Lubuntu 10.04 - Distro Review

Lubuntu is working towards gaining an endorsement from Canonical and thus becoming an official Ubuntu derivative. Lubuntu is an LXDE version of Ubuntu just as Kubuntu is a KDE edition or Xubuntu is an XFCE variation. Since I just recently acquired my T101MT I was looking for a solid lightweight distro to run on that would still provide we with the power and flexibility I was used to from Ubuntu, thus it is only natural that I should choose an Ubuntu derivative.

Downloading:

The first thing you will notice about Lubuntu is that unlike most distros that have to cram every megabyte they can into their LiveCDs, the Lubuntu ISO download is only 521 megs. The ISO loaded right up onto my USB drive thanks to unetbootin and I was soon installing Lubuntu on my tablet.

Installation:

The installation of Lubuntu is decently standard. It is the same installer Ubuntu uses. It provides the option to install along side an existing operating, using the entire drive, or setting up a custom layout - all using gParted. About ten minutes later I had Lubuntu up and running on my hardware (I love USB installations).

Also if you already have some form of *buntu 10.04 installed on your computer you can add an LXDE/Lubuntu install by installing the lubuntu-desktop package via apt.

Look and Feel:

Lubuntu's default theme is a sleek looking blue that blends well with the Chromium and PCMan icons that are on the task bar by default. Those migrating to Lubuntu from Windows will also feel at home in the LXDE desktop due to the positioning of the main menu in the lower left and the tray icon in the lower right.

Lubuntu lacks the flair of Compiz or E17, but this is by design. It's goal is to be a fast, lightweight operating system.

Software:

I really like the default software the Lubuntu team has chosen to include. The first thing you will notice is that the stock webrowser is Chromium, this is a change I think we will be seeing a lot more in light-weight distros. Don't get me wrong - I like firefox, but compared to Chromium it is a snail at best (and a bit of a resource hog). Pidgin is the default messaging client, xchat is included for IRC usage, and transmission is there for all of your torrenting needs.

In respect to office software Lubuntu ships with abiword for word processing and gnumeric for creating spreadsheets, a refreshing change from the bloated OpenOffice that ships with most distros by default. In terms of media Lubuntu comes stock with Gnome MPlayer (my favorite media player), Cheese Webcam booth, Aqualung, and Xfburn.

For system tools the Lubuntu team has taken their pick of various gnome and xfce applications. From Gnome Lubuntu uses their sound applet, wifi applet, gdebi, and power manager. From xfce comes the task-manager and pyneighborhood (network browser).

In the means of terminal Lubuntu comes with LXTerminal. A nice extra that is included in Lubuntu by default is a copy and paste manager "parcellite"that is very similar to the KDE "klipper" tool. I'm glad that this is included as klipper is typically one of the first things I install on any non-KDE distro I use. Parcellite is not loaded at startup though, you will find it under accessories in your menu. While not as powerful as Gnome's gedit, but sticking with the lightweight theme, Lubuntu comes with leafpad as the default text editor. Also in a default Lubuntu install for graphics editing is "mtPaint", a basic image editor.

Memory Footprint:

On my system with out any applications loaded Lubuntu is using just over 125megs of RAM. Not too shabby :)

Issues:

The only real "issue" I see with Lubuntu is the fact that the LXDE desktop does not support volume up/down/mute function keys on laptops by default. This is easily solved by mapping them using xbindkeys - but this is something most new user will not want to do.

Final Thoughts:

Lubuntu has come a long way from it's first release with 9.10 just last year. This 10.04 release is a fantastic addition to the world of light weight Linux distros and just like the others in the *buntu family I have no doubt it will adopted by many for use on slower/older computers.

~Jeff Hoogland

T91MT vs T101MT - Hands on Review

Earlier this month I talked about why I feel Asus's T91MT is a better computer than Apple's iPad. What I failed to mention in that posting is that in addition to the T91MT Asus also has a T101MT netbook/tablet hybrid. If you are in the market for a tiny tablet computer you might be like I was, torn between which of these two netbooks to buy - they are fairly close in price! After having owned both a T91MT and the T101MT I have put together the following compare and contrast of the two tablets that will hopefully help you decided which of the two to purchase.
Size and Weight -
Lets start with the obvious - how big these devices are. The average consumer will first notice that the T91MT is an 8.9" tablet that weights in at 2.1 pounds while the T101MT is 10.1" that weights in at 2.86 pounds. Which of these is better? Its a personal choice really.

Keyboard -
The T91MT has a flat key board while the T101MT has a chiclet keyboard (some space inbetween the keys). Coming from my old EEE 900A model/normal laptop the chiclet keyboard took some getting used to, but after a few days I was typing away on it with no issues. The image below is the T91MT keyboard on the left and the T101MT keyboard on the right:


Track Pad -
The track back on both the devices is essentially the same. Same look and feel, same silver mouse button. Neither supports multi-touch on the track pad and both support scrolling on the right side.

Screen Resolution/Design/Finish -
Both the netbooks contain the fairly standard 1024x600 resolution netbook panel. Both panels fully support multi-touch. For some reason though the touch layer is much more noticeable on the T101MT than it is on the T91MT. If you look at the screen from the wrong angle the contents appear blurry almost. Another thing you will notice right away between the two laptops is that the T91MT has a shiny finish on the back of it's screen - meaning it is a giant finger print magnet. The T101MT has a matted finish that tends to stay much cleaner.

Lastly the hinge on the T101MT is much smoother than the one on the T91MT. When closing the T101MT (or putting it in tablet mode) it has rubber stoppers that are designed to slip into slits cut into the screen so the keyboard part does not rotate out form under the screen while you are moving the device around. This was a much needed design additive as it always annoyed me that the T91MT screen does not sit straight on when the device is closed.

Processor -
The processors in these two devices are very, very different. The T91MT uses a Z series 520 chip that is clocked at 1.33ghz, while the T101MT sports an N series 450 chip that runs at 1.66ghz. Both chips have hyper-threading technology and of the two only the Z520 supports virtulization (just in case you wanted to run a virtual machine on your netbook). The extra speed of the N450 is decent noticeable. It is much "snappier" when multi-tasking than it's Z520 cousin.

RAM -
Both tablets come with 1gig of DDR2 memory and are upgradable to 2gigs. The only thing worth noting here is that the T91MT has a 1gig stick that you have to replace with a single 2gig stick in order to upgrade it's memory. The T101MT on the other hand has it's default 1gig of memory soldiered to it's mother board - meaning in order to upgrade it's memory you need to purchase a 1gig stick.

Hard Drive -
The T91MT comes stock with a 32gig SSD while the T101MT comes with a 160gig 5400rpm standard laptop drive. The T91MT hard drive uses a PCI mini port to connect - meaning if you want to change the drive in it you are somewhat limited on selection. The T101MT on the other hand uses your standard 2.5" sata hard drive connector so you can drop any mobile drive in it (personally I ordered an SSD with my T101MT, I feel a normal hard drive is just a bad idea in a netbook).

Webcam -
Both the netbooks come with very sad .3 mega-pixel cameras. Good enough to make a video call over Skype, but not a quality image by any means.

Graphics Card -
The T91MT comes with the Intel GMA500 graphics card while the T101MT has the more standard Intel GMA3150 graphics controller. An important thing to note here is that while the GMA500 is a physically faster graphics card, the drivers for it are decently horrid on all platforms (although they are the best under Windows 7). The GMA500 should do 720p video playback however do not expect it to be 100% smooth if this is what you want to play on the device. The driver issue with the GMA500 is largely due to the fact that Intel doesn't actually make the GMA500 chip, they just stamp their name on it.

Operating System -
The T91MT ships by default with Windows 7 Home Premium while the T101MT ships with Windows 7 Starter. Not a big deal right? Actually it is. Windows 7 Starter does not support multi-touch functionality regardless of your hardware. Meaning if you want multi-touch on the T101MT you will need to upgrade/change the Windows version installed on it. Both of the netbooks run Ubuntu quite well with a small bit of hacking (and have multi-touch with kernel > 2.6.33). If you are going to keep Windows 7 on the tablet however, do yourself a favor and make sure to upgrade the RAM to 2gigs.

Bluetooth -
The T91MT has a built in bluetooth controller while the T101MT does not. So if you are needing bluetooth on the larger tablet be sure to pickup a USB bluetooth adapter.

Battery -
The T91MT claims "up to 5 hours" and the T101MT claims "up to 6.5 hours". Off a full charge while streaming audio over the speakers from Pandora the T91MT gets just over three hours and the T101MT gets just under four hours. The T101MT has has a removable battery while the T91MT does not, personally I really like having a removable battery so I can carry a spare.

Follow Up -
I ended up keeping the T101MT and selling the T91MT to a friend. The two main deciding factors for me in this decision was the battery life and graphics card (the GMA500 is a giant pain under Linux). Which of these two tablet is right for you? How would I know! Hopefully if you have been trying to decide between the two of them this article helped you decide on one or the other.

~Jeff Hoogland

N900 Video Call with Skype

If you have graced my page before then odds are you know I love my N900. This past Wednesday Nokia released the PR 1.2 update for the N900 and one of the features they added was support for the front facing camera to make video calls. Video conferencing via services like Skype, Google Talk and Allstream Business Communications are a fantastic advancement in technology.

I made my first video call this evening on my N900 and it works quite well! The GUI for Skype video calls is fairly simple and looks as such:

The video feed fails to appear when I use the screen shot function built into the N900, but I marked the locations of where the feeds appear. In order to make a video call simply open the Skype contact and select "Video Call":

You can also start a video call from a normal Skype call by selecting it from the call's menu:

I would like to note that in order for the video call options to appear I had to first receive a video call on my N900. After this I had no trouble initiating a video call from my device.

The quality from the front camera isn't the best, but it is more than enough to do basic video calls with. I recorded a short video that displays a video call between my N900 and a laptop:

Video calls such as this are by far the way of the future! Hopefully we will see more devices follow in the N900's footsteps and start adding this functionality.

~Jeff Hoogland

Starcraft 2 and a bit of Wine - Linux Performance

EDIT: If you stumbled upon this page looking for a HOWTO for getting Starcraft 2 working under Wine check here.

I mentioned earlier this month that I was enjoying the Starcraft 2 beta on Ubuntu 10.04 thanks to Wine software. In my previous posting I had simply stated that SC2 was "playable" under Wine. I have a fairly powerful gaming laptop that sports an nVidia 260m GTX and a 1680x1050 resolution panel. SC2 defaulted itself under Wine to "ultra" settings on my system - after playing one game at these settings (well it was really more like playing a slide-show). I promptly lowered the details and textures to low (while leaving the resolution the same).

With these settings I average around 40 FPS at the main menu and in game. At the high end I see just over 50 FPS while playing and at the low end it bottoms out around 20 FPS in combat. (For those wondering how I obtained these numbers press control+alt+f to put an FPS counter in the upper left hand corner of the screen while in SC2). These numbers come from the latest SC2 patch as of today (05/25/10).

Now for a bit of an ironic story regarding SC2. Late last night I dual booted my system with Windows 7 Ultimate again due to the need for an embedded youtube video to work in an Office 2007 power point presentation (it failed to work under Crossover and youtube plays poorly in VMs, thus native install was my only option left). Back on topic - since I had Windows installed anyways I figured I would copy over my SC2 files (god bless Blizzard and their portable installs) and see how comparable the performance was on the native operating system.

Needless to say it performs better, in fact the FPS I see under low settings on Wine is about equal to the same FPS I was seeing under high settings on Windows. That is about where the things that worked better under Windows ended for SC2 on my computer.

I would like to prefix my following statement with the fact that my network drivers are installed, working, and I had used several other applications online just fine.

When I joined my first SC2 game on Windows I had just selected my workers to start mining when the lag started, around two minutes later I was dropped from the game and it counted as a loss in my ladder league. I figured it was just something funky with my internet line, even though I had not had any issues in SC2 under Wine in the last three weeks, as such I promptly selected "find match" to start another game. Two minutes later I had "lost" another ladder game due to "connection" issues.

Fan-flipping-tastic.

Just out of curiosity I decided to boot in Linux to see if the issue existed there as well (I'm hoping the irony of rebooting into Linux to play a game isn't lost on anyone). Needless to say the problem was not present there, after sweeping two ladder games without any connection issues on Ubuntu I can indeed confirm that it was a "connection" issue with the SC2 was only happening under Windows.

Yes: I know this game is still in beta.
Yes: I know odds are this issue is limited to my system.

Is it still annoying? Yep. It is ridiculously ironic? You bet.

Anyone else have fun story they would like to share about an application working better under Wine than it does on Windows itself?

~Jeff Hoogland

Community Counts: Another Advantage to Linux Mint

A few months back I listed five reasons I thought Linux Mint is a better choice than Ubuntu for a Linux distro. Today I would like to add another reason to that list. With the recent releases of Ubuntu 10.04 and Linux Mint 9 we see something that I feel really makes Linux Mint out shine Ubuntu (yet again):

Community input counts.

Now while Ubuntu has a fantastic support community apparently community input on over all design does not matter. Do I think it is right? Not really, but it's their product so Shuttlesworth/Canonical has every right to make executive decisions such as these.

The creators of Linux Mint show a very different mentality when it comes to community input and the design of their Linux distro. In fact it is not uncommon to see popular suggestions that occur in their user forums to become a part of the next Mint release.

A recent example of this would be the Mint software installer. Built from scratch the Mint software installer was designed to be a better tool than Ubuntu's old Add/Remove programs for users to install software from. Then the Ubuntu Software Center released and put the Mint manager to shame. With Mint 9 the Mint Software manager has again been rebuilt from scratch to feature the best qualities from the old software manager, gnome app-install, and the Ubuntu software center.

Now what is the big deal about a distro making improvements to itself in a new release? It is the fact that the creators took to heart what their users where telling them when making this improvement. For some of you this may not be a big deal, but personally I enjoy using a distro where my opinion counts.

~Jeff Hoogland

CXGames 9.0 - Hands on Review

Back on October of last year I did a comparison of Cedega and CXGames. As of yesterday Codeweavers launched their CXGames 9.0. If we had heard any news or updates from Cedega in the last five months this would be an updated comparison, but since Cedega has not changed I simply am going to be reviewing the newly released CXGames.

The first thing you will notice when using CXGames 9.0 if you had used past versions is that the GUI has under gone a refreshing change.

Application Installer:

Bottle Manager:One of the key things you will notice when installing a game is that there are now "profiles" built in for games. Officially supported games have a profile as well currently a handful of other games. Similar to how Cedega works people can now submit the Wine settings they use to successfully run a game to Codeweavers so others can replicate these settings with a single click from the installer. With the number of users Codeweavers has accumulated over the years I have no doubt that we will soon see profiles for the multitude of gold and silver rated unsupported applications listed in the Codeweaver's data base.

New GUI, game profiles, what else is new in CXGames 9.0? A much needed Wine version upgrade has been added to this release. CXGames is based off of the recently released Wine 1.1.42. If you are not aware newer Wine versions often times include many bug fixes that can allow applications that had failed to run under Wine in the past to suddenly start working. The benefit of purchasing commercial Wine software such as CXGames is that while you gain all the benefits of an updated Wine version you do not have to worry about experiencing any regressions that may have found their way into the Wine base.

From a gamer's aspect the most important thing about this new release is added support for the recently released Steam GUI. The new interface for the Steam content delivery service I find runs much better under CXGames 9.0 than the old Steam interface ever ran under past Crossover versions. CXGames 9.0 also advertises added support for StarTrek Online and the Starcraft 2 Beta. There is a profile under "unsupported applications" for StarTrek, I am not much of an MMO guy so I have not tested this game yet. Upon searching for an entry for Starcraft 2 you will not find one, on the Crossover forums one of the staff makes the claim that it just works OOTB when selecting "install other application". I can confirm this is not the case. By default SC2 crashes at upon startup, after some tweaking I have it at least showing me a loading screen (even though it freezes with no terminal output).

Finally I always like to mention cost, CXGames 9.0 continues to be 40$ (this includes one year of support and updates). Overall CXGames 9.0 is another great release in a fantastic product line. The GUI updates are for the better, the game profiles work well, and a newer Wine version is always appreciated. If you are a Steam gamer on Linux then CXGames 9.0 is a must have, if Starcraft 2 under Linux is what you are looking for you are going to have to pass on CXGames for the time being - but I have no doubt that by the time SC2 releases at the end of July it will be fully supported under Crossover.

~Jeff Hoogland

My Beef with the iPad

Now I've written a couple of pieces about the iPad thus far and if you read through them you will see that the device has failed to impress me thus far. Now despite the fact that I think there are better alternatives out there iPad, all in all I don't think it is a bad device per-say (mostly just over priced). With the idea in mind that a computer is simply a means to an end: if the iPad works to get your job done and you want to purchase it, great!

My real problem with iPad is when people start calling it an "innovative" or "world changing" device. So when I come across Newsweek magazines with covers like this:
You might understand why they grind my gears. Is the iPad a nifty gizzmo? Sure it is. It is by no means "innovative" though. Innovative implies that something is ahead of it's time. We have had tablet computers for years and the operating system that runs on the iPad is a variation of the operating that was released on the iTouch some three years ago.

Is the iPad a neat gadget? Sure. Would the iPad have gotten even half as much press if it didn't have a fruit stamped on the back of it? Nope. Is the iPad going to revolutionize anything the iPhone or another tablet hasn't already? I doubt it.

If there is one thing I have always respected Apple for it is their powerful and persuasive marketing techniques and the iPad is no exception to this. Hopefully though you can see through all the marketing haze surrounding the iPad and see that it is just another computer. Companies release new computers every week, the iPad is no different (other than the fact that it has a fruit stamped on the back of it).

Agree or disagree with something I said? Then drop a comment below and let me know.

~Jeff Hoogland