Well, I spoke too soon. I was excited to see that Safari had been upgraded rather quickly, and posted before trying out the software.
When I used the upgrade I got a wee little error stating that the bonjour service failed to start. The problem is that I did not install the bonjour service when I originally installed Safari. The service is a security risk so I choose not to install it. Continue Reading »
Today at WWDC about the only thing that Apple really brought to the table was Safari for Windows XP and Vista.
My first thought is that this is a wonderful thing for web developers. They no longer need to rely on services such as browsershots to see what a page looks like in Safari. It really is great news for these people, but other than them who is going to use this browser? Continue Reading »
Mozilla Thunderbird is probably the best email client around. Besides being a slight resource hog the program works great. The only protocol that I use for email is IMAP, this allows for me to keep track of my emails from any location I am at. Many email client’s support for this protocol is very lacking, the only one I have found to do a great job with a GUI is Thunderbird. Most of the very good IMAP clients are command line, such as pine. Command line is great for many things, but for me a GUI is much nicer when it comes to email. Continue Reading »
<p>One of the problems with operating system today is their error messages. When something pukes out in Windows you will receive a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) with this hexadecimal error that you have no idea what it means until you look it up. </p> Continue Reading »
I started using the Mozilla lightweight browser called Phoenix in late 2002. I’ve been with the product for two name changes (Firebird and now Firefox) and many updates. It has grown from this tiny project to create a very lightweight browser to feature bloat. Continue Reading »
When someone gets a new computer most people are excited. They are finally able to use that once piece of software that they have been wanting to test out. This excitement quickly dies down when you have to spend over two hours trying to clean up all of the preinstalled junk on the computer. Continue Reading »
I’ve previously posted about XFCE with Beryl and the fact that its fairly easy to get working in xubuntu. In my second post I stated that I did not like Beryl for various reasons. With all of the talk as of late about Beryl being installed by default in various distros I decided to give it another go.
From my last post and this beryl had somehow became corrupt. When I would login to the beryl session the xfce window manager would start and it would not allow me to start beryl’s. I decided that it would be easiest just to uninstall all of the components and start fresh. Reinstalling was fairly simple with synaptic, I did not have any problems here. After a the install a quick ctrl+alt+backspace to restart X and I was in XCFE and Beryl once again.
The first thing I noticed was the fact that Beryl had been updated and a few things have changed. I thought that some of my previous problems may have been fixed, sadly I was wrong. If you use keyboard shortcuts for almost everything like me you will quickly find out that Beryl takes over most keyboard shortcuts by default. One of my favorite shortcuts is the F6 key in firefox. This normally moves the cursor to the address bar so you can type something in. I press this key when running Beryl and all of the sudden all of the windows hide and I see my desktop. I for one do not have any items on my desktop and have absolutely no need to have this shortcut. I went into the horrible beryl manager to try to find the place to unset this. It probably took half an hour to find the right setting.
I have to say I like the whole cube aspect of the 4 desktops. It provides a quick and easy way to remember go through all of the screens. It was fun to hit ctrl+alt+left or right arrow and just hold them down. It would make me dizzy and it surprisingly didn’t kill the processor. The issue I had was the fact that only the left control and alt would toggle the movement of the screen. Normally either of the controls and alts will work to do this. This might just be a setting, but I didn’t have time to look into this as the last time I tired to fix something it took 30 minutes.
The water effects are neat at first, but quickly become tiresome when you are trying to get real work done. It is just an unnecessary feature than wastes valuable time when you are trying to do things very quickly. You can live with it, but it just wastes time more than it adds to the experience.
What finally made me switch back to the xfce window manager was when I was typing my post on Vista last night and X kept “crashing” for no reason. I would be typing and all of the sudden X would restart. It seemed to always restart when I would get to one part about Vista blue screening, of all topics. After a little investigating I found out that beryl has kindly bound the shift and backspace together to restart Xserver. I would be trying BSOD (for Blue Screen Of Death) and would type it as BSDO and have to hit the backspace key. By habit I still had my finger on the shift key — X restarts. It took me about 4 times doing this to figure out exactly what it was.
I can see no logical reason to bind shift and backspace to restart X, you’ve already got control+alt+backspace to do this. There does not need to be a simpler command for it. This just aggravated me and I immediately switched away from beryl and do not currently have any desire to switch back. Some people may enjoy the fuzzy GUIs like beryl, Vista, and OS X, but I am not one of those people. If it does not improve productivity or at least give a laugh I do not see the reason for it being on the computer.
But hey, thats why I run xfce in the first place. I don’t like all of the extra stuff added by gnome and kde. I might just be one of the select few who feel this way though, I can see how most people enjoy all of the extra “features”.
VMware is a very neat product if you want to run any operating system without reformatting or using a spare computer. It allows you to create a virtual machine that runs inside your native system. So, if you run Linux and need to use one or two programs under Windows this allows for just that. Another popular reason to run this software is to test out Linux before installing it onto a computer. One of the best parts is that they offer this neat product for free!
A virtual machine is a great way to improve security along with its
other benefits. It allows for an enclosed environment for any virii or
other badware. Many anti-virus companies use this type of software to
test different virus’s effect a system. If you surf the net entirely
inside a VM then you do not have to worry near as much about something
infecting your system. This is truly a way to secure your system
without all that much work.
Now that we know of a few reasons
to use VMware lets take a look at getting it up and running. The
install of VMware was fairly simple under Linux, just extracting the
tarball and running vmware-install.pl. The installer asks several basic
questions and should be very easy to figure out the settings. Under
Windows it is a very basic installer that asks the same questions. It
is just as easy to use if not easier as it has a GUI to help with the
install.
After the install you are given a screen that allows
you to mount a pre-installed virtual machine (VM) or install your own.
They offer many several Linux distros in what they call appliances.
These are operating systems that someone else has installed and usually
have the default settings. This works very well if you quickly want to
try something and not wait for it to install.
Since what I am
looking for is Windows on top of Linux I have to install it myself as
they can not legally provide it. The XP install was almost identical to
a normal desktop install. The only large difference is that is was
slower, I mean a lot slower. You are installing Windows on top of
everything that is already running on your system, meaning that it does
not have all of the system resources. One of my main problems was the
lack of a ton of RAM. My system is a laptop with 512MB of RAM which I
split in half — 256mb to VMware and 256 to Linux. The ideal setup for
VMware would be a host machine with at least a gig of RAM.
Once
XP is installed it works just like it would under a normal install. I
install firefox and get shockwave working without issues. Now I am able
to play those shockwave games that you cant normally play under Linux.
For just this reason Vmware is worth the install. I install a few other
applications that only run under windows, such as Visio with no
problems at all.
After a few days of using VMware I tried to
install a Creative Zen V I got from someone and this is when the fun
begins. First off, this mp3 player is not good if you run Linux as it
uses the Music Transfer Protocol or MTP which is not natively supported
under Linux. There are a few programs out there that support other
Creative products, but unfortunately not this one. The next logical
option is to install it under VMware. The install of the software was
flawless, but USB support is severely flawed. To get the VM to see the
USB drive it has to be plugged in and powered on prior to starting up
the machine. This is not a big problem, more of a hassle to remember to
do this each time you want to sync your mp3s. The problem comes in when
you try to sync the devices for the first time — the VM blue screens!
Thats right, you can get a blue screen under Linux!
I had to test this multiple times to figure out exactly what the problem
was, but with a little googleing I found out that VMware does not
support USB2.0. I am not sure what is more amazing, the fact that it
doesnt support this protocol which is many years old or that it blue
screens when you try to use it. After trying to find a solution the
VMware provided option is to use a USB 1.1 hub between the device and
your computer to control the speed. This is outragious, they don’t
provide a decent software workaround, instead they want you to use
another piece of hardware to provide the solution. If they told me that
the fix was in a non-free version I would probably upgrade to it, but
from everything I’ve read this is a problem with every version of
VMware.
This software does amazing stuff and should at least be
tested out. It does have its quarks, such as the whole USB 2.0 issue,
but its a free piece of software so it is very hard to complain. I
highly recommend this software to anyone who wants to play with
multiple OS’s and have a bit of RAM. It works much better than wine (Linux) or cygwin (windows) and supports much more software.
I have been using Firefox since sometime in 2003 when it was still called Phoenix. At that point there were only a few people using this “new” browser and therefore did not have many extensions. I got used to running the browser in its default state without any add-ons. I did not know what I was missing until recently when I started playing with the different extensions that people have built. I now have found a select few extensions that allows firefox to run fast and securely.
NoScript
Most
people do not realize that having javascript enabled on a browser is
very insecure. If you go to a malicious web site they can do just about
anything to your computer without your knowledge. Most people have seen
the scare tactics with javascript where a site shows your internal IP
address to you. This in and of itself is harmless, but when combined
with the ability to scan your entire network for anything they want it
is harmful. More on this security hole can be found in the security now
netcast #52.
I used to use flashblock
to block annoying flash from autoplaying, but with NoScript it has the
ability to do the same thing and also any embeded files — flash, java,
and video files. If you want to surf securely in firefox you need to
turn javascript off, this adds the abiliy to white list certain web
sites so that they will still function if you trust them.
AdblockOne
of the most annoying things about the internet today is ads. With
adblock you can stop them from loading and make most sites load quite a
bit faster. NoScript will block most ads as they are loaded from
external javascript files, but there are always sites that try to get
around that and host them locally. This extension will allow you to
block them with a few clicks.
There are extensions out there to automatically update to block ads automatically in adblock, such as Filterset.G. I find these to block too much and impede on a sites valid content. I prefer to block only certain items I find annoying.
Fasterfox
If
you ever feel that firefox runs too slowly install fasterfox. This
extension tweaks the firefox settings to provide the fastest experience
possible. There are quite a few articles out there on how to speed up
firefox by editing the about:config, but editing this is like editing
the Windows registry — a pain.
Since I run my own server I find
that fasterfox in its default settings can cause problems with a small
server such as my own. That is why I choose the “optimized” setting
rather than “turbo charged”. This helps the speed of the page load
without compromising the server at the other end.
Web Developer
If
you do any sort of web development then this extension is a must have.
It has so many neat functions that its just something you should look
at to see if it has something that will be handy to you. Some of the
features I use is the HTML and CSS validation buttons and the outlining
tools.
Nightly Tester Tools
I
originally got this tool to test the beta version of firefox 2. It
provides the ability to install extensions that are not compatible with
the version of firefox you have. It has so many other geeky options
that I kept it installed after firefox 2 was released.
Greasemonkey
This
extension allows you to use javascript to customize a page. The issue
with this extension is that if you use NoScript to block javascript on
a page this extension will not work properly. It works great on trusted
pages, but not on untrusted ones.
The neatest part about
greasemonkey is all of the scripts that people have already created.
They have an entire web site dedicated to them userscripts.org. One of the scripts I use adds a link to duggmirror on all digg posts so you can easily go to the mirror if the site goes down with traffic.
Add n Edit Cookies
Allows
you to quickly edit cookies in firefox. I use it primarily to change
the expiration date on sites that log you out after a certain amount of
time.
IE Tab
While
using Windows I prefer to open a new tab with Internet Explorer rather
than opening up IE in its own window. This works great for sites like
Microsoft updates which only works in IE.
Reload Every
Reloads the page at set intervals. I find this to be quite handy when trying to test web design functions.
Extensions I no longer use
These are extensions that I used at some point but no longer use for various reasons
Foxytunes
This extension was great while I use Windows as my primary OS. Since I no longer use Windows to listen to music and control xmms in gkrellm I no longer need this extension.
Live PageRank
I
used this for a while until I found out that the extension was tracking
my every move on the internet. Talk about creepy spyware.
Forcastfox
When
I used to have to go outside for work I used this extension to know
what to expect. I how have an office with a window and can just look
outside.
Fireftp
This
adds the ability to have a FTP client inside firefox. I found it to be
buggy and it would crash firefox. I have not used it in a while and
they have probably fixed these issues, but I just would rather fire up
an actual FTP program.
FlashGot
Allows
you to download a ton of stuff in one click. I just do not have a use
for this extension at this point. I don’t save all that much to my hard
drive anymore.
Final Note
Extensions for
Firefox should represent yourself and not someone else. If you do not
use an extension remove it as it can slow down Firefox if you have too
many extensions installed. Don’t be scared by extensions, it is very
easy to add and remove extensions so try various extensions out until
you find a combination that you like.
I have been running beryl for a few days now and I have to admit, I don’t like it. I have ran it in both AIGLX and XGL modes and they both put a huge load on my CPU. My main system is my laptop which is a AMD 1800+ with 512mb RAM. I run XFCE not because my system will not handle KDE or Gnome, but because I prefer its speed and in my opinion ease of use.
My main problem with beryl is the fact that is eats away at my CPU.
For example, I am away from my computer all night and I get back on
with a 1.75 load. Without this software the load would be in the 0.01
to 0.05 range. I am not sure if I do not have a setting right or what,
but I followed the wiki’s on the project’s site.
Everything
with beryl looks very glassy in all of the themes, it looks a lot like
Vista. There are probably quite a few people who like this, I am not
one of them. I guess that I am someone who prefers function over
beauty. I found the program to be more limiting than helpful. By
default when you right click on a link in your browser it will wiggle
for what feels like an eternity. Its easy to turn this off in the
manager, but by the time you get everything running quick you are just
about back to your default window manager settings.
One really
neat feature was when a window was not active it would go slightly
transparent. This makes it very easy to find out what has focus.
For
me, the cons highly outweigh the pros for Beryl and its glossy windows.
At this point I would not recommend it to anyone unless they are
looking for the beauty in the system and not functionality. I think
this will be great for the OS X or Vista converts, but for us who have
been using Linux happily for years its just annoying.
You can find my previous post with screen shots here.
