The Tech Journal

Another review of the gOS November 20, 2007

Susan Linton has put up a review of gOS on Linux.com.   She gave it favorable ratings and thinks its one of the better reviews she has used.

While I generally disagreed I do respect Susan and Im glad she had a better experience than I did.

gOS: A lot of Buzz with no Substance November 19, 2007

I had the privilege of buying one of the Everex gOS PC’s from Wal-Mart.com before they sold out. I bought it and had it shipped to one of their stores to where I picked it up. Whats the verdict. Im using the gPC right now to write this review and I loaded it up with PCLOS 2007.

gOS: The beginning

After I got the PC and set the thing up I actually liked the hardware. Its great hardware, very stylish and looks very functional. I booted it up and I saw green. I like green, along with black and purple its my favorite color. I actually liked the gOS for 48 hrs. So what happened? lets cut through the hype and just say if this is the Linux communities hopes to take down Microsoft, go back to the drawing board.

gOS: Functionality

I will give the gOS this. Its extremely fast. It has plenty of horse power and even though the hardware it runs on is low end the software in this case makes all the difference. It runs a modified version of enlightenment. Enlightenment is a very underated and underused window manager in the *nix universe. Enlightenment is one of those technologies that even though it was great was dismissed by the *nix community. DR17 is no exception. When you see the gOS for the first time it looks nifty, great animations similar to what you would see in Mac OS X and in Windows. Plenty of throbbing and bouncing and (man this is starting to sound dirty) and somthing you dont see in Windows and Mac OS a Google search bar on the desktop. GreenOS is the official name and Green could also be used as a descriptor in the case of the gOS. When you hit the mint leaf in the corner (I am assuming its a mint leaf) the system menu pops up. In this menu you have your applications and configuration tools.

gOS: The problems

The problems mainly stem from the fact enlightenment is a developer preview, not even alpha quality yet. DR stands for Developer Release and should be a hint. That standing out there are plenty of Window Manager crashes and inconvenient lockups to make your heart content. The first time I ever opened a directory to have the damn thing crash was with the gOS, when trying to copy files over and have the WM crash was pretty nasty as well.

The main problem is that unlike MEPIS, Freespire and Linspire, the gOS doesnt modify the core OS so its a standard Ubuntu 7.10 kernel and all the hardware incompatibilities and kernel problems you have with Ubuntu are adopted by gOS. To give the developers a little bit of leeway this is a 1.0 release and Im almost positive they will work on the quality of the OS and hopefully whip it into a decent distro. The gOS is a selling point for their gPC and in some ways I think they are trying to establish a fan base similar to Macintosh, Amigans or RiscOS.

gOS: Other machines

I went ahead and downloaded the gOS ISO from their web site and tried it on a couple of other machines. It liked my PowerEdge, a couple of OptiPlexes , my Compaq Evo and even a home built PC. Mobile computing was an entirely different story. On my Dell Inspiron 2500 during the LiveCD session it would boot but go into a Limbo black screen when trying to load the desktop a behavior also present with Ubuntu 7.10 on the same hardware and on my ThinkPad A21m it would go halfway through the live CD boot and just freeze a behavior also inherited from Ubuntu 7.10. On my Vaio AR it worked great as a LiveCD. I didnt hose the HD on my Vaio because its my main laptop so I couldnt tell you about native HD performance from that system.

gOS: The good

Good presentation, great concept and great delivery mechanism. The interface is simplistic and easy to navigate and the learning curve is rather limited. Good effort to build a user base and a fan base. It has OpenOffice, Rhythmbox and Xine installed by default which is a good thing.

gOS: The bad

Using pre-alpha software that is rather buggy, mediocre to non-existant mobile support, using a non LTS release for the base. There is also no clear roadmap where the offering is going and no hardware compatibility list. There is also no native support for 3D using the nvidia drivers. The GPC line would be interesting if they offered a mobile unit. While I like the presentation of Google in this distro I feel there is too much faith in Google.

Conclusion

I see no pushing reasons to use this over a vanilla Ubuntu installation. You can add Enlightenment to an Ubuntu install through the use of repositories. Unlike Freespire/Linspire they do no work to improve upon Ubuntu but rather just give it a paint job, a shiny theme and market gOS as something new.

But. It doesnt mean gOS is not interesting and given that the software HAS to mature and probably couldnt regress its a distribution I will keep my eye on and will possibly install and review again at a later date.

I couldnt give any recommendation to switch to gOS from any Linux distribution at this time.

Score (Rating of 10): 6

Bill Hilf reveals Microsofts Open Source strategy November 17, 2007

It doesnt seem to be around divide and conquer.  They seem to be really paying attention to the issues.  He discusses the partnerships with TurboLinux, Xandros, Linspire and Novell and goes into the discussion of software patents.  A pretty well laid out interview whether you agree with his views or not.

Link to Interview 

Open Source community needs to arm itself November 8, 2007

LinuxWorld wrote an article about the patent landscape and concluded that the OSS community needs to “arm” itself against patent infringement lawsuits.  They have the idea that the OSS community needs to start building its own patent portfolio.

The problem

While the Open Source guys have done a good job of finding prior art and getting patents invalidated, which admittedly over 90% of those cases have ended with the patent being validated again after an appeals process, developing your own patent portfolio for a defense is hard to do.  The open source community will have a harder time because really what do they do or what have they done thats been innovative? or new?  Besides a few things, nothing and what they do have thats patentable is small beans.

Its going to be a hard long road to patent reform and unfortunately the OSS developers will be the ones that will inevitably suffer.

Get the facts about sagging Linux server sales November 4, 2007

Joe Barr over at Linux.com has written an opinion piece on the Linux server sagging sales. He bases his opinions on Peter Galli over at eWeeks article. In his opinion piece Joe bases his “research” on Red Hat and Novell financial revenue reports. The opinion piece is also representative of what happens if you drink too much of the zealot kool-aidIDC and eWeek based their research on system sales.

All Joes opinion piece does is show that you can manipulate numbers to be in your favor if you really wish to do.

Using Red Hat and Novells financial reports is flawed and useless for the context of the original article. What Galli and IDC have reported is a much stronger case. By using Red Hat and Novells reports Linux does look like its on the rise but one thing those reports lack is the fact if these are new licenses or if they also include renewals. Tracking server sales is much more reliable because unlike desktop systems, vendors do offer the choice of what OS to preinstall, whether it is Solaris, Linux or Windows. If a customer buys a system with Windows Server system, they will more then likely use Windows on that server. If they buy a Linux server, they more than likely will use Linux and the same for Solaris. So right now on the official scoreboard Windows is winning on new servers sold.

This however does not mean Linux or even Solaris is lacking. Solaris x86 and Linux are often used on retiring workstations, retiring servers that run a variety of file and print servers, web servers and old PCs that are even being utilized as firewall appliances. What will those users buy when those machines have to be replaced? With the current trend it appears to be Windows.

Linux losing share to Windows Server October 27, 2007

While Linux is a pretty good system for servers Windows Server has definately made some strides.  Windows Server 2003 was an excellent release and Windows Server 2008 seems to be heading in that direction of being phenomenal.   But alas, Linux does seem to be losing some steam according to IDC and other analysts.

Link 

TurboLinux signs with Microsoft October 23, 2007

TurboLinux has the distinction of being the first Asian distribution to sign a deal with Microsoft.

Among the benefits, patent protection, collaboration on interoperability, Live Search, as well as further monetary support.  TurboLinux is probably the oldest distribution to sign with Microsoft among the ones Microsoft signed.

The Microsoft Linux coalition includes, Linspire, Xandros, Novell, LG, TurboLinux

Linspire 6.0: Two steps backwards? Or Hurt feelings? October 20, 2007

Personally I disagree with the author of this piece.

I stick to my guns and will argue my point and the point here is the author is absolutely wrong. When I did my review of Freespire and I said I thought Freespire 2.0 was a better Ubuntu then Ubuntu, I meant it and I still agree with it.

What the authors leave out of that article is the fact that more hardware is supported then with the official Ubuntu release. Im not trying 7.10 because I keep getting frustrated with Ubuntu with every new release. 3D accelleration works with Linspire 6.0, all the common media files play out of box, and it doesnt unexplainably kernel panic and crash. The author brings up Linspire dropping things like LTorrent for KTorrent. What did LTorrent have over KTorrent? Not a thing, its a torrent application for Christs sake. NVU? NVU is dead and not being enhanced anymore, why litter the install CD with out of date code. I personally like that Linspire, Mandriva and PCLinuxOS dont enable 3D desktops by default, it should be users discretion whether to use that feature instead of hunting for an off switch. If you like the Ubuntu approach its not a bad system. Does it have its flaws? Sure but so does every OS on the market.

The main firing point here seems to be the patent deal and its wrong to hose a good piece of software just because of politics. The Microsoft deal could be good, could be bad, its still up in the air. The Microsoft deal with Novell has sprouted moonlight, an OpenXML translator for OpenOffice among many interoperability initiatives. While the patent deal seems to be a sore point I take the good with the bad and will wait to see how things turn out. That statement does not mean I think the patent deal is uneeded or a bad thing.

While I am not a poster boy for the Open Source movement, I dislike the GPLv3 and I disagree with Stallmans “Its GNU/Linux” philosophy. I even wish Theo Da Raadt would grow up. The last I heard was that the Open Source community was a community and that everyone can and should be involved and while Microsoft isnt jumping in head first, what they have contributed has been positive thus far. Should they calm down on the tongue service? Yeah they should, but that neighbor in the non virtual community who hates blacks, jews, puerto ricans, french and Starbucks should also quit blathering about. To the Linux and Open Source developers. If you dont like the idea that just anyone can take your code and profit from it, word of advice. Dont open source it.

In my personal and professional opinion if you want a better Ubuntu experience and still utilize the Ubuntu repositories and want a better Ubuntu then Ubuntu, give Linspire 6 a try. Do not jump on the bandwagon of an author who simply installed the system just to take a screenshot for an article. Give it a try and decide for yourself and dont let politics dictate your computing experience.