The S Site

OK, so it’s official, I actually jailbroke my iPod Touch and while it is cool to ssh into my Gentoo machine from my iPod there are some disadvantages to Jailbreaking.

The first problem I have faced is the battery life, or the shortening of it to be precise. Even though I did install OpenSSH I do make sure to turn it off after I have finished using it. Yet my iPod’s battery life has significantly decreased since I jailbroke it. I guess that’s a price you have to pay to have an open iOS device.

Secondly there’s the voiding of your warranty which may not seem like such a big deal but when you’re messing around with the firmware that’s when things are bound to go wrong. It’s kind of ironic if you think about it. Of course you can restore your device and get your warranty back, but then you might as well have never jailbroken it in the first place.

So that’s what I have to say. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are tons of reasons to jailbreak your iOS device, but for freedom you have to pay the price.

I’ve recently been getting back into Gentoo Linux, running it in a virtual machine and for some reason I actually understand it better this time around.

I have used Gentoo before, without truly understanding what I was doing, but now, after using other distros Gentoo actually makes sense. However, it still is a rather unique distro, with its own way of doing things, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Allow me to outline a few.

Firstly let me mention (and I know I have mentioned this many times before) Portage. Portage, based on the Ports collection system of BSD is Gentoo’s official package manager, which will automatically compile packages from source. Although this has its disadvantages, namely time, and I know that I have sort of hated on BSD for using a similar system, but Portage uses USE Flags, which are user defined keywords that tell Portage to compile certain functionality into certain packages and not to compile others. For example: you could compile a certain application with X support or you could disable that feature. This proves to actually be a useful feature for the end user, so it makes up for all the time it uses when you could have actually been using the package that you installed.

Next there are the command line tools. I have already mentioned that Gentoo likes to be different from other distros, which includes how you configure the system as well. Take loading daemons for example. On most distros (that I know of) if you wanted to load a daemon on startup you would add it to the daemons array in /etc/rc.conf, but in Gentoo they have a quick and easy command line tool to do this for you called rc-update. To add sshd to the daemons loaded on startup for example you would type:

rc-update add sshd default

Of course there is still a lot of text file based configuration in Gentoo, but because of tools like rc-update the configuration can often be in a different place to where you would expect, which can confuse people new to Gentoo.

Now for some of the downsides. I know I am repeating myself when I say that compiling from source takes time, but this can be a problem for many users. When you install Gentoo don’t expect to be instantly greeted with a nice GNOME or KDE desktop. If you intend on have such luxuries prepare to set aside a few hours, depending on the speed of your system.

There’s also the installation, which isn’t exactly user friendly. You basically use a live CD to build your Gentoo system, including the kernel, but thankfully the Gentoo community has very extensive and understandable documentation, which will help you do all this without too much of a hassle.

So there you have it. The pros and cons of Gentoo Linux. I recommend you try this distribution and see if it suits you. Portage is certainly one of a kind and I recommend you experience its power first hand.

GNOME recently released gnome3.org in preparation for their next major release of their desktop environment. So I thought I would talk about my expectations for “the next generation GNOME desktop”.

From what I have seen and read GNOME 3 will have more of a screen real estate friendly interface, much like what we have seen with Unity in Ubuntu; system menus will fill the entire screen, making it easy to spot a specific item and any elements of the desktop that are not needed while doing a specific task are hidden away, but can be easily accessed with the touch of a button. So with this in mind I believe this desktop will be well suited to computers with smaller screen real estate, such as tablets. Therefore, I believe it would be nice if multi-touch was implemented into GNOME 3 as tablets are seeming to become the portable devices of choice. I think this is where GNOME, and Linux in general needs to head; they need to aim at mobile devices. Linux has already made an impact on the market with Android, but it still would be cool to see GNOME running on a tablet, or a phone.

GNOME 3 is really focussed on elegance, which can sometimes be demanding on a computer’s hardware. The GNOME 3 website has already stated that graphics acceleration will be required to enable the full experience of GNOME 3. I just hope that it will manage to stay lightweight while offering a clean experience.

With the alleged removal of Compiz I hope GNOME 3 will offer many of the features natively that Compiz Fusion offers. I use many of Compiz’s features for window management, accessibility and overall aesthetics. Compiz provides many plugins to make for quick and elegant window and workspace switching. It also provides nice animations for resizing, minimizing, opening and closing of windows. The magnifier is also very useful, being intuitive and quick to initiate when you might need to look at something closely, in fact using it has become second nature to me that I often end up trying to use the same keyboard shortcuts in Windows. So I hope GNOME 3 will not disregard these features as they are very important in creating a functional, accessible and user friendly desktop.

These are just some of the things I am anticipating in GNOME 3. I am eagerly awaiting the release of this exciting new desktop environment, which is scheduled for April. Until then I guess I’ll have to either try (and fail) to compile the alpha from source, or wait with baited breath.

I know that I talk about Linux a lot, so today I’m going to talk about BSD instead.

But what exactly is BSD? If you’ve spent enough time in the Unix world you’ve probably heard about it. BSD was originally a derivative of the AT&T Unix operating system, sharing much of the original code. BSD stood for “Berkeley Software Distribution”. Today BSD is commonly used to refer to BSD derivatives, such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD which are considered to be very closely related to the original Unix.

You’re probably thinking that these BSD derivatives are starting to sound a lot like Linux, but that’s where you’re wrong. BSD and Linux are very different right from the ground up and this is mainly due to the communities that support their respective projects. In the Linux world there are many distros to choose from, each offering a different set of applications, tools and services, and each with a different idea of what is important in an operating system. This is because Linux itself is not an operating system, but more just the engine that powers it. All of the modern BSD distributions have the same general idea of what they believe is important in a base operating system, even if they disagree in what should go over the top, the icing on the cake, the extra applications that add the extra functionality.

The BSD descendants also kept most of the original codebase from BSD, which in turn kept much of Unix’s original codebase. This means that these BSDs are one of the closest descendants to the original Unix. They use sh, the Bourne Shell for God’s sake.

But why? A guy named Matt Fuller once wrote:

“BSD is what you get when a bunch of Unix hackers sit down to try to port a Unix system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a Unix system for the PC.”

This really sums up the difference between Linux and BSD. One is not better than the other, they are just different, the developers have different beliefs in what is important and what isn’t and the users have different beliefs in how they should interact with the operating system.

Now, I have been trying out FreeBSD for a while and I personally can’t see a use for it. It just seems like too much of a hassle for one user. Building for source has it’s advantages and disadvantages, but this is not a place to discuss it. What I am referring to is the rawness of the system. It really is not for beginners, but having said that the documentation is rather extensive and relatively easy to understand if you have some experience with a Unix based system. I can imagine why people would like it, because it is so much more faithful to the original structure of Unix, I just can’t understand the point of it, but then again, I am a Linux user, who came from Windows.

I could ramble on for hours about every single difference, but this post is already getting way too long. So, I advise you to read Matt Fuller’s article on Linux and BSD and see if you can discover the purpose of BSD.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. It’s New Year’s Eve
and it’s time to look back at predictions for this year and to make new predictions for next year. First, let’s take a look at my predictions for this year:

1. Apple and Google’s relationship will deteriorate. Well that seems about right. Apple and Google have gone their separate ways. They both have their own mobile operating systems with their own app stores not to mention other rival products. The relationship between Apple and Google has deteriorated; if you remember they were almost in cahoots with each other last year, but now they barely even acknowledge each other.
2. There will be a major internet scare in privacy. This wasn’t exactly in the form I expected but WikiLeaks this year has certainly revealed a lot of private information this year, which has made many countries very vulnerable.
3. The Apple Tablet will be released. Well this one is a definite. It’s called the iPad. End of story.
4. Optical media will become obsolete. Sadly not. People are still buying CDs and DVDs. However, the popularity of services like Netflix and Hulu is ever increasing, which is a step in the right direction.
5. Google Chrome will pass Firefox in popularity. Once again, no. Although Chrome has had a significant growth in the last 12 months it didn’t even get close to Firefox. And with the upcoming release of Firefox 4 Firefox’s popularity will most likely increase.

Well 3 out of 5 ain’t bad. Now for my predictions for next year:

1. The next release of the iPad will have a built in front facing camera; this will allow for FaceTime calling. The iPad will also feature a dock connector port on the side to allow for docking the device in landscape.
2. The MacBook Air will be removed from Apple’s product line; this device hasn’t really seen much success, and now that Apple has the iPad why would you need another portable device like it. At the moment the iPad’s functionality is limited compared to a notebook computer’s, but developers will eventually release applications to fill these gaps.
3. E-readers will die; although many people appreciate the E-ink displays found on traditional E-readers, these devices have very limited functionality other than displaying text. Nowadays people want devices that can do everything and devices like the iPad and the Barnes & Noble Nook Color are becoming more prominent in the market.
4. Chrome OS and Android will merge; although these projects are are rather different they have the potential to be on similar devices and attract similar audiences. We are seeing Android on tablets at the moment and while Chrome OS is more likely to appear on Netbooks there is a chance these will cross over. This is another sign of the clash between Netbooks and Tablets.
5. WikiLeaks will be shut down; as much as I am in favour of having everything open to the public, sadly the US Government (and other governments) does not. WikiLeaks is in a pretty strong position in that they are protected by Swedish law, but the US Government most likely could shut down WikiLeaks.

Well, those are my predictions for 2011. I’m sorry about all the tablet and Apple related predictions, but they seem to be hot topics at the moment. Oh and Happy New Year!

First of all Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Satan Day, or happy what ever else you might celebrate, or happy holidays if you don’t celebrate anything,

I hope you all are having a great time wherever you are and whatever you are doing. And if gift giving is a part of your celebrated holiday I hope you got what asked for, as long as it wasn’t an atomic bomb or something. Well I got an iPod Touch for Christmas! YAY! It’s so awesome, but I don’t really have many apps at the moment except for Palringo, Twitter, and Facebook (which sucks), so I need you guys to point me to some good apps (leave a comment). Also feel free to leave a comment about what gifts you received.

I hope you are enjoying the holidays and I hope to hear about some great apps from you. Until then I will let you get on with your festivities, or relaxing, or spending time with family and friends, or doing whatever and I will see you later.

This week’s post comes in the form of a video.

A few days ago I was flying around in Microsoft Flight Simulator X, practicing my landings at the old Hong Kong International Airport, commonly referred to as Kai Tak Airport. Back in its day it had a very unique approach for runway 13 in which the aircraft would have to make a very sharp right turn to line up with the runway. At the point of the turn the aircraft would be only two nautical miles (3.7 km) away from the runway at an altitude of less than 1,000 ft! This is my attempt at flying that approach. Enjoy!

So, I know this week’s post is a bit late in coming but I’ve been in Adelaide for the past four days, which is in South Australia (just in case you didn’t know). I thought Adelaide would be a great place for a vacation, but let me tell you it ain’t.

First let me just say that the time zone it’s in is stupid, GMT+9:30! HALF AN HOUR! Why couldn’t they just choose a whole hour either way? It would make life much simpler.

Secondly there’s nothing to do in Adelaide. It’s supposedly the City of Churches, but I didn’t see any churches. Besides the imaginary churches they also have a night club and a tram. And trust me I know about the night club because my hotel room was right next to it and let’s just say that the sound proofing wasn’t all that great. As for the one tram line, what’s the point. I eventually concluded that Adelaide is just a cheaper, smaller, ’80s version of Melbourne.

OK, of course there are some things to do in Adelaide, like go to wineries, if that’s your thing. The problem is that there really isn’t anything to do in the centre of Adelaide.

Yesterday, after running out of things to do and having a rather poor night’s sleep due to the afore mentioned night club I was pretty eager to get home. But after sitting in the plane, parked at the gate for an hour the captain finally declared that the aircraft was unsafe to fly due to a problem with one of the systems. So then I had to wait for another hour at the airport before finally boarding the next flight to Melbourne. At least I got upgraded to Business Class as a consolation.

So I finally arrived in Melbourne and I was excited to be back not just because I was away from Adelaide but because I had booked tickets to see Linkin Park for that night. It was my first concert and it was AWESOME. Linkin Park is a really awesome alternative rock band that play a rather diverse range of music.

So, in conclusion it’s good to be back, the concert was great and I will be back on schedule with my weekly posts. And finally, you can now follow me on Twitter @ssitesmiley to get updates throughout the week.

In response to a particular Four Island post with a very long title I would like to say that you’re wrong, Hatkirby. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about allow me to explain.

I have used OS X before, I used Leopard last year for a Multimedia course I took and the one thing I disliked about them was their window management. The first thing that confused me was the fact that when you closed a window the application was still running, I guess this goes with the idea of a SDI (Single Document Interface). Although This is not a major problem and the applications can be completely closed through the menus it confused me at first.

The main problem I have with Macs was window switching. Coming from Windows I was used to Alt+Tab. They do have something similar on OS X but it lists the open applications instead of the open windows. Of course they have Exposé, but it just isn’t as fast. With Alt+Tab you can switch back and forth between two windows instantly, but with Exposé you have to find the window you’re looking for and click on it.

OK I’ll cut OS X some slack. I don’t particularly mind that you can only resize windows from one edge because I don’t often resize windows anyway. If I want them bigger I just maximize the window, which brings me to another point, windows don’t maximize all the way in OS X! They only take up as much of the screen as they want, so as to not feel fat, or something. Why can’t they just do what every other operating system and every other window manager does and actually take up all of the screen when the maximize button is pressed. So in hindsight yes it does annoy me that you can only resize the window from one corner because OS X is the only operating system in which I have to manually resize the window so it takes up as much of the screen as possible.

Now, I probably should mention OS X Lion here. Well as I’ve mentioned before I think Lion will fix some of the problems I have with OS X’s window management: combining Exposé and Spaces, allowing applications to run full screen, etc. Still it won’t fix everything. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Well that’s all that I have to say about window management. I hope you were able to follow me in my ranting.

What’s up world? So at the beginning of this month I mentioned two very nice Linux distros, but since then I’ve discovered another, and trust me this one’s a good one. Thanks to This Week in Linux I discovered Arch Linux, which I am actually using right now to write this post.

You’ll remember that I talked about Gentoo, which is a great and very powerful distribution, but building everything from source can take forever. Arch is much like Gentoo in the sense that you don’t start out with much and have the ability to get into the guts of the OS, but unlike Gentoo Arch’s package manager, Pacman uses binaries! Yay! And let me tell you, Pacman is fast. It’s fast at fetching packages, it’s fast at installing packages. I daresay it is faster than APT.

Pacman does not build from source, but Arch does have a feature, much like Portage that fetches and compiles Pacman packages from source, called the Arch Build System, or ABS. I have not really used this feature yet though.

Pacman does have a lot of packages, but if you can’t find a specific package there is always the AUR, or Arch User Repository, which contains config files that one can download to automatically fetch and build packages from source. For example, with the help of the AUR I was able to get the pre-released version of 64-bit Flash Player, completely painlessly.

Arch is certainly a lot easier to set up than Gentoo as well. With the combination of excellent documentation and user friendly tools, such as Netcfg Arch Linux is a lot less painful than Gentoo to manage. I’ve been able to get X working with my NVIDIA card, install GNOME, set up wireless (surprisingly easily), and even enable Compiz Fusion.

After just a few days I am settling in to Arch Linux. It is a very powerful operating system, but at the same time very manageable. And with its rolling release system you’ll always be up-to-date. There are just so many advantages it has over other distros that I am seriously considering switching to Arch permanently.