks? Because the OS is a Linux distro, will it have any impact on Linux and the Linux community?

Well first of all, I don't see it being widely adopted as a desktop OS. It's not designed for that. There are many cloud-based OSes out there already and they are not being used on the desktop. Again, that is not the design of the software. That leaves it for laptops and netbooks. But I think this is a mistake. I don't see netbooks being around for much longer and laptops need a complete operating system, or they're just a waste of space and money. If the OS was redesigned for a tablet that would be something else. Cloud computing on a tablet I can understand. A tablet doesn't need any more power than to make some quick adjustments to a document while on the go, or a quick status update to friends or an employer as you head across town to a meeting (and maybe a video or two on a flight).

That being said, I don't think that there are enough cloud apps available to justify the OS operating completely through a web browser. And the apps that are available are too limited for any kind of professional work. As an illustration, lets take a look at the Chrome Web Store. If you are using the Chrome or Chromium web browser, you can try this out for yourself.

I won't go into the pros and cons of the store itself (there is a lot I could say to criticize it); I'll just talk about the apps available. In the productivity menu (we're assuming professional use here) let's look for an image editing application. Right now a featured app is the "Advanced Image Editor by Aviary". After selecting it, we are prompted to install it. The "installation" brings us to a web page: http://www.aviary.com/online/image-editor?lang=en#&src=chromeos. I am truly surprised at the features it has. There are several filters and tools available, and you can even work in layers. That is very good for a web application. But as a professional solution? It will never replace GIMP's functionality and is light years behind Photoshop. I'm really not even sure if it's decent for a hobbyist. Why use this when GIMP is free? For those who want only to make quick edits for uploading to Facebook, fine, but in no way is this a professional solution.

The same website (Aviary.com) has another link from the app store for music creation. And again I'm surprised at the sophistication in a web application. This one had some minor issues (drag and dropping instruments into tracks was extremely sluggish), but on the whole I have to say nicely done. There is a wide variety of instruments to choose from and supports importing your own sounds. But again, this is not a professional solution. LMMS, Ardour, and others are completely free and and have way more features.

I'd like to look at one more app. This time I'll move away from the productivity category and move to entertainment. Let's try one of the games.

The first game that caught my eye was Runescape (it was featured). I've never really been into MMOs so I wouldn't really be able to give an unbiased opinion of it, but I would love to hear from anyone who does play that type of game. The graphics impressed me only in the fact that it was played through a browser. In comparison to other games it only would be impressive if you played it 6 or 7 years ago.

I did actually try Quake Live which was also in the store. However, in spite of the fact that it is available in the store, it does not work with Chrome. This app only works with IE 7+ or Firefox 2.0+. I'm assuming that since it is in the store that it will soon support Chrome (and thus Chromium) so I gave it a go.

The graphics quality of Quake Live lies somewhere between Quake 2 and Quake Arena. It plays very well, and the gameplay is very reminiscent of of Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament.

On top of the free to play model, there are 2 subscription-based options for playing, the Premium Membership for $1.99/month and the Pro Membership for $3.99/month. The monthly fees are not worth it in my opinion. A game like this for purchase is worth at most $10.00 (being so dated) so I can't imagine paying a monthly fee for this. The breakdown of the different subscriptions can be found here.

To go back to my earlier statement about Chrome OS being better suited for a tablet than a notebook, I'll grant that a FPS would be more difficult on a touchscreen. But at the moment it's not even compatible with the OS so I don't know what to say here.

So, being in a beta still, it's hard to say if this will be a success or not. My thought is that it doesn't deserve to be as it stands, but it does have the Google name behind it so who can really say? Perhaps if they go the sane route and at least put in a virtual keyboard for those who want to install it on a tablet I might be a little more optimistic.

There is still the big elephant in the room however. I'm referring to Google's habit of collecting data. Now this is open source, so if Google is collecting data right from the OS itself, we will soon know about it. But since all usage of this OS centers around your data being kept on a server "somewhere out there" I just cannot get behind it. There is no source code to look at from the web-based apps, and you can be sure that the user is not the only one that has access to the files stored in the cloud. But in this case my personal feelings are irrelevant.

Let's pretend for a minute that this really takes off and overtakes iOS as a popular OS on the Internet. Will this help legitimize Linux for the masses as a viable choice on their PCs? Again I can't help but be a pessimist. Android OS is currently more prolific than iOS for smartphones. Yet most people using Android don't even know they are using Linux. I feel that will be the same here. Google isn't going to go out of their way to tell people where the OS really comes from, or to inform people about free or open source software. They will push their brand name and tell people they are using Google. That's it.

And that's honestly a good thing. Google's business practice contradicts what free and open source is all about and I really wouldn't want the two being associated together. Linux will keep chugging along at its own pace. With the improvements and growth Linux has made in the last few years, it doesn't need a name like Google behind it anyway. Linux is doing perfectly well on its own.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Multi-Monitor Support Forces More Use from Windows Partition

I've been struggling with multi-monitor support for a while now. I'm still not 100% satisfied, but I think I've got the best solution possible for my circumstances. I should probably share my system specs before I go any further..

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3 GHz
2 Nvidia GeForce 9800 512MB video cards
4 GB DDR2 RAM

This was what I wanted: SLI configuration, compiz effects, both monitors spanning 1 desktop (to drag windows from one monitor to the other), separate virtual workspaces for each monitor including different wallpaper.

The end result of much effort and several attempts is:

SLI simply does not work with a multi-monitor configuration at all. At least in any configuration I tried the 2nd monitor simply would not start in SLI. So if I wanted to use both cards, Twin View is not an option.

Separate X screen without Xinerama works but it was unusable for me as it caused some really strange things to happen. Nautilus windows just started popping up in the taskmanager and would not stop launching them until the system crashed. Until the crash, the two monitors worked however and compiz was enabled as well. With the separate X screens though, dragging windows from one screen to another was of course not possible.

I tried enabling Xinerama with the separate X screens, and this worked fine but for two things:

  1. No compiz effects. This was disappointing, but I could live with it.
  2. No KDE apps. Indeed, trying to start up any KDE application would cause the entire desktop environment to crash to the login screen. If I tried to log into the KDE desktop environment rather than Gnome, it would load and crash, again leaving me at the login screen. This I cannot live with as there are a few KDE programs that I just cannot live without.

That left with me with Twin View, which does work very well, except for 2 things:

  1. Separate virtual workspaces for each monitor are not possible. Xorg sees only 1 desktop , which means that each monitor must use the same wallpaper and switching virtual workspaces will cause both monitors to make the switch. It cannot be done independently.
  2. My second video card is now not being used. Now I would like to point out that SLI never worked very well anyway. Or I should say that it never worked very well when compiz was enabled. I actually switched to KDE briefly for this reason (I could have the plasma desktop effects enabled and SLI worked fine). I'm now really regretting going the multi-GPU route when I had this machine built. I wish I had just purchased one 1024MB card, but c'est la vie.

This current setup suits me fine for the most part. For graphically-intensive gaming however, I will have to rely on my Windows partition a little more than I do currently which is a real shame. I would like to point out that I believe blame can be laid squarely on Nvidia for lousy SLI support in Linux. In Windows I can have a multi-monitor setup with SLI enabled with no problems whatsoever. I know this has to be possible in Linux as well, but Nvidia just can't be bothered working it into the drivers. And they refuse to release the source code so that others may do the job for them.

I'll admit that compiz is not innocent here. But even with compiz disabled there is some discernible stuttering in the display when SLI is enabled.

This brings me to another point. when something quirky happens in Linux, it doesn't mean that Linux is quirky. It means that some software running is having some undesired results. To put this in perspective, lets look at some software that runs on Windows that has less than desired effects. Perhaps the most common that I see is umpteen-thousand toolbars that people for whatever reason install in Internet Explorer. It has the result of not only slowing down the browser, but with all the spyware that inevitably comes with it, the whole system slows to a crawl (and why the hell are you using IE anyway?)

I could bring up more examples obviously, but you get the point. In either of these cases, the OS is not to blame. It is either the software being run, or a configuration problem (well it's both in each case. The Windows example would include the configuration issue because if a guest account was used instead of the default administrator account, the spyware wouldn't be permitted to install).

But I digress. I didn't really mean to turn this into a Linux/Windows comparison. This was only meant to be a more personal post of my own experience.

If you have any experience with the issue I've described, please comment and if you have a solution I may have overlooked, please share it.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Implications of the WikiLeaks Scandals

I've been following the story of Julian Assange's arrest and of course the US government reaction to the cable leaks. I wasn't going to bother with a post about this, but the more I read, the more it seems to occupy my mind. It's going past the typical "amusing antics of the US government" and delving into Orwellian territory.

Now this goes beyond the concept of respectable or responsible journalism. Whether or not WikiLeaks falls into the above categories or is simply out to embarrass governments in the same way that tabloids seek to embarrass celebrities and other public figures is not the issue. What is at issue is the freedom to distribute information. In Western culture are we not free to discuss and inform anything we feel has importance, or might be important to other individuals? It's becoming apparent that this is not so.

We have high profile public figures calling for Assange's assassination. Large media outlets such as the New York Times are being blocked for publishing a few of the the leaked cables. The "rape" charges against Assange seem more and more like an attack on his character in hopes to discredit him rather than any kind of serious allegation. (Here is a detailed account of his crime and arrest. This is a very interesting assessment of the charges by acclaimed author and feminist Naomi Wolf.)

This whole situation is getting out of hand. Is this the death of real journalism? Depending on what is being reported, it seems that journalists soon may find themselves in a situation where their profession necessitates operating outside the law. I'm sure that Julian Assange would say that this situation is already here. It's exasperating.

I find myself wondering how Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists who uncovered the Nixon-era Watergate scandal) would have fared in today's political climate.

UPDATE:
This is a video from October 22 discussing the (then upcoming) Iraq War Docs leak that brings some perspective. Daniel Ellsberg, the famous whistle-blower of the Vietnam War in 1971, speaks. Part one of two.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The Year of Linux (Take 19)

The general consensus (according to w3counter.com, which gets its data from web-usage only) the current Linux market share for the Linux OS is approximately 1.5% (as of October 2010). Yes there are other stats that give different numbers, but this seems like an approximate average. Some have Linux's share at below 1% and more than a couple have it at above 5%. The specific numbers don't even matter to me at this point. I only think that they should be better.

Now of course I've also heard the arguments that globally the percentage could be as high as 40%, taking into consideration 3 points:

  1. Countries outside of Europe and North America are not considered in most if not all data collecting websites.
  2. The population of China and India together roughly doubles the population of Canada, the United States and all of Europe combined.
  3. The governments of both China and India actively promote the use of GNU/Linux over Microsoft and Apple OSes.

I only point to this as a way to discourage the mindless Linux hate coming (mostly) from Microsoft users. I fail to understand where this hate comes from, especially considering that it mostly comes from people who haven't given Linux a chance at all, or from those who tried it once over a weekend. But I digress.

My real question here doesn't have anything to do with Linux popularity in various Asian countries. My question is what would it take for the market share in Linux to rise above, say, Mac OSX's desktop market share?

I think I have an answer, but it will take a bit of explanation.

Linux is the No-Name Brand OS

At least to Windows and Mac users it is. Most people consider Linux to be the cheaper and less-usable alternative to the "name-brand" Windows and Mac. This, of course, couldn't be farther from the truth but the only way to change people's minds is to actually get them to use it for more than a day. And I don't think that this can happen without a cultural change.

Consider the time-frame that Microsoft came to dominate the market.

In the early '90s, Microsoft was still the young, upstart software company that was starting to do battle with the big, evil corporate Apple. Windows 3.0 was released in May of 1990. (3.11, the big one before Windows 95, was released in 1993).

Anyone remember what else was going on at the time? I mean outside of the computer world. Culturally speaking. Anyone?

There was Seattle, the whole "Grunge Movement", and everyone in any advertising agency freaking out because no one was listening to them. Fashion magazines had no idea what to do and were clothing models in plaid and knee high combat boots, selling outfits for $50 and less. No-name brand products, for the first time, were outselling name-brand products. People were about function, not style. And people loved to support the underdog. Western culture, in these three or four years of the early '90s, was saturated with these ideologies.

People also started buying computers a lot more than they had ever before. Technology started to be more in the front of people's minds in the mid '90's. I remember "multimedia" as the buzzword, but that was quickly replaced as the media started to become aware of this mysterious thing that hackers were now doing: "surfing the web". And the Internet began to be seen as a re-emergence of the Wild West, at least that is how it was portrayed.

Enter Windows 95, the latest offering from that young upstart software company that ran perfectly well on an IBM clone -- the no-name brand computer. The timing was really perfect. Microsoft was well on its way to dominance, but already the function-not-style mindset was dissipating. Grunge was dead. And musical tastes were changing too. "Electronica" was now becoming a movement. Raves became popular again. And this edgy sounding music was all technology-based. Kids could make this sort of music in their basements if their parents had bought them a computer at some point.

Windows 98 was released in June of 1998. Advertising agencies were breathing a sigh of relief, and starting to relax a bit. The recession was over, and the US budget was balanced. People had disposable incomes again. The depressing Music of the early '90s was gone. The Spice Girls, The Backstreet Boys and Brittney Spears were at the top of the charts. The Smashing Pumpkins disbanded in disgust. And Microsoft was king. By the time XP was released in 2001, America was thoroughly back in the name-brand, style before function mindset. As long as something looked pretty, it didn't matter if the core was rotten. If it was expensive, it must be good.

Microsoft got really lucky. Windows had matured in a way that completely fit into the rest of America's culture. Don't get me wrong, Gate's business sense had much to do with Microsoft's success too, I'm just saying that the timing of it all expedited its popularity.

Considering this, where are we left? Well Microsoft is still undeniably king. No longer are they "the young, upstart software company that was starting to do battle with the big, evil corporate Apple". They are now the big evil corporation that people are going to Apple to escape from. (Fill this space with any ironic comment you wish).

But we are in a recession now. Why are people paying even more for a Mac, rather than switching to Linux which is cost-effective and ultimately better than both? I would say the reason is that the culture didn't change with the economic situation like it usually does. The reasons for that are many and varied. Not the least of which is the anti-sharing media campaign put forth by the RIAA, MPAA and other groups. (And hey, telling people not to share is telling people not to use free or open-source software).

So to finally bring this around and include the reason for the title, will the year of Linux ever come? Probably. But not any time soon. If 9/11, two wars, the worst recession in decades and Michael Moore can't seem to make a significant cultural change, then I just fail to see how it's going to happen. And without it, I can't see people abandoning their OS of choice en masse.

Unless of course it's Linux that actually causes this cultural shift I'm waiting for... hmmm...