Martin Notes

There have  been a number of posts about Gnome Do 0.8 already, but I’ve been late with installing… I must say: it’s brilliant! They’ve combined the normal Do GUI with a dock and that works just great.

The dock works as a dock should: it’s at the bottom of your screen and it shown applications that you can open, or have open. The settings for the dock can be changed by right cliking on the most left icon (summon Gnome Do). There you can change settings like auto hide and whether you want a Mac like zoom in the dock. Adding applications is easy: just drag an icon from the Gnome menu to the dock.

The good thing is that Gnome Do hasn’t lost it’s command line. When you press the keyboard shortcut (Super-Space) or select the “Summon Gnome Do” icon the dock changes into a typing area as you know it from Gnome Do.

To install just update your Software Sources with the following:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-testers/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-testers/ubuntu intrepid main

If you have Gnome Do already installed then you’ll get an update notification pretty soon. If you hot not then you should do the following:

sudo apt-get install gnome-do

To enable the dock you have to select the Docky theme in the appearance preferences.

If you are never satisfied with the amount of settings they are offered: You can find Gnome-Do in the Gnome Configuration Editor at the following path:

/apps/gnome-do/preferences

In the Docky folder you can edit some settings like the IconSize, the monitor where it’s shown and the SummonTime.

GUI, Linux, Opinion, Ubuntu gnome do

You can download and build it like I described in my previous post.

wget http://google-gadgets-for-linux.googlecode.com/files/google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.5.tar.bz2

sudo apt-get install libdbus-1-dev libmozjs-dev libxml2-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev libltdl3-dev libxt-dev libxul-dev libgtk2.0-dev librsvg2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev

./configure --prefix=/usr

make

sudo make install

To start Google Gadgets:

ggl-gtk

Ubuntu

I’ve installed the Kubuntu Jaunty Jackalope alpha 3 on my normal laptop, I didn’t try anything like VirtualBox since I wanted to see how it performs compared to my normal Intrepid install. So I downloaded the iso, burned the CD, shrank my 8.10 system partition and installed 9.04-3.

Installation
The partition shrinking and installation ran as smooth as possible: No reboots required until the install is complete and no useless questions. Resizing the partition took a while, but after that the installer finished within 15 minutes. I was rather surprised that I had so little problems since it’s an alpha release, maybe that’s because the installer is not under development yet.

First impression
Booting 9.04 is fast. I’ve used the new ext4 filesystem and that’s worth it: My full startup from power on until password entry is about 40 seconds, from there until the KDE desktop is working is about 20 seconds. For comparison: my current 8.10 Gnome takes 60 seconds until password entry and then 40 seconds until a working Gnome desktop. That’s a good start for the rabbit.

The KDE 4.2 is now a release candidate, but I think it still requies quite some work. Although I must admit that my knowledge of KDE is limited, maybe some of the stuff I found is normal in KDE.

First of all my laptop screen is 1366 pixels wide and that’s too much for KDM. The screen where it requests the password leaves a space on the left and right of the monitor where is shows garbage, the middle 1024 (I guess) pixels are rendered correctly. I’ve seen this problem before: KDE 4 doesn’t like widescreen resolutions.

Visuals
After logging in it uses the full width of the screen and I was confronted with the beautiful KDE4 plasma desktop. A small glitch: the KDE panel was too small for the screen, but that was easily fixed. The screenshot shows the desktop after I played around with it for a while. I really like it, the plasmoids work smoothly and integrate with the desktop instead of, like screenlets and Google gadgets, which are windows. The design can be easily adapted to your wishes, but the default design is already very good.

The panel takes a bit getting used to when you get here from Gnome. It behaves like a crossing between the Windows taskbar and a Gnome panel. It has a Vista start menu like feature in the lower left corner, the windows list in the middle and the notification tray and clock on the right. When you right click the panel you can configure the height and width, and some other settings. Here also: everything looks nice and smooth.

Then I opened my first window. How can they deliver such a beautiful desktop with such a horrible windows and widget (or style in KDE speak) manager? The windows don’t fit in the slick and smooth plasma desktop at all. They stand out like somebody drew a stick figure on the Nachtwacht. I tried other styles and window decorators, but they never fit within the plasma desktop.

So I started looking for a style that did fit in, kde-looks should provide a solution there, shouldn’t it? Indeed there are some quite good looking styles and decorators there. So I downloaded , but how to get this into KDE? There is no “Get” or “Import” button with the styles and windows. Which is strange since there is one for colors, plasma styles, etc. Google helped: you need to build them! I won’t bother you with the trouble I had getting the QtCurve style to build, but it takes some skill and time. The result was disappointing. It looks like the KDE 4 desktop still needs to update their style and windows rendering since the current one limits designers way too much. Even Gnome offer more (!)

Functional
The desktop feels good, everything responds well and most of the buttons are in logical places. The working and categorization of the KDE menu takes some getting used to, but I guess that’s just time. One thing that does annoy me is that there a so many ways of configuring stuff and there are so many configurations that it hard to find what you need. For example: Konqueror downloads to the Documents folder by default. I don’t like that, I prefer a separate Downloads folder. So I set of to change that. There are a lot of configuration entries in the Konqueror menu, and each display a load of options, but mine wasn’t there.

There more in that direction: how do I switch off the tap-click of my touchpad? I really had to search to switch of the system sounds, and when I found them I had to switch them off for each action one by one. Why does KWallet ask me for my password each time I login? These are not essential things, but they shouldn’t be present in an OS in 2009.

Kubuntu comes with OpenOffice 3 comes pre-installed and works as expected, so do the address book and the organizer. Gimp is not there since it’s very Gnome. Amarok showed some problems, or: it’s not there. That’s an alpha bug, I guess. The pre-installed applications offer sufficient functionality to start working without immediately starting Adept. When you need to install anything, Adept helps you and finishes the installation nicely: I installed Skype and that didn’t give any problems.

What I found surprising is that I couldn’t find Firefox in Adept. Actually I expected it to be pre-installed, but when it wasn’t I expected it to be easily installable. I hope this is an alpha bug because Konqueror is nice, but I can’t live without FIrefox.

Overall the KDE 4.2 and the underlying Kubuntu is working nicely. There are very little bugs and nearly everything runs smooth and with problems. Of course there are things that require some attention: changing the icon set doesn’t work and scrolling is sometimes a bit jumpy. Although these don’t break the usability of the system. It’s stable, fast and modern.

Conclusion
Aside from the usual alpha problems the Kubuntu 9.04 alpha 3 is pretty good. I might even become a KDE fan when they fix the visual problems with the styles and windows. The best feature so far is the speed of the system, it boots faster and feels much more responsive then 8.10. I’m looking forward to the release.

Linux, Opinion, Ubuntu Kubuntu Jaunty Jackalope alpha 3, review

The people from Ubuntu have been working on the release of 9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope, for a while now. a few days ago they released the Alpha 3, which contains the new 2.6.28 linux kernel with ext4 and some performance updates for the graphical drivers. Apparently ext4 saves a lot of time while booting, I’ve read improvements of 30%, which is impressive.

9.04 should have some nice improvements when it’s release. Gnome 2.26 should be in it, and with that the evolution exchange plugin (finally!). For the KDE people there will be KDE 4.2 which offers some cool visual and performance updates.

Here is the release schedule, that gives you something to look forward to:

November 20th, 2008 – Alpha 1 release
December 18th, 2008 – Alpha 2 release
January 15th, 2009 – Alpha 3 release
February 5th, 2009 – Alpha 4 release
February 26th, 2009 – Alpha 5 release
March 12th, 2009 – Alpha 6 release
March 26th, 2009 – Beta release
April 16th, 2009 – Release Candidate
April 23rd, 2009 – Final release

I’m currently downloading the alpha 3 release of Kubuntu. As soon as it’s installed I’ll post a review.

Ubuntu

I’ve downloaded the Windows 7 build 7000 beta with the intention to install it in VirtualBox 2.1. I wonder if it can match Ubuntu’s Performance, usability and feature set.

First the download itself: it took a long time since Microsoft didn’t expect so many people to download the beta… Is that naive or just plain stupid? But after a full night  downloading the iso is in.

1. Installation

I’ve created a VB machine with the Vista settings, I assume that Windows 7 should run on a machine with at least Vista’s settings: I have created a VM with 16Gb disk, 1Gb memory and 128Mb video memory, 3D enabled. Microsoft promised that Windows 7 would be more resource friendly.

It takes ages before Windows 7 has figured out what hardware the machine contains, but the installation itself runs smoothly. It requires 2 restarts, but that normal with Windows. After about 50 minutes I’m on a working desktop. Aero doesn’t work, that was to be expected. The install takes about 7Gb (!)

Installing the VirtualBox Guest Additions also doesn’t work, that’s a bit disappointing. So I ended up manually updating the drivers for the system and the video. Another restart required.

Ubuntu clearly wins here. The Ubuntu installation is easier, more logical and much faster.

2. General performance

It’s slow. I know that will have to do with the VM, but that’s not the only reason. The performance indicators showed that even in the VM my machine should be able to run Windows 7. When I click anything it opens slow, very slow. The Card Deck application took about 50 seconds to open.

I have the feeling that Windows 7, as Vista, depends to much on Aero for the frontend that not being able to run Aero breaks the whole system. Also Windows 7 still starts a lot of services after it has already shown the desktop which causes it to be less responsive in the first minutes. After this is done the system response improves a lot. It’s not as fast as Windows XP in the VM, but it’s much better then Vista.

Memory usage after startup is 300Mb, that’s impressive!

Ubuntu is faster. That’s no surprise.

After playing with the monitor settings I managed to kill the resolution of the monitor, it now displays 800×600. So if you want to play with Windows 7: don’t fool around with the screen resolution!

3. Ease of use and visual niceness

I’m a Gnome and Mac addict, I never liked the Windows and KDE interface approach. The new taskbar which an act like a dock is pretty nice. It takes a lot of screen space though, which is a general problem with the Windows 7 visual design. The icon tray is still there, include the bizarre ‘hide icon when not active’ function.

Explorer (the file manager, not the browser) is very much the same as in Vista. The only difference I could find was that the ‘open folder’ triangles fade out when the pane is inactive. What’s strange is that the Folder Settings dialog is still the same as in windows XP, that dialog is 10 years old…

If I look at the default installation only, so no personalisation then Windows 7 is doing quite good. The Ubuntu default config with the awful orange/brown colors and the Gnome default layout is horrible. Windows 7 looks more clean and the start menu is fast and easy to use.

While configuring Windows 7 more to my liking I was reminded of why I prefer Ubuntu: Windows can’t be configured. You can can choose a predefined setup that matches your needs best, but you can’t tweak it completely. Windows is and stays what it is.

When you play around with Ubuntu it enables you to make it exactly as you want it. This takes time and effort, so not everybody will do that. If you stay with the default config I’d say Windows 7 is actually better then Ubuntu, but if you’re ready to think and do some tweaking Ubuntu is so much better than Windows 7.

On the ease of use I would say Ubuntu and Windows 7 are equal. Ubuntu is more configurable, but most people won’t use that, Windows is familiar and that’s working ok. On the visual level I like Ubuntu better (especially with the Shiki Colors scheme!), but that’s mainly taste. Windows 7 looks good, so I’d call this a draw.

4. Preinstalled features

There is a huge difference in the approach that Windows 7 and Ubuntu take here. Windows 7 is an operating system, with everything that an OS needs: kernel, GUI, utilities, even some end user applications like Notepad and Paint.It’s not a fully operation system after installation; you need to install your productivity tools yourself: mail, word processor, spreadsheet, etc. This makes sense: not everybody wants to use what your supplier offers you.

Ubuntu installs a lot more end user applications, it actually comes fully loaded. After installation you can start working. This is easier, but it also forces you to use the preinstalled tools or to deinstall them and install your own preferences.

When it comes to the preinstalled features Ubuntu is a clear winner. Windows delivers near to nothing when it comes to end user applications.

What Windows does deliver a complete stack of OS features. In that section it is a good competitor of Ubuntu. Please mind that I’m looking at this from the standpoint of the end user, and not a system administrator. Windows 7 even includes a decent command line tool, which supports some more Unix oriented commands like ‘ls’ and ‘cat’. A peculiar decision of Microsoft.

Windows 7 has a complete and understandable set of tools to manage the system. Ubuntu tends to get a bit hard to understand for newbies at some points, although this is improving fast.

Windows 7 has sufficient features to call it a good OS, but Ubuntu delivers a much more complete set of features. Ubuntu is the winner here.

Conclusion

Windows 7 is far better then Vista. It’s faster, looks a little better and takes yet another small step towards the future. But. I’ve downloaded 2.44Gb to be able to install a system that contains only an OS. Nothing more, just a kernel, a GUI and some utilities. It takes 7Gb on your harddisk after installation and it can’t run 3D graphics in a slower machine.

I have mixed feelings here. On the one side Windows 7 is really going somewhere, it’s good. But on the other side Ubuntu is so much better when you tweak it a bit. When Canonical would invest some more time in delivering a more tasty off the shelf install then it would easily defeat windows. But they don’t.

There is no winner in this competition. Windows 7 will be the next most used OS, there is no question about that. Ubuntu is trying to compete, but it will never be able to. In the end Ubuntu is a better OS, which a better GUI, but it should show that much better then it does now.

Ubuntu review, windows7

One of the features I’ve always liked in the Mac is that it hides the mouse pointer when you use the keyboard. That makes it possible to type or read without having the mouse pointer in the way. So I went looking for a solution for Ubuntu. After some googling I found “unclutter”.

Unclutter hides the mouse pointer when you haven’t used the mouse for 5 seconds. Although this is different from the Mac approach, it actually works fine for me. When the pointer is hidden you can type and read and when you move you mouse then the pointer is shown again.

According to the man pages it should be possible to let unclutter hide the pointer when you press (or release) a key, but I couldn’t get that to work.

Installation is easy, it’s in the Ubuntu repos:

sudo apt-get install unclutter

And start it:

unclutter & disown

If you want to start unclutter when you login you can add it to your session:

Open Sessions, click “Add”, type some name (“Unclutter”), command (“unclutter”) and comment (“Hide mouse pointer”) and that’s it.

GUI, Ubuntu mousecursor, unclutter