Feature by feature: Firefox vs. Safari

Safari

Firefox

Comparison

VirtualBox - Not Bad For Free Virtualisation

Latest VirtualBox 1.4 was released on June 5th, and it is the youngest virtualization player. If you are not aware of this products, VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use and is available both as open source under the GPL and under a commercial license which, in most cases, allows you to use the product free of charge. Compiled binaries for different Linux distributions and Windows are available from the project’s download page.

With this new edition innotek officially enters the Apple market, already seeing competition between Parallels, with its Desktop solution, and VMware, with its upcoming Fusion, introducing support for Mac OS X (still in beta). This version contains lots of improvements and bug fixing. Here is the sample list of new features and changes in this release:

• Full support for 64-bit Linux
• RDP session shadowing
• Clipboard synchronization
• Serial ports and easier Linux host interface networking
• VirtualBox now supports VMware disk images (VMDK) natively and can give virtual machines access to physical disks and partitions (”raw disk support”)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) and Xandros Desktop 4.1 are now officially supported
• Added support for OS X hosts
• Signed all executables and device drivers on Windows
• Added user interface for Shared Folders
• Improved keyboard handling on Linux hosts
• Added first run wizard
• Restore original window size when returning from fullscreen mode
• Fixed screen update when switching to fullscreen mode

Besides these changes there are many more changelog.

Personally I haven’t given a try to VirtualBox on an extensive level but can say that compared to Vmware’s Workstation, my preferred virtualisation (for now), VirtualBox lacks in performance, but then again you can get it for free … so do give it a try.

Use your iPod in Linux

Really good article for those having iPods (as I do not and do not require it … my HTC Artemis with WM6 does the job) and wanting to manage the collection using Linux.

Many people have Linux installed on their computers, but they are afraid of using their iPod on it. Perhaps corrupt files, or damage detour them from using the myriad programs that currently exist for the Linux operating system.

There is good news, you can use your iPod in Linux, and get away from the control of iTunes. I have assembled the very best programs that will sync, edit photos and copy files onto your iPod.

Complete Article

PCLinuxOS 2007 installation review and first impressions

Never have I had such an incident free installation procedure before. Really! I’m not joking. There’s literally nothing much (in terms of problems) to report. My installation of PCLinuxOS 2007 was simple and error free. What I will say now (about installation) will be comments on certain preferences and perhaps some confusion on (my) part. However, I would say that while PCLinuxOS 2007 installation was one of the most simple and straight-forward linux installations I have ever done, it wasn’t perfect!

Installation Ease? 10/10

Speed of installation? I think I had a whole installation completed in under 30 minutes. That’s excellent, though not as fast as Freespire which I think has a record (on my machine) of about 10-12 minutes!

Configuration capability? Now there’s the problem. I guess every Linux distro has to choose between how “easy” to make an installation and how “configurable”. Well, PCLinuxOS’s installation configuration ability is not thaaaat great. It’s sufficient, but somehow, it is a little scary because when you’re messing with the partition editor, everything looks “fun” even “childlike” and the gravity of the situation just seems to be lacking. The advanced options are limited and often unhelpful. Perhaps to compare, one of the BEST installations in term of configuration was openSUSE 10.2. Now in that installation you can almost change everything (including which windows drives to mount or not)! But I guess, PCLinuxOS just saves the user the trouble and does the thinking for you. Nice, but a little frustrating to non-so-new Linux users.

Bootloader? Well the final bootloader looks pretty, and it even automatically recognises my Windows XP partition, but it failed to recognise my openSUSE 10.2. This was made all the more frustrating because while installing there was no way I could add (or figure out how to add) the full details for openSUSE which was really frustrating. (it’s still not working and I know I have to edit grub somehow, though I don’t know how). Anyway, all this should not be a problem for those who work only with Windows and PCLinuxOS. I must say though, that the BEST bootloader installation is by Ubuntu, which doesn’t look pretty, but recognises EVERY single distribution that I’ve had on my machine. In fact in times of greatest frustration, I’ve actually loaded an entire Ubuntu just to fix my GRUB. OK… that suggests I’m still a noob, but it also shows how reliable I think Ubuntu’s grubloader is.

Internet connectivity? No hassles at all. My DSL modem worked fine as soon as I entered my IP address etc details.

Graphics display? I must add that PCLinuxOS has been one of the BEST (alongside Mandriva) out of the box experiences in terms of my monitor graphics display. Usually, in openSUSE, Ubuntu and any other distro I’ve tried, I’ve usually had to re-configure my Graphics display settings, and even download a VIA driver when available. And even with a VIA drivers, my Ubuntu display blinks! No such problem in PCLinuxOS. It’s working. No configuration needed. And that’s excellent. Really excellent!

Multimedia Codecs? Well, I’ve not tried everything, but so far, everything has worked; EVEN DIVX movies. Can you believe that? (Yes it plays DVDs and mp3s too) No need to install anything. I’m yet to try a Quicktime .mov file, so I’m not sure about that, but any distro that can read my .divx (which even Windows needs a software package for!) out of the box is excellent!

Look and feel? I must say that PCLinuxOS is visually a standout distro! The icons and the desktop look unified, as if they had one designer thinking it all through. We don’t get the modular design look (where many designers work on different programmes to give their own ‘personal’ and contradictory touch). In terms of other distro’s, openSUSE is pretty good, but you still have to work to make it look really good. Ubuntu is just terrible! But PCLinuxOS is just simply beautiful. It did remind me of Dreamlinux, but a better version of Dreamlinux! It even makes the blue look good (and I hate blue distros)! There is one minor drawback. I think because of the lack of ‘proprietary’ fonts, the font-display of my webpages is not as ‘good’ as on openSUSE or on Windows. Well, that can be changed, or gotten used to, but that’s just an additional comment.

Software Packages? I’ve given the packages in PCLinuxOS a quick look-in and I’m surprised that all the major programmes are there… OpenOffice 2.2, GIMP etc. But I’m surprised that the games are missing. That’s sad. Because for such a distro, the games would only help strengthen it. I know where to get the games, but I wish, especially if/when I were to give this distro to a newcomer, the games were already there because it would just be that much more attractive (because the Linux collection of games are actually quite fun… some of them at least).

Summary? Basically, PCLinuxOS 2007 lives up to the hype. And as a single-CD distribution, it looks and feels much better than Ubuntu, at least in its first impression. I find myself missing the power of openSUSE, but then, openSUSE being a multi-CD distro with big-buck-support, is a tough act to beat. I liked PCLinuxOS for all the reasons people are saying that it is a great distro: looks, ease of use, out of the box multimedia functionality etc. And I can’t wait to try and test it out more. Cheers to the PCLinuxOS team. This is really a Linux Plus!

(final screenshot after installation and slight modification below)