For example, they’ve done away with the maximize and minimize buttons. Windows now sport only a close button. Maximize is done by double-clicking the title bar or by dragging the window to the top of the screen. Restore is done by either double-clicking again or pulling the window down. There is no obvious method to minimize, but you can do so by right-clicking the title bar and selecting Minimize.

The developers and interface designers argue that max and min buttons are rarely used and, in my case, they’re right. They argue that buttons that don’t get used are just a visual distraction and should be removed. Again, in my case, I agree. Not everyone does, though, and that’s caused quite a stir.

People forget that GNOME 3 is not an incremental upgrade. It’s an attempt to rethink how we use the desktop. It’s a genuine effort to come up with something new. As such, it should be applauded. Before you condemn it, you should at least try it. See if the new work flow and UI suits you. If it doesn’t, fall back.

I set out to try GNOME 3 this weekend and, at the same time, break away from my normal default Ubuntu install and play with Arch Linux. Arch Linux has a decidely different feel from Ubuntu or Fedora. It’s a rolling release distribution, which means it’s always up to date. That also means that you’ll install from a snapshot and the first thing you need to do is bring everything up to date by downloading and installing updates. This took the better part of a day for me due to my crappy Internet connection.

Once ready to go, though, Arch performs very well. GNOME 3 installed painlessly from their testing repository. It’s fast and looks very good. I’m still playing around with GNOME 3 but my initial impressions are very positive. I like the work flow, and I like the window management. It’s a cleaner, less cluttered look than previous GNOME incarnations. I’ll spend some time with it and share more thoughts as I go.

Even though I find this colour combination soothing, it still bugs my eyes after hours of staring at the screen. I was chatting with my friend Dave yesterday, and he pointed me at a color palette that he’s fond of: Solarized. After a day of using it extensively with iTerm and Textmate, I can say that it’s much easier on my eyes. Thanks, Dave!

You’re a Linux sysadmin. You have a lot of experience with Linux in the cloud (AWS). You’re bored. You need some excitement in your life.

If one of these statements describes you, I have some great news! The company I work for is desperately seeking iOS devs and another Linux sysadmin. We’re located in Viet Nam, in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City. We have a warm, wonderful work environment that’s very much in “startup mode”. We’re a great group of people that occasionally resembles a UN tech meeting with members from Germany, France, the US, Canada, Australia and, of course, Viet Nam.

If you’re interested in stepping outside of your comfort zone and exploring SE Asia, leave a comment. We’re definitely interested in talking to you.

The big problem is that people don’t seem to understand the relationship between iowait and load. They see a very high load and very few processes and they can’t figure out why the load is so high.

When running ‘top’, look to the iowait percent number. If it’s high, the CPU is spinning its tires waiting on io. The referenced article can tell you how to find the culprit. You then need to figure out how to smooth out the bottleneck. If it’s temporary, you may have to just ride it out. If it’s a permanent process, such as MySQL, you may have to redesign your disk.

One issue with pre-release software is that it’s in a state of flux until it actually ships. I receive update notifications pretty much every day, and some of the updates are pretty major (274 packages this morning). The most recent update broke things in a bizarre way that took me about an hour to fix:

During the update, compiz was removed and my nVidia driver broke (kernel changes). I quickly figured out the nVidia problem and fixed it, but it took me a while to figure out why I couldn’t activate compiz. It didn’t occur to me that it would be gone. Only compiz was removed–the setting managers (simple and complex) were both left untouched. Reinstalling compiz fixed the problem.

The symptom, in case someone else runs into this, is that setting Desktop Appearance would hang the Desktop Appearance manager. Even after reinstalling compiz, the next run of Desktop Appearance hung. The run after, though, worked, re-enabling all of my desktop tweaks.

I did have to go back and make my standard compiz tweaks, though–those weren’t preserved when compiz was removed and reinstalled.

Running pre-release code can get you access to cool, cutting edge features. But it’s not without it’s potential pitfalls. And with open source, you don’t get to cry when it breaks. You get to figure it out on your own (with help from Google) and fix it yourself. “If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.”

One thing that did bother me was the way Chrome uses its own UI elements to paint the window borders and control buttons. The buttons wind up on the opposite side from every other apps buttons. There is a way to fix that, though. In Chrome Options, on the Personal Stuff tab, select ‘Use system title bar and borders’. Chrome will take up a little more space, but it’ll look the same as other windows and the window controls will be where you expect them.

I’ll be writing up a little more on Ubuntu shortly, as the release date approaches, so watch this space. For now, the pre-releases are rock solid and if you like to live on the edge, feel free to install now. No need to wait for the April 29 release date.