Ubuntu 9.04 Beta Impressions: Jaunty is looking good

Sathya | April 6th, 2009 - 4:12 am


It’s been a while since I last used Ubuntu – I have generally shunned away from Ubuntu since Fiesty – for the main reason that I’m more of KDE guy, I never really liked Gnome, and my experience with Fiesty was rather unsavoury. You might say ‘hey you want KDE try Kubuntu’ -  Kubuntu – well I won’t get started on that. I’ve been using Sabayon and was pretty darn impressed with that. With Jaunty being due for release soon, I decided to check Jaunty, even more so after Manish kept raving about Jaunty’s performance.

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Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex Review

Bharath | November 27th, 2008 - 4:41 am


I was very curious about Intrepid’s release. I just could not wait! I even pre-ordered the CD but downloaded the DVD without patience. I have not-so-fast a connection when it comes to downloading a DVD. In spite of it, I just downloaded. I even allocated HD and swap space for that and was just waiting to install it.

And what horrors!

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[How-To]Send SMS from your Linux computer via your Mobile Phone

Sathya | October 18th, 2008 - 12:52 pm

While exploring Fedora 10 Beta, I found this neat little app called Phone Manager.

The about page of PhoneManager states

Phone Manager is a program created to allow you to control aspects of your mobile phone from your GNOME 2 desktop..

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Google Chrome – Impressions, Links And Running it in Linux using Wine

Sathya | September 5th, 2008 - 1:37 am

Much like most of Google’s projects Google Chrome was launched all of a sudden yesterday. Though it was “discovered” rather “accidentally” by one a Google insider hitting the send button containing the comic-book type images of Google Chrome’s workings(excuse me, a Google guy hitting the “Send” button accidentally? Yeah,right! (Santosh agrees with me too on this one). And the hype was unprecedented. Once the hype died down and everyone got to try – the impressions were rather more or less universal, mainly being

 

  • Its frikking fast
  • Its too basic
  • Chrome aims IE userbase rather than Firefox
  • Unless addons are brought in, most Firefox users would not switch to Chrome.
  Google Chrome is basically the best of Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Safari and Internet Explorer all rolled into 1. You have the benefit of rendering engine – WebKit which powers Safari and Konqueror(since Webkit is a fork of KHTML which powers Konqueror), you have the equivalent of Internet Explorer’s InPrivate mode, Opera’s speed dial-like homepage, and Firefox’s addon capability(though not there at the moment).
Now what’s my take ?
Well for one, the homepage is similar yet different from Opera’s speed dial. Unlike Opera’s Speed  Dial which requires you to manually set the web pages, Chrome does so automatically based on which pages you most frequently visit –  One step better than Mozilla Firefox’s Most visited button.

Homepage

You can also search through your history pages, or open your recently closed tab pages right from the home page(Incidentally, it also shares Firefox’s shortcut for Reopening the recently closed tab – just hit Ctrl + Shift + T) and bingo!

I did like the UI – its plain, simple, and free from clutter – gives me maximum space for my web viewing purposes. Just have a look at the pic below – no irritation menu bars or huge buttons (thought the omission of stop button is unforgivable).

Chrome - Full

 

I also like the way the just 2 buttons which are placed next to address bar – these 2 allow you to configure most of Chrome’s options, and have links for openings new tabs, new windows, and the Incognito mode – which, like IE’s InPrivate mode, doesn’t store history, cookies etc of the sites visited under this mode.
Then there are also some neat touches that I like 
  • Re-sizable text boxes. – Unlike most browsers, Chrome gives you an option to resize the text boxes – perfect if you want to type some especially long sentences – say an address probably, but the default width provided was too less. Just hold and drag the handle the edge of the text box and resize
  • Popup status bar at the bottom – Again, unlike most browsers, you don’t have a fixed size status bar, eating away real estate. The status bar pops unintrusively while the page loads and then disappears. It again pops up while hovering over a link – real smooth!
  • Chrome is frikking fast – whether on pages which heavily use JavaScript or not – I suspect its because, like Opera, the WebKit rendering engine grabs and displays text first, images later – this is especially obvious if you’re using a slow connection like I am
  • Chrome seems to be localized to specific countries – For example in the Manage search engine page, Chrome offers me, in the list Choices of MSN India, Guruji, Yahoo! India and Rediff

Search Engines

  • The whole moving tab-thingy is neat! You can detach a tab from a window, and it becomes a separate window! Similarly, moving a lone window to an existing Chrome window attaches it as a tab!

Tabs Tabs detached

 

  • Chrome comes with its own task manager! You can kill any tab, or plugin. And as its been mentioned, every tab is a new process and hence even if 1 tab freezes, it doesn’t take down the entire browser – though Chrome hasn’t crashed at all for me.
Google Chrome is still in beta(the version number is 0.2.149.27) and it shows – there are several drawbacks:
  • One of the MOST CRITICAL drawback, atleast for me is the lack of RSS support – RSS is the killer, I use Firefox’s Live Bookmarks extensively, and can’t live without it. Is this Google’s way of telling we won’t give you an RSS reader, use Google Reader if you want ? Though I _do_ use Google Reader extensively, I would also prefer something like live bookmarks
  • No Addons/extensions as now, but hey, it’s still early days
  • Some pages don’t work with Chrome yet, most notably Google Analytics and Lively!
  • The save/retrieve password is bit of a miss – it suggests passwords based on domains only, and not on sub-domain, page basis
  • It may not consume memory but it _does_ eat up a LOT of CPU.

Task Manager

 

  • The options page is still simplistic, and looks like a direct rip from Firefox. And it uses IE’s proxy settings! Clcik on proxy, and it loads up the Internet settings used by IE – pushed out a little too fast?
  • And hey, WTF is it with that shitty 475kb Bootstrapper thingy huh ? 
All in all, Google Chrome has got a nice start – I will definitely be using both Chrome and Firefox – lets see what the Big G has in store for the future.
Here are some links 

 

[Review] Dream Linux – A nightmare for Linux novices

Aditya | July 7th, 2008 - 7:39 pm

Admin’s Note: This is a guest post by Aditya. Though this post was drafted on 1st July, my work commitments and rather bad memory prevented this post being published. Due apologies.
I know that a title is a bit harsh but I am afraid it is true.
First lets get into some technical stuff.
Dream Linux is a Debian based distro(like Ubuntu) . It has both Xfce and Gnome interface. I’m reviewing the Gnome version.

The Installation

The first screen you get after booting into the CD ask you to choose the interface(Gnome or Xfce)
It also has memtest for testing memory but the CD cant be checked for defects, which is a very important feature, since the disk has to be free of defects as it is an operating system.
I choose the Gnome interface and booted. Here’s where I faced my first nightmare. The whole thing is pretty slow. Even after booting completely. I do know that a live CD is slow as it is limited by the optical drive but this was way slower than other live C.D’s.

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Presenting openSUSE 11.0

Sathya | June 20th, 2008 - 12:44 am

After a long, long wait for SUSE maniacs like me, its finally here: Presenting the latest version of openSUSE, openSUSE 11.0

The new version features a slick shiny new installer, updated KDE 4.0.4, GNOME 2.22, Kernel version 2.6.25. If you’re still hesitant to jump to KDE4.0, you can use KDE 3.5.9 which comes with the DVD edition. And if you’re on a low-end spec PC, then just install XFCE!

On the applications front, openSUSE 11 features Firefox 3 Beta 5 which gets auto-updated to Firefox 3.0 via online updates. Also featured is Banshee 1.0, which has been re-written to improve performance and includes many new features, like video playback, better “shuffle” playback, support for iPods, MTP devices, and mass storage player devices, and support for podcasts and better Last.fm integration.

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Dell Inspiron 1520 Review

Sathya | December 2nd, 2007 - 3:15 pm

Laptop Review:

As few might be knowing I’ve purchased a Dell Inspiron 1520. Here’s a short review on it.

Laptop Specifications:

  • Processor: Intel Core2Duo T5250 @ 1.5 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache
  • Main memory: 2x1GB DDR2 667 MHz Dual Channel mode
  • HDD: Fujitsu MHW2160BH 160GB SATA
  • DVD-RW: TSSTcorp DVD+/-RW TS-L632H 8X
  • Sound Card: Intel HDA ICH8(82801)
  • Graphics Card: nvidia 8600m GT with 256MB RAM
  • NIC: BroadCom BCM4401 100
  • WiFi: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
  • Bluetooth: BroadCom BCM2045
  • System Chipset: Intel GM965
  • Expansion & Misc ports: 4xUSB, 1xIEEE1394, 1xRJ-45, 1xRJ-11, 1xVGA Out, 2xExpressCard 54, 1xHeadphone out, 1xMicrophone In, 1xMedia Card reader(SD/MMC/MS Pro).

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