First Three Weeks with 10.04

I've been running 10.04 as the primary OS on my Samsung NC10 netbook for three weeks and so far have had no issues.  Improvements and changes are subtle for the most part.  Every six months when I move to a newer Ubuntu I am reminded that I need to understand more about the brass tacks of the OS in order to really understand where the improvements are being made.

The boot time and shutdown times are both improved, although improvements in those categories are becoming harder to recognize since 9.10 was fast as well.  10.04 is faster but by a matter of only a few seconds.  I guess keeping up with those stats is a matter of following the increments until it is instant on both actions.  Sooner than later you'll push your power button and be up and running instantly and you'll shut down just as quickly.  Improvements in hardware (like SSD's) and software (like removing a redundant HAL) categories at the same time will speed the course to instantaneous start and shut-down.  Then we'll all have a few more seconds in our life to...?

Changes to Gnome and the GUI are noticeable as well, especially the fact that you are faced with the color purple now instead of earth tones.  With Linux based desktop operating systems though there is so much customization available that really you can only talk about differences in the default settings.   And when you like to start adjusting those immediately defaults don't last long.  Not long ago I learned how to change the splash screen so I'm going to get to work on that now with the Lynx.

Android OS Review

I just bought myself a brand new Android powered phone!

As some of you may already know, Android is an operating system developed for phones by Google and runs a linux kernel. However, it has already been used for other applications such as netbooks.

I just thought I'd give a quick first-impressions review of the operating system after having the phone for a little less then a day.

So far, I have to say, I like it! I could go on and on about its positives so I will allow you to do some research on it if you wish. I will focus mainly on what I did not like. It does lag occasionally; However, its not nearly as bad as my old windows mobile phone in this respect. It probably slots in just under an iPhone as far as peppiness is concerned. This is also largely dependent on the hardware, which, on my phone (a Motorola Backflip), is not exactly the best hardware available. One thing I am surprised is how restrictive it seems to be... I actually have less control over this phone then I did with my windows mobile phone. There is not even an option to turn data on and off! I had to download an app for that (APNdroid for those that are interested). Perhaps as newer versions of the android operating system are released, the amount of adjustable settings will increase. Currently, however, it does not give you much control over its inner workings without the use of risky 3rd party apps.

Overall, I am fairly happy with my decision to get this phone, its positives definitely seem to outweigh its negatives so far.

Open Source Enterprise Publications - Existing

Obviously I wasn't the first to think of how open source operating systems can present value in an enterprise environment. From what I can tell most of the dated literature focuses on open source application development in contrast to open source operating systems in a business environment. I did some queries to see what's already out there and available for free or via the library. I think I might have found some valuable sources. I am going to take a look at these and see what kind of approach these source reflect in terms of effectively using and deploying open source in a business environment. Let me know if you know of any other publications about this topic. The sources below aren't in any particular order:


Iansiti, M., & Richards, G. (2006). The business of free software Enterprise incentives, investment, and motivation in the open source community.[Boston]: Division of Research, Harvard Business School. Retrieved 4/21/10 from http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-028.pdf.


Woods, D., & Guliani, G. (2005). Open source for the enterprise: Managing risks, reaping rewards. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly. Retrieved 4/21/10 from http://bit.ly/aQDsf9.


Gupta, J. N. D., Sharma, S. K., & Rashid, M. A. (2009). Handbook of research on enterprise systems. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.Retrieved 4/21/10 from http://bit.ly/aDNzEI.


St. Amant, K., & Still, B. (2007). Handbook of research on open source software: Technological, economic, and social perspectives. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. Retrieved 4/21/10 from http://bit.ly/cromxE.


Baschab, J., & Piot, J. (2003). The executive's guide to information technology. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved 4/21/10 from http://bit.ly/8X99ih.
Second edition from 2007:
http://bit.ly/boMj8a


Vugt, S. v. (2009). Beginning the Linux command line. Berkeley, Calif: Apress. Retrieved 4/21/10 from http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-1890-6.
On Google Books @ http://bit.ly/aduQTO


Chao, L. (2009). Utilizing open source tools for online teaching and learning Applying Linux technologies. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. Retrieved 4/21/10 from http://bit.ly/b95lkb.

HAL-less 10.04

There's already been some discussion here about how the newest distribution of Ubuntu (10.40 Lucid Lynx, final release scheduled for 4/29/10) was able to remove the HAL to speed up boot time and provide other advantages. I found a breakdown of where the processes where moved to here on the Ubuntu Wiki. This change follows the *.nix philosophy of using many small tools that are good at doing individual jobs and enabling them to pass information easily between present and future applications. I've read that the Ubuntu developers were coming to the realization that HAL was becoming redundant. Here is the link to the page on the Wiki https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Halsectomy

Enterprise Ready Open Source

Being the preferred linux desktop distribution among the linux community, Ubuntu appears to be ready for enterprise level desktop deployment scenarios. Processing efficiency and reliability already give linux server distributions like apache a certain competitive advantage allowing linux to compete with Microsoft in terms of server operating system market share. I still need to find some credible up to date statistics on this, but that should only be a matter of searching the SPC library’s online subscription databases.

My boss, Shri, just came back from Korea from an IEEE conference with a new Samsung netbook and asked me to configure it for him. It had Windows 7 Starter on it and configuring it was just as fun as watching water boil. It wasn’t too bad once I got most of the bloatware off. But I know that the weak, but apparently cute little netbook would run much more effectively if it had some linux distributionon it. Maybe that’s why according to Computer world “Linux's share of netbooks surging, not sagging …”

With Ubuntu being open source and all, let’s not be blind to Cononical Ltd own agenda, which is to compete with commercial distribtuions like SuSe and Red Hat. It goes to show that the bread and butter of companies like Sun Microsystems and Red Hat is made by support contracts as opposed to licensing fees. Despite the advances in compatibility and usability, linux systems still haven’t been very appealing as an effective enterprise desktop solution to many experienced CIO’s. Indeed it does depend on the nature of the company if a linux solution would yield a higher return on investment (ROI) than a Microsoft/Citrix/Vmware solution. These are large companies with vast knowledge bases facilitating IT operations of client organizations. Not to say that the linux community doesn’t have its own vast knowledge base. However, the learning curve for IT staff is higher for linux systems. But with the advances brought forth by Ubuntu, the learning curve is now only marginally higher than for Microsoft. Being the education industry, perhaps we can help the pendulum swing from proprietary to open source IT infrastructure solutions. Cononical Ltd is hoping for the same and is hard at work, coming out with educational initiatives like Ubuntu Certified Professional similar to the Red Hat Certified Engineer. This might be a good time to write and publish about how exactly to use to open source solutions to maximize ROI… for small and mid level businesses first… enterprise later!? Who’s with me?

Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

Running 10.04 in VirtualBox OSE was not showing me the speed benefits of the newest distribution. So I went ahead and upgraded last night ahead of the schedule. I hit Alt+F2 and typed in "update-manager -d" (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager opened up with message: New distribution release '10.04' is available. I clicked on 'upgrade' and followed the instructions from there. The "-d" is critical since the final release is not out yet. "-d" (deprecated) is the switch that will list the distribution upgrade as available prior to its 4/29 final release. Running the new distribution on a Samsung NC10 netbook start up (<30 seconds) and shutdown (~5 seconds) are noticeably faster. Not as fast as if I had a SDD (supposedly <5 seconds) but still faster than the 9.10 distribution in both categories. This is, I've read, due to the fact that they have removed the HAL in this distribution. Although I'm not yet completely clear on what that means. If you know please leave a comment below explaining. During the upgrade there were a few common sense questions to answer such as do you want to keep the locally installed grub config or go with the package managers. Since I also have XP on this machine (haven't touched it in months) I stayed with the local one. During the process Canonical also gives a message that they no longer provide updates for a fairly long list of items, most of which I suspect are related to the fact that they dropped the HAL. Not a problem I would think as long as you have the right software respositories turned on. So I'm off to compute away on 10.04. As I notice important differences, I'll report back.

Are you afraid of Linux? Try Wubi!

If you have heard a lot about Linux and think that you must be a computer scientist to use it, fear no more. Try using Wubi to install an Ubuntu partition so that you can easily have Windows and Ubuntu on one machine. Visit http://wubi-installer.org/ and follow the few simple instructions and you'll be using Linux in no time.

Let us know your experiences in the comment section below. Have fun.