Posts Tagged Linux
GNOME 3 and Arch Linux
I’ve been following developments in the GNOME community for a while. In particular, I’ve been watching the battles rage over decisions made in the development of GNOME 3. The GNOME developers have tried to rethink the way we use desktop environments and window managers, and they’ve made some very controversial decisions.
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.
Ubuntu + Chrome: Rock Solid Web Browsing
I’m using the soon-to-be-released Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.4) and I have to say it really rocks. Coupled with Google Chrome, it’s the best web browsing experience I’ve had on my laptop. Rock solid. If a page load disrupts things, Chrome identifies the faulty page and kills it. In the rare case that the browser itself gets torn apart, the next stop automatically rebuilds all the open browser windows and tabs. No worries about losing your place. And it’s fast, too.
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.
The perils of bit rot…
Posted by chris in General SysAdmin on 20 March, 2009
Bit rot is a concept familiar to a lot of people. Usually, it refers to the slow degradation of data storage. Magnetic devices, over time, can lose their charge in places that can cause data holes to appear. Lose a few bits from a file and the file can become useless.
But there’s another form of bit rot that just as insidious and can be far more dangerous. It’s the bit rot that comes from keeping old systems on line and in production with no plan for an upgrade path. Let enough time pass and it could become impossible to upgrade the system.
I have a client that has a production system running an older version of Linux. The version of this particular distro is so old that file repositories are no longer maintained and security patches are no longer offered. Furthermore, this particular server is running a commercial piece of software that has been end-of-life’d by the vendor. Not only does the vendor no longer support the software, it’s impossible to get distribution media for the software. If this system were to blow up somehow, the client is basically screwed. We cannot reload the OS because we no longer have the original install media. We cannot reload the application for the same reason. The vendor might offer an upgrade to the software or we could just pay for the package all over again, but there’s no guarantee that the latest version will be backward-compatible with the existing system. Like I said—screwed.
The good news in this case is that we were able to uplift the entire system into a virtual machine. We can now back up the virtual machine image. In a worst case scenario, we can recover from backup and restore the virtual machine to be the same as the current hardware system. The process of uplifting such an old system was not trivial, and we were lucky that we were able to get it done. The client is now “protected” much more than he would have been had he continued down the same path.
Whenever you put a system in place, you need to plan for the eventual upgrade of that system. The reality is that software, and especially operating systems like Linux, matures. You need to plan for that. Distribution choice matters. Any of the Ubuntu LTS distributions are guaranteed to be supported for 5 years. Commercial distributions like RedHat and their Open derivatives like CentOS have long term support options available, too. Using Open Source tools makes the software path more favourable to upgrade.
Don’t let systemic bit rot happen to you…