With the launch of the on-demand video streaming service Netflix in the UK and the offer of one month's free trial, I decided to give the service a quick test.
More than the selection of programmes and films available on the service though, I was curious to see if instant streaming would work on my Linux computers. In short, it does not.
I tested the service in both Firefox and Chromium, with default and altered user-agents without success. I was mildly optimistic that whilst it wouldn't work straight away, that perhaps by faking the user agent it could be forced to work but unfortunately it was not that simple.
My optimism came about because Netflix should work on a Chromebook (running Google's Linux-based cloud OS Chrome OS). Unfortunately though, it seems from the error page that Google's system has some software specifically to allow it to use the software. Unless this software is available outside of Chrome OS then it seems that general Linux usage is futile.
The only alternative would be to resort solely to streaming using an XBox or Android phone but for me, the latter has a screen size much too small and the former is a hassle to use thanks to the TV only having one HDMI socket which is generally occupied by my Sky box.
So less than 30 minutes after starting my trial, I have canceled my membership. It's no great loss - I watch more than enough TV via Sky - but I think it's a shame that a service which obviously technically can run on a Linux system (proven as it's on Chrome OS) is not widely available for any Linux system.
Yesterday's setup of Linux Mint 12 KDE Edition went very smoothly.
From running the system via a live USB boot disk through to complete installation; the problems were few and the impression has been largely positive particularly in comparison to the Gnome 3 edition of Mint 12. It has been so much better in fact, that the boot of the system via the USB stick was significantly faster than the boot of the old installed OS. I think that says a lot about the speed of the Gnome system.
I was particularly pleased to discover that dual screen support exists without issue and without needing proprietary drivers from NVidia. Little features like independent wallpapers for each screen are a nice touch. I'm also quite the fan of KDE's widgets system. To the best of my knowledge there is no equivalent in Gnome and if there is, it wasn't as obvious as here where a right-click on a panel or desktop is enough to reveal their presence.
So far - and it has been less than 24 hours since the installation, so it's hardly a thorough test - I've had no major issues on my desktop machine. The only very minor niggle is the appearance of Firefox which visually, doesn't sit as well in KDE as it does in Gnome. It really is a minor issue though and doesn't affect the usability of the browser. If it really starts to bother me, I can always use Chromium as an alternative.
Following such a success, I decided the netbook should also be upgraded. I like to run the same systems where possible just for consistency so I downloaded the 32 bit version and went through the same process of installing via USB.
This was more tricky. At the moment, I'm not a particular fan of netbook versions of traditional interfaces. I didn't like Unity and I don't like Plasma-netbook that KDE used by default on my machine. Not being particularly familiar with KDE, I had to research how to revert to the traditional interface which took some time and some clicks but I got there.
Oddly I've also experienced a few crashes, one of which resulted in a Kernel Panic requiring a battery pull to resolve. That was during my configuring phase though and now I've settled down on that front, I'm hoping it'll be fine.
Assuming the desktop machine remains stable, I think I'll be keeping this for a while. My last experience of KDE was right after the launch of version 4 and I remember being less than impressed. Now is a different story. It's come on a long way.
For the netbook, if it doesn't seem stable enough then I'll have to investigate other options. One of which is a minimal Linux OS designed purely around using the internet. I can't recall it's name but it only takes something like 100MB and considering the netbook is mainly for internet use, it could be fun to try.
From running the system via a live USB boot disk through to complete installation; the problems were few and the impression has been largely positive particularly in comparison to the Gnome 3 edition of Mint 12. It has been so much better in fact, that the boot of the system via the USB stick was significantly faster than the boot of the old installed OS. I think that says a lot about the speed of the Gnome system.
I was particularly pleased to discover that dual screen support exists without issue and without needing proprietary drivers from NVidia. Little features like independent wallpapers for each screen are a nice touch. I'm also quite the fan of KDE's widgets system. To the best of my knowledge there is no equivalent in Gnome and if there is, it wasn't as obvious as here where a right-click on a panel or desktop is enough to reveal their presence.
So far - and it has been less than 24 hours since the installation, so it's hardly a thorough test - I've had no major issues on my desktop machine. The only very minor niggle is the appearance of Firefox which visually, doesn't sit as well in KDE as it does in Gnome. It really is a minor issue though and doesn't affect the usability of the browser. If it really starts to bother me, I can always use Chromium as an alternative.
Following such a success, I decided the netbook should also be upgraded. I like to run the same systems where possible just for consistency so I downloaded the 32 bit version and went through the same process of installing via USB.
This was more tricky. At the moment, I'm not a particular fan of netbook versions of traditional interfaces. I didn't like Unity and I don't like Plasma-netbook that KDE used by default on my machine. Not being particularly familiar with KDE, I had to research how to revert to the traditional interface which took some time and some clicks but I got there.
Oddly I've also experienced a few crashes, one of which resulted in a Kernel Panic requiring a battery pull to resolve. That was during my configuring phase though and now I've settled down on that front, I'm hoping it'll be fine.
Assuming the desktop machine remains stable, I think I'll be keeping this for a while. My last experience of KDE was right after the launch of version 4 and I remember being less than impressed. Now is a different story. It's come on a long way.
For the netbook, if it doesn't seem stable enough then I'll have to investigate other options. One of which is a minimal Linux OS designed purely around using the internet. I can't recall it's name but it only takes something like 100MB and considering the netbook is mainly for internet use, it could be fun to try.
A few months back, the latest release of the popular Linux distro Mint was released. Since then, I've been running it on my two machines - a 64 bit desktop and a 32 bit netbook.
Linux Mint 12 was a significant release as it was the first time that the distribution adopted Gnome 3 as it's GUI. This latest version of the interface has itself been controversial because of its significant departure from the its traditional experience.
Mint's release did a reasonably good job of trying to tame the new beast by incorporating theming and extensions in an attempt to try and retain some familiarity but I don't think it's quite worked yet. The repositioning of the taskbar, duplication of functionality (with Gnome's launcher and the Mint Menu) and the noticably slower performance have left me with a poor impression. Not of Mint necessarily - moving on from Gnome 2.x was a necessity - but of what Gnome 3 is at the moment.
Since installing the new system, I've experienced a number of bugs and annoyances from a slow boot, laggy Gnome Shell, GEdit lockups, full system crashes and difficulty with shutdowns and restarts. For this reason, I'm now downloading the release candidate for the KDE edition of Mint 12.
I've used Gnome since I adopted Linux back in 2007 and although have briefly played with KDE; I've never settled down with it always preferring the simple interface of Gnome 2. Now though, I wonder if things will be different. KDE 4 is well developed compared to the recent release of its rival. Perhaps I'll find it a better option. If not though, my third option is to try the Debian edition of Mint - or something else altogether!
Linux Mint 12 was a significant release as it was the first time that the distribution adopted Gnome 3 as it's GUI. This latest version of the interface has itself been controversial because of its significant departure from the its traditional experience.
Mint's release did a reasonably good job of trying to tame the new beast by incorporating theming and extensions in an attempt to try and retain some familiarity but I don't think it's quite worked yet. The repositioning of the taskbar, duplication of functionality (with Gnome's launcher and the Mint Menu) and the noticably slower performance have left me with a poor impression. Not of Mint necessarily - moving on from Gnome 2.x was a necessity - but of what Gnome 3 is at the moment.
Since installing the new system, I've experienced a number of bugs and annoyances from a slow boot, laggy Gnome Shell, GEdit lockups, full system crashes and difficulty with shutdowns and restarts. For this reason, I'm now downloading the release candidate for the KDE edition of Mint 12.
I've used Gnome since I adopted Linux back in 2007 and although have briefly played with KDE; I've never settled down with it always preferring the simple interface of Gnome 2. Now though, I wonder if things will be different. KDE 4 is well developed compared to the recent release of its rival. Perhaps I'll find it a better option. If not though, my third option is to try the Debian edition of Mint - or something else altogether!
Following some minor but annoying failures and the poor performance of its ageing CPU, last weekend I upgraded my server from a single core 2.4GHz Celeron (circa 2007) with 623MB of RAM to a dual-core Celeron E3600 2.6GHz CPU with 2GB of DDR3 RAM.
The old server had done well, having been run continuously for over four years, initially as a general machine and then pushed into service as a server following the failure of its predecessor, but its age was showing. I'd been running the storage drive via an external USB2 caddy for some time due to the failure of the internal SATA controller and that would lose connection from time-to-time. Most inconvenient since you could almost guarantee it would happen when I was away for a few days.
I also wanted to run services in virtual machines, but on attempting to run just a single VirtualBox machine proved too much for it. That was the final straw, prompting me to purchase a bare minimum of components to conduct the upgrade whilst keeping costs to a minimum.
To that end, I bought a new motherboard and the aforementioned CPU and RAM. Everything else has been kept, including the case; power supply; optical drives and disk drives. The cost of the upgrade came in at a little over £80. I was pleased.
So now the upgrade is complete, this site is hosted on a virtual machine. That means it is easy for me to experiment with other servers on other virtual machines without affecting the website. I've already been playing with DNS and DHCP servers and I expect I'll revisit mail servers and possibly VPN at some point too!
As an aside, it turns out that the upgrade could not have come at a better time. My general PC, used for day-to-day computing, decided to fail a few days ago so I established a virtual machine on the server running Linux Mint to tide me over until I could open it up. Removing the CMOS battery for 5 minutes got it going again and I've also replaced the PSU from another failed machine to hopefully resolve some intermittent power problems.
It's been a busy week for tinkering!
Server Specifications
CPU: Intel Celeron E3400 2.6GHz
Motherboard: Asus P5G41T-M LX G41
RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR3 1066MHz
Storage HDD: Western Digital WD20EARS Caviar Green 2TB
Web Server Specifications
Software: VirtualBox
RAM: 768MB
Video: 1MB
OS: Ubuntu Server 10.04LTS
I'm sick and tired of hearing about "The Cloud".
This latest buzzword is creeping in everywhere, from the technology and computer press; to consumer TV adverts; to workplaces. The Cloud is everywhere and I'm concerned the less technologically inclined will lap it up.
The term means nothing less than services hosted on the internet and without thinking about it, one might believe it to be the latest and greatest technology yet enabled by our ever increasing broadband speeds. In truth, only half of that statement is correct. Broadband speeds are bringing ever more complex services to our computers but none-the-less, services have existed for over a decade. For example, an often touted illustration of a Cloud service is email in the browser. Of course, little mention is made that such services have existed and been in extremely common use for over a decade. Online document processing has existed for over 5 years - this is nothing new.
The thing is; The Cloud implies something simple, pleasant and friendly. Nobody would argue against little fluffy clouds in the sky, and this is the image that comes to mind, for many ... possibly. Actually, not my mind. Me, I see The Cloud as a grey, heavy storm cloud ready to rain down on the unprepared. You see, I actually see The Cloud as something rather dangerous.
Technology companies (Google, Amazon et al) would have it that many of our day-to-day activities are carried out online. Want to write a document, edit a picture or video, listen to music, read a book; well don't use big expensive software installed to a powerful computer with terabytes of storage space. No. Just turn to The Cloud. Open up your sleek web browser on your cheap laptop and let the Company servers take the strain. Let them do the processing and then store your files ready to be accessed anywhere with a connection. How wonderful. How simple.
Here's the problem. The company has your data. You don't. The positive theory is that the data is safe. Backups are not your concern. Should anything happen to your computer, it's okay. The data is safe.
Is it really though? Yes, the popular companies are behemoths, but they can fold. If they disappear, what happens to your data. Does it disappear too? Will you get any warning?
With all that data on the company's servers, it's a target for hackers - perhaps more so than your little individual machine. If the server is hacked, is your data going out the door?
Other problems can occur too, does the company have an offline solution in case your internet connection goes down? What happens when something goes wrong at the company? Recently, Google temporarily lost the emails stored in it's GMail user accounts. What sort of impact could that have had on it's users - what if it happens to files stored in Google Docs?
I think there are a lot of unanswered questions, and I think that there are a lot of people NOT asking them. The internet is wonderful in it's way, but I cannot see it replacing my powerful computer system. I like to control my data. I want to make the decision over how it's stored and backed up. When I delete a file, I want to know it's gone. Storage is cheap, as is processing power. For what many people use their machines for (basic internet, simple word processing), I don't see the need for remote processing.
Don't get me wrong, there are services I like and use. I upload pictures daily to Flickr; videos occasionally to YouTube and use DropBox for offsite backup and syncronisation. But these are select files for select purposes. I would never put every photo on Flickr and use it as my primary photo storage medium. If Flickr (or any other service I use) disappeared tonight, I would lose nothing.
Unfortunately it's far to easy for the non-technical to get sucked into these marketing buzzwords and think they're great. I think everyone needs to take another look.
This latest buzzword is creeping in everywhere, from the technology and computer press; to consumer TV adverts; to workplaces. The Cloud is everywhere and I'm concerned the less technologically inclined will lap it up.
The term means nothing less than services hosted on the internet and without thinking about it, one might believe it to be the latest and greatest technology yet enabled by our ever increasing broadband speeds. In truth, only half of that statement is correct. Broadband speeds are bringing ever more complex services to our computers but none-the-less, services have existed for over a decade. For example, an often touted illustration of a Cloud service is email in the browser. Of course, little mention is made that such services have existed and been in extremely common use for over a decade. Online document processing has existed for over 5 years - this is nothing new.
The thing is; The Cloud implies something simple, pleasant and friendly. Nobody would argue against little fluffy clouds in the sky, and this is the image that comes to mind, for many ... possibly. Actually, not my mind. Me, I see The Cloud as a grey, heavy storm cloud ready to rain down on the unprepared. You see, I actually see The Cloud as something rather dangerous.
Technology companies (Google, Amazon et al) would have it that many of our day-to-day activities are carried out online. Want to write a document, edit a picture or video, listen to music, read a book; well don't use big expensive software installed to a powerful computer with terabytes of storage space. No. Just turn to The Cloud. Open up your sleek web browser on your cheap laptop and let the Company servers take the strain. Let them do the processing and then store your files ready to be accessed anywhere with a connection. How wonderful. How simple.
Here's the problem. The company has your data. You don't. The positive theory is that the data is safe. Backups are not your concern. Should anything happen to your computer, it's okay. The data is safe.
Is it really though? Yes, the popular companies are behemoths, but they can fold. If they disappear, what happens to your data. Does it disappear too? Will you get any warning?
With all that data on the company's servers, it's a target for hackers - perhaps more so than your little individual machine. If the server is hacked, is your data going out the door?
Other problems can occur too, does the company have an offline solution in case your internet connection goes down? What happens when something goes wrong at the company? Recently, Google temporarily lost the emails stored in it's GMail user accounts. What sort of impact could that have had on it's users - what if it happens to files stored in Google Docs?
I think there are a lot of unanswered questions, and I think that there are a lot of people NOT asking them. The internet is wonderful in it's way, but I cannot see it replacing my powerful computer system. I like to control my data. I want to make the decision over how it's stored and backed up. When I delete a file, I want to know it's gone. Storage is cheap, as is processing power. For what many people use their machines for (basic internet, simple word processing), I don't see the need for remote processing.
Don't get me wrong, there are services I like and use. I upload pictures daily to Flickr; videos occasionally to YouTube and use DropBox for offsite backup and syncronisation. But these are select files for select purposes. I would never put every photo on Flickr and use it as my primary photo storage medium. If Flickr (or any other service I use) disappeared tonight, I would lose nothing.
Unfortunately it's far to easy for the non-technical to get sucked into these marketing buzzwords and think they're great. I think everyone needs to take another look.