I had been looking at the tablet market for quite some time now. Of course the iPad(2) is still the most known and popular out there, but now that Google has released their tablet-optimized Android version I felt that the time was right to plunge myself into this territory. I know that there had been quite some devices around before the Honeycomb era, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab or the Archos tablets. However, in my opinion, either the overall experience or the moderate hardware specifications of these devices left much to be desired.

This is where the Xoom comes in. This device sports a Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, doing its work on 1 Ghz. It has a 10.1 inch capacitive screen, a 5MP camera on the back and a 2 MP camera on the front. Running Android 3.0, which was partly developed on this tablet, giving you a really nice and polished experience when using it. Unlike Apple’s iOS, Honeycomb has support for Flash, which in my opinion alone is a huge advantage. Let’s face it, Flash isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and it is still the dominant technology for a lot of the interactive content you can find on the Web.

At the time of writing there aren’t that many Honeycomb optimized applications out there yet, but you can slowly see more and more appear in the Android Market. It’s true that some of the more popular apps don’t really scale well to tablet resolutions, which is especially true for games, but that doesn’t necessarily need to be a deal-breaker, since it’s only a matter of time before these apps get updated. Operating System wise I think Google did a great job here. Of course their own applications work like a charm and I’m definitely impressed with their Books application.

It speaks for itself that one of the primary functions of this device is reading. It’s a shame however that available titles on Google Books are a bit on the low side, at least here in Europe, but you do have the option to install both Amazon’s Kindle and B&N’s reader apps which work well. Alternatively you can also install one of the many PDF readers. My favorite is EZ PDF reader, which does require a small contribution, but I think it’s worth it. Addionally, checking out your news feeds is really a pleasure with the excellent Pulse news reader app. You might already be using this on your phone, but believe me, experiencing this on a tablet is a world of difference.

Another popular use for tablets, at least if you can believe the latest stats on this, is gaming. While I’m not that much of a gamer myself, it’s true that these type of devices open a whole new market. The way you play games is more akin to playing on a console than on a PC, but I actually believe it will become a subset of its own. Performance wise the Xoom tablet works really well, thanks to the Tegra processing power under the hood. 3D graphics are fluent, look great and there’s no stuttering whatsoever. If you’re into gaming, this definitely is something to consider, especially since I believe that with the plethora of Android & Tegra devices coming out we’ll be able to get some awesome looking games on these devices.

What I also like very much about the Motorola tablet is the fact that it is open. With this I mean that it is relatively simple to unlock and root the device. While many mainstream users don’t have an immediate use for a feature like this, I believe it is something that can be important if you value getting updates in the future. Let’s face it, most hardware vendors aren’t very keen on releasing new iterations of Android for their devices in a timely manner. This is of course not without reason. Porting their respective UI shells to new versions is most likely a challenging, time and resource consuming task. That is why I personally prefer the ‘vanilla’ Android devices. Buying one of these gives you a bit more certainty that updates will roll out faster. And even if the vendor abandons the device, you can always count on the many community developers creating ROMs for your tablet with the latest and greatest goodies. When getting a device which is easily rooted, you only increase your chances of finding community updates later on.

Honeycomb in general is looking good. You can tell that Google has put in a lot of effort getting their mobile OS ready for the tablet era. The general experience is smooth and enjoyable but there still are some quirks to work out. When you put the system to the test by running multiple applications at the same time, it can become a little bit laggy. Nothing to worry about, I’m just talking about a slight delay in response time when switching screens for example. It’s probably one of those things that’s coming from the fact that Android is a true multi-tasking platform and will get better as development progresses. Some applications have crashed on me, but only the ones that aren’t optimized for Honeycomb. The main operating system hasn’t failed me yet and I’m pretty confident it won’t either.

Of course it’s not all perfect. I’m sure there’s always some room for improvement, but my biggest annoyances are basically the fact that the Xoom is a bit on the heavy side, nearing 800 grams and the fact that in some cases you need to install multiple applications that basically perform the same task, but offer different content. Weight wise, this will surely get better over time and most Android tablet builders have some catching up to do with Apple on this front, but keep in mind that this is only the truly first generation of Android tablets to hit the market. On the application front I think the problem is a tad more complicated. I’m mainly referencing to the e-books apps here, but also the fact that you now have multiple application stores. Both suffer from the same issue: different applications and stores may offer both identical and unique content. This makes finding what you’re looking for difficult. Prices often vary (although for most items the difference is negligible) which can become quite confusing, especially when it’s not clear what the immediate advantage over a competitor is. This is a problem that I don’t really see being solved any time soon. These companies are trying to make money after all and if the company believes that they can get a fair market share on their own, I don’t think they’ll see any incentive for consolidation. On the other hand you might argue that it does increase competition which in many cases can be good for consumers. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see. As always, time will tell.

My conclusion is that tablets are definitely on the rise. It might be a bit soon for Joe Plumber to jump on the wagon, but if you’re an early adopter or just love technology I’m sure you would not regret investing in a tablet. What device you choose in the end depends on your needs and preferences. All I can is say, give Android a chance, I’m pretty sure you won’t be disappointed. I’m not pretending to give an objective opinion here. My personal preference is and will probably always be with Android. I do believe that it has a very good chance on becoming the dominant platform and therefore a relatively safe bet. Concerning the Xoom, I’m sure it’s not for everyone. It does have its weaknesses, but offers plenty of other things to make up for them. It remains a pricey item for sure, but thanks to the openness of Android we’ll soon be seeing less expensive alternatives.

1st place:

2nd place (my favorite):

3rd place (also better than the winner imho :p):

Congratulations to these authors!

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Extra (this movie was included in the 5 finalists, but unfortunately didn’t make it):

to download the ogg-versions of these movies, click here!

The CodeWeavers people have already put in great support for DirectX 9 in their latest version for gaming, and it seems they are planning to also include version 10. Other things include support for .Net & GDIPlus. All this should be included in their latest release, version 7.2. For the expected 8.0, they plan on revamping the Linux UI, but also the Mac version is going to get some new goodies. Further on, better support for IE7, Office and much more applications is to be expected.

While I haven’t used any of their products myself lately, I must say I’m quite impressed by their efforts. Since I use Wine myself on an almost daily basis, I can vouch for the fact that the program has definitely reached a mature state. However when using the ‘vanilla Wine’, be prepared for a lot of tweaking. This is where CodeWeavers jumps in. They have been able to provide all this tweaking for you, giving you a working product out-of-the-box.

I’m usually not so enthousiastic about commercial spin-offs of Open Source products, but this one really is worth it’s money. If you’re not willing to spend time on tweaking & troubleshooting Wine issues, or would like professional support when stumbling upon a problem, then consider this product, I’m sure you’ll love it!

According to its developers, Samba 4 is about to change all this. While it is true that there is still a long way to go, some nice things are to be expected. As previous versions required tedious configuration skills and reading through tons of manuals, version 4 should “just work”.  The DNS scheme is now being generated automatically, and the OpenLDAP back-end, if required, is being configured by Samba itself. Scripting has vastly improved, as now Python is being used as the default scripting language, however there are still bindings for other tools as well.

All good news, but there are of course a couple of disadvantages. For example, there is no real administration interface. In the past, Samba used to have a web-interface, but due to lack of support this has been removed. The door has of course been left open for the community to develop this, so I think we will see quite a few of these interfaces pop up soon enough. Another downside is that authentication for Unix clients and the print server, compared to Samba 3,  are not yet implemented. In it’s current state this would mean you’d have to run the two versions side by side.  Luckily, there seem to be plans to re-instate these features as soon as possible.

Of course there is still a lot of work to do. One of the things mentioned are domain trusts not yet implemented. This is still a bit of a set-back. However the fact that the Samba-team is working closely together with Microsoft is proving to be successful. Unfortunately, Samba 4 is not yet released to the public, but an alpha release is due soon. So for all you early-adopters out there, just a little more patience .

It seems that this writer does not really have that much in-depth knowledge about what is going on in the FOSS world, and how this community works. This is also being reflected in the comments on the article. It looks like this person has fired up one or a couple of popular distributions for a limited amount of time, but didn’t really like what he saw, writing this twisted article as a consequence.

However it is true that Linux, or any Unix for that matter, still has quite the long way to go. While some in the Unix-family surely are more mature than others, especially when you take a look at proprietary Unices, I hardly agree with what was written.

A lot of the article, in multiple of it’s points, is in essence about the fact that things are so de-centralized. Well what do you want? We are talking about Open-Source here. Most of the work is done by volunteer-programmers that devote their free time to all these projects. There is no central leadership and while some of the bigger projects have showed that they do posses quite good management, most of them are just people having fun.

The first point discussed is the different types of package management. True there is not really a standard, although the RPM-format is already widely accepted, as is the DEB one. In fact, these two alone are probably the most used in Linux-land, and there do exist tools to convert one to the other without much hassle.

Second up is the de-centralisation and text-based configuration files. With the first part I totally disagree. Apart from some exotic software here and there, all of the config-files are stored in the /etc folder. The fact that it’s using text-based files actually poses an advantage to me. It’s easier to backup, and you don’t have to spend endless amounts of time browsing through one big configuration database. I know other OS-es do it differently, but if you like that method, then use that OS!

Point three is up. The author is discussing the problems with the kernel Application Binary Interfaces. Big words, and although I’m no expert on this one myself, I don’t really see the problem here. While it’s true that ABI’s are in charge of interfacing between the kernel and applications, these days most applications use higher-level libraries. So unless you are using a lot of proprietary drivers or so, this really is not such a big deal…

Up next is Native File Versioning. Basically, this is functionality that allows you to restore a certain file or folder to a previous version. The author seems to be used to this from his Windows experience, but being a Microsoft connaisseur myself, this really doesn’t work that well anyway. Admitted in some cases it can be handy, but I haven’t used or needed this even once in the many years I’ve been using computers. If you’re smart and you’re going to edit critical files, for god’s sake, make a backup of the file before you start…

On the next two points in the article the writer discusses the Graphical User Interface and X11 integration of applications. I’m going to vent my comment on these two together, as in my opinion they are quite linked together. One of the things I’d like to say about this is that the proposed features by the author really don’t seem to add any value to me. Integrating the GUI more with the kernel only provides semi-lock-in scenarios which should be avoided as much as possible. The GUI’s are already having a lot of standards, more than enough it seems to me. Secondly the article discusses the problematic behaviour that when your X crashes, all applications running under X crash as well. When reading this I was kinda speechless. I mean, isn’t that kind of logic. Is restarting X so difficult? No! Even the author admits that… Actually, the times current X sessions crash isn’t that often anymore anyway, so why even bother on this one? I’m sure over time more and more stability will become available.

Last but not least is the ‘lack of’ commercial backup utilities. Again I totally disagree on this one. All the big players on the backup market already provide full support for almost any Unix/Linux flavor. In fact, most of these things actually work better in Linux, at least in my experience. For end-users the options might be a bit more limited, but if you look around a bit harder, you would find plenty of options, and if you insist on using something ‘Windows-only’, you can always try to run it in Wine, emulating the Windows environment.

Conclusion, this article really dropped the ball on this one. I really am not the type to start writing huge comments on other people’s articles normally, but this one made me feel I should make an exception, and so I did.

This is very good news indeed, as it will enable Linux users to run Silverlight websites natively. Since the development is sponsored by Novell, and they have a partnership with Microsoft, they were even able to throw in the official Microsoft codecs, meaning even more compatibility.

While I’m personally a bit sceptic about this Novell/M$ marriage, in this case it’s clearly proving to be a good step. Who would have thought not so long ago that Linux users would ever get free software with official Microsoft licensed codecs in it? Right, nobody .

I think a lot of Linux people are eargerly waiting for this one. Microsoft themselves promised some time ago a plugin for Silverlight on Linux, but so far I haven’t seen one bit of that promise. And since they are able to provide one for Mac OS X, I find it quite strange that they leave the Linux community out in the cold. Maybe I’m wrong on this one as I haven’t really followed up on it so well, so please, if you know more then me, don’t be shy and leave a comment .

I can’t wait to check this thing out. Probably it won’t be working 100%, but hey it’s still a beta after all, and at least some compatibility is already appreciated. Big thanks to Novell & Microsoft for this one .

This version is currently only available for Linux users, and can be obtained here. This decission was made because 64-bit Linux distributions don’t ship with a 32-bit browser by default. Neither do they usually offer an extended 32-bit emulation layer. The need for a native 64-bit flash player thus is the greatest for this platform.

Windows and Mac users should not worry, a version for their platform is in the make as well, and will be released soon. In the end, the final versions will all be released on the same time anyway.

I think this is a very, very good development. The community has been screaming for this to come out for years now. Many of us already had given up hope. Yes it is true that with using a custom wrapper, emulating or other means you could solve a lot of flash problems, but working native is always better!

On the software side, you can expect the usual goodies like OpenOffice (still version 2.x though), FireFox 3, The Gimp and many others. Another big improvement is better support for wireless networks, a thing that has been pushing Linux back in the past.

Actually, CRN is reporting that this new Ubuntu is outdoing Windows Vista. With faster installation time, better functionality and ease of use, and the improved wireless, this version if bound to be the best alternative for Windows so far. They also did a benchmark of both Operating Systems on the same hardware, and it seems Ubuntu is faster on almost every point.

For existing Ubuntu users, there is now an improved upgrade process. Actually, you don’t have to do much, just change your upgrade path in System >> Administration >> Software Sources to Normal releases. Next you run Update Manager, and the software automatically notifies you that there is a new release available.

The only downside for me is that this upgrade process is terribly slow. On my system it needs to get about 1300 new packages, and it seems the host serving them is having a hard time. This of course might be only a temporary problem. I’m also expecting this upgrade to break some of my customizations I did, but this is normal as I use quite the exotic setup here . For someone working with an out-of-the-box 8.04 install, this shouldn’t be an issue. This makes the upgrade-process very newbie-friendly.

All in all, I’m having high expectations of this new release, and I can’t wait for this damned upgrade to finish . Hopefully not too many hickups will happen, but if they do, stay tuned to this blog, and you’ll surely will read about it!

However this does not mean its development has finished. Developers will still continue to make bug-fixes and add new features, with the difference that the heart of the system, called the structure, stays identical. This means users would no longer have to check if their kernel version, utilities used and drive format match up to each other.

Of course this alone doesn’t make Ext4 ready for production use. As with any new file-system, administrators in the corporate world will wait a little longer to include this and first see how the new system performs on a day-to-day basis. Another drawback is the fact that you still have to maintain one of the older file-systems, as neither the LILO or GRUB boot-loaders can successfully load the kernel off an ext4-partition.

Another important development is that there is already talk of giving Linux a new, next-generation file-system. The system of choice would be btrfs (pronounced butter-fs). Since this system however is still quite immature, and developing a good file-system takes a lot of time, ext4 could be used to bridge the gap.

All in all, I think it’s good to see that the Linux world is working hard to give us the best systems possible. I personally eagerly await ext4, although I think I’ll also wait a little longer to include these in my systems. But maybe if you’re running a non-critical machine and feel adventurous… .

This new version, which is supposed to be an even more fierceful competitor for Adobe’s popular Flash player, looks very promising. Among one of the most eye-catching improvements is the promise that this new version will be shipped with cross-platform and cross-browser support.

Supported platforms are Microsoft Windows (duh ), Mac OS X, but surprisingly, also Linux. For the browser world, you can use Internet Explorer (another big duh of course), but also Firefox and Safari.

I’m glad too see Microsoft has gotten the message from the community and is releasing this functionality also for Mac & Linux users. With version 1 so closely tied to their own Windows platform, they have had a lot of criticism to endure. Of course Mono (2) promised to partly cover these platforms, but it’s nice to see that our Redmond friends took a closer look at some other popular operating systems.

On the browser side, I’m a bit disappointed to not see any Opera support. Probably in the next few weeks we’ll see some workarounds and community patches surfacing for this, but nevertheless, I’m surprised it’s not natively supported. However I’m sure this is only a matter of time.

Whether this newest Silverlight release will be nibbling at the market share of Flash is still to be seen. So far, I haven’t really seen much use of it myself, apart from during the Beijing Olympics, where Microsoft had cleverly set up some partnerships in an attempt to boost their software use. The main drawback at the time was of course the lack of support for other browsers and platforms. Now that this has been solved (however yet to be proven), Silverlight can finally really take off. Probably more partnerships with big content providers are coming, but now at least it has a good chance of breaking through to the mainstream.

I’m sure that we’ll hear and mostly see more about this the coming weeks/months. For the time being, I’m going to take a look how Silverlight performs on my Ubuntu/Firefox setup . To be continued …

Update 15/10: Tried to download it yesterday for Linux, but currently the runtime for this platform is not yet available… Only Windows & Mac are to be found.