Today, I want to revisit the article I wrote 2 years ago about 10 things I missed when switching from OS X to Ubuntu. There have been 5 major Ubuntu upgrades since I wrote my original article, have things changed that much? Do I still miss the things I missed back then? Let’s look at each point again, and see how things have changed.

1. Dashboard – No longer missed

When I first switched to Ubuntu, I really missed the OS X Dashboard feature. Most of all, I missed being able to open the Dashboard and quickly check the weather, see the calendar, and check the time in multiple time zones. I tried many different widget systems on Ubuntu, but found them all clumsy and unusable. Perhaps there are some out there now that are great, I don’t know, because I don’t even want a Dashboard any more!

At some point, Gnome added the weather and multiple time zones to the standard clock panel widget. This allows me to always see the full date, time, and weather conditions in the top-right corner of my desktop. If I click on the date, I’m presented with a calendar, events from Evolution or Google Galendar, and the time and weather conditions in any city that I’ve added to my list. This is far more convenient than pushing F12 all the time on the Mac and waiting for the Dashboard to appear. Of course, the dashboard can do much more than this, but for my needs, Gnome panel widgets do everything I want.

2. Quicksilver – No longer missed

I still love Quicksilver on the Mac for quickly launching apps and doing repetitive tasks. I can’t use OS X without Quicksilver because digging through the Finder to launch something like the Activity Monitor drives me nuts.

Since I wrote my original article, we’ve seen the major improvements in Gnome Do. It’s now a great replacement for Quicksilver. The thing I find most interesting, however, is that I almost never find myself using Gnome Do. I think this is because it’s so much easier to launch programs from the Applications menu or the Gnome Panel that I simply do not need another application launcher for Ubuntu.

3. Adium – No longer missed

I still think that Adium is one of the best chat clients I’ve ever used. It’s functional, beautiful and the best chat client on OS X.  But I no longer miss Adium when using Ubuntu. Not long after I wrote my first article, GAIM was renamed to Pidgin and along with the renaming came a load of improvements, including a much better looking interface. Today’s Pidgin and Adium aren’t really that different form each other, they look different, but act basically the same.  Unfortunately, Ubuntu no longer includes Pidgin by default, but it’s super easy to install.

4. Professional Graphics Software – Still very much missed!

The lack of professional grade graphics software for Linux is still a huge problem. I’m even more convinced of this today than I was 2 years ago. I actually forced myself to use only Ubuntu and open source graphics programs when working on 2 major projects. Did I succeed, yes! … but the process was extremely painful.

First, there was the pain of learning GIMP. From a technical point of view, the GIMP might be just fine, but from an end user point of view, it’s simply horrible. I was able to make it work, and I was able to complete my work, but the end result left me feeling disgruntled and I feel that my projects suffered as well. I used other programs too, such as Inkscape, and generally found them acceptable, but I still kept wishing that I had access to Adobe Fireworks or Photoshop.

5. TextMate – No longer missed

Vim: The Free Man’s TextMate

I still spend a lot of time working in a text editor. I got hooked on using TextMate for my web and Ruby on Rails work. It seems like all the cool Rails developers use TextMate exclusively, but we’re starting to see a shift from that. I see more and more people talking about using Vim for their coding projects.

Thanks to this great article, I discovered that I could do almost everything I want right in Vim and a Terminal window. I now have a set of Vim configuration files that I can use on any system (even on Mac and Windows) that have everything set up just how I want it. I love it and I’d never go back to TextMate!

6. Dictionary – Still missed

Mac OS has a great built-in dictionary application. I used to find myself using it all the time. It has high quality entries are from the Oxford American Dictionary.

On Ubuntu, there is a dictionary application installed by default, but it can only look up words in free dictionaries (results and quality vary). This means that you must be online to look up a word, which can be a real bummer.

I’ve also played around with other dictionary programs like StarDict. Unfortunately, I found them rather unusable and they generally don’t “just work.” I personally think that a high-quality dictionary program for Ubuntu is needed. I’d even be willing to pay for something, especially if it can give me multi-language translations.

7. Quicktime – No longer missed

When I was first moving to Ubuntu, playing media files was a really big problem. The codecs and players that were available at the time were very unreliable, they often crashed, didn’t work properly and sometimes didn’t work at all. I found this extremely annoying. It was also difficult to install the necessary codecs.

All this has changed now. Playing media files on Ubuntu is a breeze. The media player will automatically find and install any needed codecs, and it plays just about any file you throw at it. In fact, I can’t remember the last time that a media file didn’t “just work” in Ubuntu. The Linux community and the Ubuntu team have done a superb job of making media files work – way to go guys!

8. Bluetooth Support and Syncing – No longer missed

Much like the situation with media files, Ubuntu 7.04 did not do a good job with Bluetooth. The latest versions of Ubuntu, however, are pretty good at working with Bluetooth devices. It’s now trivial to connect a Bluetooth enabled phone to your computer, transfer files, etc. There may still be some ways to make Bluetooth better on Ubuntu, but I can’t think of any, it just works now, and I think that’s great!

9. System-wide spell checking – Still would be nice, but not missed

I can’t say that I miss this feature on a daily basis, but it still would be nice to have.

Mac OS X has system-wide spell checking for all Cocoa based apps. This means you can have just about everything you type into your Mac spell checked. This unified system means that you only have to train one dictionary with your new words.

Of course there is spell checking in almost every Ubuntu application, but each one has its own system. You need to train the dictionaries for each app and get used to each system’s little quirks. Hopefully, someone out there is working on a system-wide spell checking framework for Linux.

10. Smart Trackpad – Still would be nice, but not missed

When making the switch to Ubuntu, the trackpad settings (from 7.04) really drove me nuts. I had all kinds of problems with the trackpad not being shut off when typing, and missed some of the fancy trackpad features in OS X. In general, I don’t like using trackpads and prefer using a mouse, but when using a trackpad on Ubuntu, I can say for sure that things have gotten better.  Things have also changed in the OS X world of trackpads (multi touch, etc). I still consider Linux to be behind Apple in trackpad technology, but I don’t miss any of those features any more.

Conclusion

I have to say that over the last couple of years, I’ve really come to love Ubuntu. Until recently, I rarely felt the need to go back to Windows or OS X (I’ll tell you more about that in another blog post). I’ve been generally pleased with each new release of Ubuntu and enjoy seeing the incremental improvements. Ubuntu has come an unbelievable way since I first tried it almost 5 years ago.  I think the future is bright for Ubuntu and Linux in general … but there’s still a long way to go!

What are some things that you miss from Windows or Mac when you’re using Ubuntu? Share your ideas in the comments below!

Related posts:

1. Switching From OS X to Ubuntu: 10 Things I Miss
2. Mac OS X Home and End Keys
3. KeyFixer – Fix Your OS X Home and End Keys

After doing some quick googling, I realized that this motherboard series is actually quite popular and that people are using them for all sorts of tasks. Some make them into entertainment centers, low-powered servers, car computers and even hackintoshes. This peeked my interest and I decided to try it out for myself, after all, using some of my old computer parts (HD and DVD drive), I could make this new desktop for less than $200, what did I have to loose?

So, are these Intel motherboards with their low-power Atom processors really all that people claim? Could I run Ubuntu (my main goal), Windows 7 and OS X all on this dirt cheap hardware?  Here’s what I found out.

My Hardware

• Intel Desktop Board D945GCLF2D with integrated Intel Atom processor
• Compucase Mini ITX case 8K01BS-SA12U
• 2GB of Kingston DDR2 RAM
• Old 400 GB Seagate SATA hard drive
• Old IDE DVD drive

Build your own

• Intel Desktop Motherboard with Atom Processor, about $90 – Intel D945GCLF2
• Mini ITX Case, about $60 – Mini ITX Cases
• 2GB of RAM, about $25 – Kingston ValueRam 2GB
• Hard Drive, about $50 – Western Digital Caviar Blue 250 GB Hard Drive or pick out a bigger one
• Optical Drive, about $25 – Optical Drives

This motherboard is really small, and you can buy some incredibly small cases to put it in. The smaller cases don’t have much room for add-ons (but really, how often do we really fill our cases with addons?). It seems that just about everything can be added by USB these days. In fact, I decided not even to install an internal DVD drive, because I don’t need a DVD drive for everyday use.

I found the case to be very nice and I have no complaints. Putting everything together was a snap and both the case and motherboard came with adequate instructions. The real question here is about performance with different operating systems.

Ubuntu 9.04

Since I do most of my daily work and programming in Ubuntu, this was the most important OS for me. I was going to try installing from a USB flash drive, which everyone claims is easy, but found it easier to just hook up my old IDE DVD drive temporarily and use my trusty Ubuntu Jaunty install CD. Everything went like normal, the Ubuntu install is incredibly simple these days. I had Jaunty up and running in less than 20 minutes.

I’m happy to report that all of the hardware worked perfectly with absolutely no tweaking – I never opened a terminal once while setting up this machine – it just works!  I was immediately surprised by the performance of the machine. The dual-core Atom 330 processor runs at 1.6 GHz and I figured that performance would be pretty poor.

The machine boots Ubuntu quickly and launches applications seemingly just as fast as my Core 2 Duo system. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it works very well for daily use. I don’t use any really power-hungry applications (besides Firefox, which seems to demand more resources every day) and spend a lot of time in Vim and the browser. Video performance is acceptable and Compiz works flawlessly.  I didn’t do any benchmarks, but I can say that I find the performance to be acceptable.

Windows 7

I decided to install the release candidate of Windows 7, again expecting poor performance. (Note, if you want to dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows, it’s best to install Windows first). Windows 7 also installed on this hardware without any tweaking, I didn’t even need to download any drivers. To my amazement, everything just worked. Even all the fancy visual effects worked out of the box!

Windows 7 takes significantly longer to boot than Ubuntu, but boot times were acceptable. Performance seemed reasonable to me (although, installing AVG anti virus really made things work a lot slower). I installed several applications and didn’t run into any problems. I’m not a heavy windows user (pretty much Windows free since late 2005) so I can’t compare the performance to other machines. I can say that I found it usable. For a part-time Windows user, or for those who just like to surf the web and organize their photos, this hardware should be sufficient for running Windows 7.

OS X

I did some quick searches, and found a lot of reports of successful OS X instillation on this motherboard. I have an old Macbook for when I need OS X (which is rare), so installing OS X was not a priority for me. I did give it a try, however, using one of the newer methods which allows you to install from a Leopard retail DVD. I’m not an advocate of cracking or stealing software, so this method seems more palatable to me (it still breaks Apple’s EULA, but not the DMCA).

I followed several different tutorials and was able to get OS X installed on a spare hard drive. I wasn’t, however, able to get things to work perfectly. I had problems with the video drivers that I found online, and all of my 5 attempted installations ended in a machine that either would not boot properly or had messed up video.

I’m quite sure that it’s possible to install Leopard on this hardware, especially since so many others have reported success. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can probably make it work. Personally, Ubuntu does 99% of what I need, so I’ll stick with the free, open source and legal OS that “just works” on my hardware rather than spend days trying to make a hackintosh.

Conclusion

I think this computer would be a wonderful addition to any household. It’s a perfect computer for anyone who’s not a power user (you don’t want use it for gaming, to do high-end video processing or run virtual machines), for kids, grandparents, anyone really. I would feel good about giving this computer for just about any of my friends or relatives. Why not build your own and give it a try?

Related posts:

1. Run Windows Apps With Darwine
2. Goodbye Windows (Sorta)
3. Linux is Losing to Windows XP in Netbooks

So, how many users does Ubuntu have? It’s really hard to tell. In October, 2007, Canonical claimed that there were over 6 million users of Ubuntu. Then in October, 2008, in an interview with IneternetNews.com a Canonical spokesman claimed that

“In terms of numbers we’re very confident this is an 8 million plus user base of active users. That is a hard thing to count and there are lots of issues about methodology for counting but I have seen nothing that sheds doubts on that.”

With this in mind, lets look at some indicators and statistics from around the web to see just how popular Ubuntu really is. Has it gained in popularity since 2007, or has another distro come in to take Ubuntu’s place?

Note: this article is in no way a scientific study of Ubuntu’s popularity, it is just a collection of interesting stats from around the net. Have fun with it!

1. DistroWatch.com

Like last time around, we’ll start things out with distrowatch.com. While not the best indicator of a distro’s popularity, it is a traditionally accepted measure of popularity in the Linux community. When we wrote our original article back in November of 2007, PCLinuxOS topped the distrowatch list, but that apparently didn’t last for long, as Ubuntu is once again back on top (and overall yearly stats at distrowatch.com show Ubuntu in the number one position from 2005-present).

DistroWatch.com’s most popular linux distributions for the past 6 months

1. Ubuntu
2. Fedora
3. openSUSE
4. Mint
5. Debian
6. Mandriva
7. PCLinuxOS
8. Puppy
9. Sabayon
10. CentOS

This is the list that we’ll use going forward to compare the top distros.

2. Website popularity

There are several companies that specialize in ranking websites. None of these sites are perfect and many people discount them all together. We thought it would be interesting to see how some of the top Linux distribution websites stack up in these net rankings. Here are current rankings for the top 10 distros (from the Distrowatch list). The November 2007 results are included in parenthesis.

Netcraft Rankings

1. www.ubuntu.com: 694 (up from 1,649)
2. www.OpenSUSE.org: 1,823 (up from 4,622)
3. www.debian.org: 1,938 (down from 1,719)
4. fedoraproject.org: 2,164 (up from 4,314)
5. www.centos.org: 3,054 (not on the list in 2007)
6. www.linuxmint.com: 3,150 (way up from 41,331)
7. www.mandriva.com: 10,049 (down from 7,691)
8. www.pclinuxos.com: 10,479 (up from 11,144)
9. www.puppylinux.org: 14,196 (not on the list in 2007)
10. www.sabayonlinux.org: 36,494 (down from 28,549)

Alexa Rankings

1. www.ubuntu.com: 2,327 (up from 2,445)
2. www.debian.org: 4,475 (down from 3,499)
3. www.OpenSUSE.org: 10,889 (down from 7,878)
4. fedoraproject.org: 12,992 (down from 11,127)
5. www.centos.org: 16,198 (not on the list in 2007)
6. www.linuxmint.com: 29,146 (up from 69,753)
7. www.mandriva.com: 30,945 (down from 18,497)
8. www.puppylinux.org: 62,103 (not on the list in 2007)
9. www.pclinuxos.com: 80,114 (down from 57,390)
10. www.sabayonlinux.org: 120,109 (down from 72,331)

So, it seems that Ubuntu is, according to these sites, the most visited of the distros from distrowatch’s top 10. It’s also interesting to note that Linux Mint’s rankings have dramatically improved since 2007. Perhaps Mint’s popularity has something to do with their focus on being user friendly (and not brown)?

Blogging Trends

Sites like Technorati and BlogPulse allow you to track how often people are blogging about a certain topic. We compared Ubuntu’s blog buzz to other top Linux distros and found that people are writing about Ubuntu far more than any other Linux distro.

BlogPulse

We took the top three distros from distrowatch and compared them on BlogPulse.

Technorati

Technorati shows very similar results when comparing Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE and Debian over the last 180 days.

As you can see, people are blogging about Ubuntu far more often than other distros. (We’d also like to note that a good amount of blog posts that contain the word “fedora” are about the hat and not the Linux distro).

Google Trends

Again we decided to look at Google Trends to see which distros people are searching for. Of course, there is a lot of room for error as someone could be searching for the philosophy of Ubuntu, for a new Fedora hat, or for The Red Hat Society.

First we compare our top 4 distros from above. You can clearly see that from the second half of 2006, there are far more searches for Ubuntu than for Debian, Fedora (including Fedora Core, and Red Hat searches) or openSUSE (including SUSE).

Next we compare Ubuntu to the rest of the top 10 distros combined (including variations of the distro names such as Red Hat). It seems that since mid 2007, Ubuntu is being searched for more often than all the other distros combined.

Here we compare Ubuntu to Linux, Unix, FreeBSD and Solaris. Clearly Linux has the lead, but Ubuntu gets really close around release dates. In 2007, we thought this trend would lead to “Ubuntu” overtaking “Linux” as a search term, but this clearly has not happened.

Finally, for some perspective, we compare Ubuntu, Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Twitter

Since our original article was published, searching Twitter trends has become an interesting way of finding out what people are talking about.  We used Twist to compare the same top 4 distros. Here is a graph comparing tweets over the last 30 days. (Once again, a whole lot of the “fedora” tweets are about the hat, not the Linux distro).

And finally, we compare Ubuntu with Linux, Mac and Windows.

Conclusion

It appears that Ubuntu is still the most popular Linux distribution. According to some stats, it’s more popular now than ever. Of course, these stats don’t really tell us how many people actually use Ubuntu. They do, however, give an interesting insight into Ubuntu’s relative popularity on the internet. They also re-emphasize just how far Ubuntu (and Linux in general) have to go to catch up with Mac and Windows.

Remember, this was all just for fun, no need to get upset if you don’t like something you see here (or if we left out your favorite distro). Whatever your favorite OS is, the most important thing is that it works for you and that you can be productive using it. So, until next time, happy computing!

Related posts:

1. Ubuntu: Just how popular is it?

There is no doubt that Ubuntu’s popularity has grown dramatically over the past few years, but just how popular is Ubuntu? How many people have ever heard of Ubuntu? How many people visit the Ubuntu site each month? How many people have tried Ubuntu, and more importantly, how many people are actually using it?

According to Canonical’s official press release for Gutsy Gibbon, Ubuntu has a “strong and growing user base of over 6 million people.” Where Canonical got this number is not clear, and they have provided no evidence to back up this claim. Nobody really knows how many people are using Ubuntu, but we found some interesting statistics online that show Ubuntu’s popularity is growing. From these statistics, it looks like Ubuntu has become far more popular than any other Linux distribution.

Note: this article is in no way a scientific study of Ubuntu’s popularity, it is just a collection of interesting stats from around the net. Have fun with it!

So, where can we look online to judge Ubuntu’s popularity?

1. DistroWatch.com

Traditionally, people have turned to DistroWatch.com’s ranking of different versions of Linux to judge a distro’s popularity. This is simply a ranking of the average number of hits per day that each distro’s page gets on the DistroWatch.com site. This ranking system is obviously not a very accurate representation of a Linux distro’s popularity, but it is the generally accepted by the community as an indication of what distros are most popular. Ubuntu has been at the top of this list for some time, and only in the last six months has been surpassed by PCLinuxOS.

DistroWatch.com’s most popular linux distributions for the past 6 months

1. PCLinuxOS
2. Ubuntu
3. openSUSE
4. Fedora
5. Sabayon
6. Mint
7. Debian
8. Mandriva
9. MEPIS
10. Damn Small

Does this mean that PCLinuxOS is now more popular that Ubuntu? As the following stats show, this is hardly the case.

2. Website popularity

There are several companies that specialize in ranking websites. None of these sites are perfect and many people discount them all together. We thought it would be interesting to see how some of the top Linux distribution websites stack up in these net rankings. Here are current rankings for the top 10 distros (from the Distrowatch list). When a distro has a corporate sponsor, we’ve included their website ranking in parentheses.

Netcraft Rankings

1. www.ubuntu.com: 1,649 (www.canonical.com: 88,013)
2. www.debian.org: 1,719
3. fedoraproject.org: 4,314 (www.redhat.com: 1,273)
4. www.OpenSUSE.org: 4,622 (www.novell.com: 630)
5. www.mandriva.com: 7,691
6. www.mepis.org: 8,021
7. www.damnsmalllinux.org: 8,605
8. www.pclinuxos.com 11,144
9. www.sabayonlinux.org: 28,549
10. www.linuxmint.com: 41,331

Alexa Rankings

1. www.ubuntu.com: 2,445 (canonical.com: 119,849)
2. www.debian.org: 3,499
3. www.OpenSUSE.org: 7,878 (novell.com: 9,154)
4. fedoraproject.org: 11,127 (redhat.com: 7,089)
5. www.mandriva.com: 18,497
6. www.damnsmalllinux.org: 49,544
7. www.pclinuxos.com: 57,390
8. www.sabayonlinux.org: 72,331
9. www.linuxmint.com: 69,753
10. www.mepis.org: 82,654

Update: As someone pointed out on Digg, Gentoo’s website should probably be included in this list. We didn’t include Gentoo in our original numbers because we used the Distrowatch.com top 10 as our starting point (you have to start somewhere). To be fair, let it be noted that Gentoo’s Netcraft ranking is 859 and their Alexa ranking is 8,919 which would place gentoo.com in 1st place and 4th place respectively.

Blogging Trends

Sites like Technorati and BlogPulse allow you to track how often people are blogging about a certain topic. We compared Ubuntu’s blog buzz to other top Linux distros and found that people are writing about Ubuntu far more than any other Linux distro.

BlogPulse

We took the top 3 Linux distros from the above website rankings and compared them on BlogPulse. As you can see, people are blogging about Ubuntu far more often. There is also a large surge in blog posts about Ubuntu surrounding the recent October 18th release of Gutsy Gibbon.

Technorati

Technorati shows very similar results when comparing Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora over the last 30 days (note the scale difference in these graphs).

Ubuntu	Debian	Fedora

Google Trends

Perhaps the most interesting statistics come from Google Trends. This tool allows you to compare different terms and see how often people search for them. The tool is far from perfect and is still in Google’s “labs”, but it does give some interesting insight into how often people search for different Linux distros. Of course, there is a lot of room for error as someone could be searching for the philosophy of Ubuntu, for a new Fedora hat, or for The Red Hat Society.

First we compare our top 3 distros from above. You can clearly see that from the second half of 2006, there are far more searches for Ubuntu than for Debian and Fedora (including Fedora Core, and Red Hat searches).

Next we compare Ubuntu to the rest of the top 10 distros combined (including variations of the distro names such as Red Hat). As you can see, for the last few months, Ubuntu has been searched for more often than all the other top 10 combined.

We found another interesting trend when comparing Ubuntu to Linux, Unix, FreeBSD and Solaris. Clearly Linux has the lead, but Ubuntu is not far behind.

Finally, just to be fair, we compare Ubuntu, Linux, Mac, and Windows.

DIGG

Then there’s always Digg.com. How many times have these popular Linux distros made it to the front page of Digg in the last 6 months (stories containing the distro’s name in the title)? We did some searching and found the following information very interesting.

1. Ubuntu: 163
2. Fedora: 10
3. Mandriva: 8
4. SUSE: 8
5. Debian: 6
6. PCLinuxOS: 3
7. MEPIS: 1
8. Sabayon: 1
9. Mint: 0
10. Damn Small: 0

Conclusion

So what do all these statistics really mean? Honestly, probably nothing. They can’t tell us anything about real Ubuntu usage. However, they do seem to show that Ubuntu has managed to gain a large portion of the Linux mind share, at least amongst the tech community. We enjoyed uncovering and compiling these stats, but please remember that it’s just a bunch of unscientific data, it’s just for fun. We hope you enjoyed this article, now back to your favorite OS (whatever that might be).

Related posts:

1. Ubuntu: Still Popular?
2. 10 Alternative Web Browsers for Ubuntu Linux

Then, about two months ago, I switched to using a new Dell with Ubuntu Linux at work. For the most part, I couldn’t be happier, but there are a few things I really miss about my Mac. Here’s a list of the 10 things I miss the most. If you know of replacements for any of these under Ubuntu, please leave a comment and share your solution.

1. Dashboard

When I first upgraded to OS X Tiger, I thought the Dashboard was silly and a waste of processing power. After almost two years, it became the thing I instantly missed the most when using Ubuntu. With a selection of Dashboard widgets including clocks displaying multiple time-zones, the weather, system stats, and website stats, the Dashboard can become quite addicting. When using Ubuntu, I keep wanting to press F12 to check my widgets, but I haven’t found a good desktop widget solution for Ubuntu yet.

2. Quicksilver

I love Quicksilver on the Mac for quickly launching apps and doing repetitive tasks. I can’t use a Mac without Quicksilver because digging through the Finder to launch something like the Activity Monitor drives me nuts.

I’ve only scratched the surface of what Quicksilver can do, but I can’t find anything on Ubuntu that does these tasks quite as well. I’ve tried Deskbar but find it slow and annoying. Is there something out there that compares with Quicksilver on Ubuntu?

3. Adium

Adium is simply the best chat client I’ve ever used. Because it is based off the same messaging library as Pidgin (GAIM), it supports just about ever IM network out there. The interface, however, is much nicer than Pidgin’s interface and integrates perfectly with OS X.

When Using GAIM on Ubuntu 7.04, I feel like I’ve stepped back 5 years. GAIM under Ubuntu is clunky and rather ugly. It’s also much more difficult to see when new messages arrive because there is no notification system similar to Aduim’s Growl based notices. The version of Pidgin shipping with the Ubuntu 7.10 looks more promising, hopefully it is more polished and fun to use.

4. Professional Graphics Software

Yeah, I know, this is probably the number one complaint that everyone has about using Linux, but I’ve found it to be true – I can’t find any really great professional graphics software for Ubuntu. I know, GIMP is great, but I’m accustomed to using Adobe Fireworks for web design and site mockups, and GIMP just doesn’t fit my needs. Come on Adobe, start supporting Linux already!

5. TextMate

The Free Man’s TextMate: Gvim + Nautilus

I spend a lot of time working in a text editor. I got hooked on using TextMate for my web and Ruby on Rails work. It might not be the best text editor in the world, but it seems to be the best on the Mac.

On Ubuntu, I’m using a combination of Gvim and Nautilus to replace TextMate. Gvim is fine, but I’m not yet a Vim expert and the lack of a good integrated file browser really bothers me. I think I’ll get over this one pretty soon.

6. Dictionary

Mac OS has a great built-in dictionary application. I often find myself launching this app (with the help of Quicksilver) to check a word or find a good synonym. The high quality entries are from the Oxford American Dictionary.

On Ubuntu, there is a dictionary application, but it can only look up words in free dictionaries (results and quality vary). This means that you must be online to look up a word, which is kind of a bummer. There are some cool features like multi-language dictionaries, but the quality often leaves much to be desired. Is there a really great dictionary app for Linux?

7. Quicktime

Quicktime is one of those things that Mac users take for granted. It’s just there and it plays almost any media file you throw at it (especially if you’ve installed the Perian plugin).

Playing your favorite media files on Ubuntu is not a great experience. Sure, if you hunt around the web enough, you find instructions on how to make just about any media file play in Linux, but the results are usually buggy. I often find it possible to play a file but not possible to fast forward or rewind without the player crashing. I miss Quicktime and its simplicity.

8. Bluetooth Support and Syncing

Bluetooth support in OS X is simple and easy to use. I have a mobile phone with Bluetooth and it only took me a few minutes to pair it with my Mac and start syncing files. A few minutes later, I was using the phone as a mobile modem that can connect my Macbook to the net while on the road. Transferring files to and from devices like mobile phones and the Nokia N800 is also a breeze.

While I was able to get rudimentary file transfers working with the Bluetooth module in my Dell N1420, it was not easy. Syncing contacts and calendars also seems to be impossible. Much work could be done to improve the Bluetooth experience in Ubuntu.

9. System-wide spell checking

Mac OS X has system-wide spell checking for all Cocoa based apps. This means you can have just about everything you type into your Mac spell checked. This unified system means that you only have to train one dictionary with your new words.

Of course there is spell checking in almost every Ubuntu application, but each one has its own system. You need to train the dictionaries for each app and get used to each system’s little quirks. Hopefully, someone out there is working on a system-wide spell checking framework for Linux.

10. Smart Trackpad

I prefer to use an external mouse instead of a notebook’s trackpad, but if I have to use one, I want it to behave itself and be easy to use. Apple’s implementation of the trackpad is simply brilliant. You can customize the trackpad to ignore accidental clicks, use two-finger scrolling, and the all-so-cool two-finger “right click”.

After using a Macbook for over a year, the trackpad included with my Dell Ubuntu system seems horrible. First of all, the scrolling feature of the trackpad doesn’t work at all. What’s even worse is the lack of a setting (that I can find) to make the trackpad ignore accidental taps. I’m constantly having the cursor jump to another spot on the screen because I accidentally tapped the trackpad with my palm while typing. I’m really hoping that Ubuntu 7.10 addresses some of these issues.

Overall, I have to say that I’m very happy with using Ubuntu. These are just a few little things that really bug me about my Dell Ubuntu notebook. With a little patients, I’m sure most of these issues will be solved. There are also a lot of things I love about Ubuntu that I miss when I use OS X, maybe I’ll share those in my next post.

Related posts:

1. From OS X to Ubuntu: 2 Years Later
2. Why I’m Switching to Mac and Linux
3. Dell Inspiron 1420N with Ubuntu Unboxing

The time seems right for a company like Dell to partner with a distribution like Ubuntu and bring Linux to the masses. Unfortunately, Dell and Ubuntu’s parent company Canonical have not worked together closely enough to make this a first-rate offering. While I think the 1420N is a great computer overall, the lack of attention to detail (and unbelievably bad driver support) keep these latest Linux offerings from being ready for the general public. Hopefully Dell and Canonical will resolve these problems and make a truly great product that I could feel comfortable recommending to family members who are not familiar with Linux.

The Good

Design

Having used a Macbook for the last year, I was not initially impressed with the 1420’s design. Apple has made the industrial design of their computers into such an art that any other laptops look bad in comparison. However, when compared with other PC notebooks, the 1420 is very nice. It looks nice sitting on my desk and is comfortable to use.

Heat Management

One place where the 1420 design outshines the Macbook is in heat management. If you’ve ever used a modern Apple notebook, you’ll know that they become extremely hot and it’s nearly impossible to use them on your lap. The Dell 1420 has a fan that blows hot air out the left side of the notebook and keeps the bottom of the notebook very cool. You can comfortably use the 1420 on your lap for hours without the machine overheating.

Keyboard

The keyboard feels nice and has good tactile feedback. The extra buttons like “delete”, “page up” and “page down” are placed in reasonable locations considering the normal lack of space on notebook keyboards. The extra media keys work well to control the volume and navigate media in Totem and Rythembox. The power button conveniently brings up the Gnome logout menu (this can be changed to preform other tasks via the Gnome Power Manager).

Screen

I upgraded to a higher resolution glossy screen. While the 1440×900 resolution is nice, I wish it was available with a non-glare coating. Colors look noticeably different when compared with a Macbook and with computers running Windows XP. This could simply be a difference between the way Linux and other operating systems handle color or might possibly be a problem with the video driver (more on that later). Overall, the screen is very nice and one of the first notebook screens that doesn’t make my eyes hurt after hours of work.

Good But Needs Improvement

Bluetooth

I ordered the Bluetooth module for an extra 20 dollars. I’ve been using Bluetooth with my Macbook to transfer files to and from my mobile devices and for connecting to my mobile phone for internet access. I knew that Bluetooth support in Ubuntu is pretty poor, but I wanted to see if it would be usable. The first thing I noticed is that there is no way to turn the Bluetooth radio on and off separately from the WiFi radio without entering the BIOS. This means that the Bluetooth radio is almost always on, wasting battery power and possibly causing a security risk. It would be nice to be able to turn the radio on and off with its own switch or via software. (Update: If you feel like compiling some software, it is possible to turn Bluetooth on and off via the command line. Here’s how.)

Getting the Bluetooth up and running was not easy. Most of the necessary software was installed by default, but I still needed to install extra software and edit configuration files to make anything work. With some tweaking and the help of these instructions, I was able to send files to and from the my Sony Ericsson w810i and Nokia N800. I’ve heard that it is possible to use the w810i as a modem in Linux, but with no graphical interface for these type of connections, it’s not very useful for the average user.

WiFi

The 1420 WiFi works well with unsecured and WPA secured networks. NetworkManager has problems connecting to WEP encrypted networks. Lack of good WEP support is annoying and severely limits Ubuntu’s ability to connect to public access points.

Audio

I was surprised at the high quality sound card included with the 1420. When listening with headphones, no noise is noticeable and audio sounds very clear. The inclusion of two headphone jacks and a microphone jack on the front of the machine is a nice touch. Getting a microphone to work was not quite so easy. There are holes in the case above the screen that appear to be for a built-in microphone. If there is a microphone back there, I was never able to get it to work.

I was able to get an old headset working when I plugged it into the microphone port on the front. Unfortunately, Ubuntu and Dell have not included an audio mixer for adjusting the input volume. I needed to hunt through the Synaptic package manager for a mixer and install it before I could get the microphone volume loud enough to make Skype calls. A little bit of customization and package pre-installation on Dell and Canonical’s part could take using microphones from annoying to a great experience.

DVD Drive

Watching unencrypted home recorded DVDs is no problem and you’re prompted to install the proper codecs when the first DVD is inserted. Burning simple data and audio CDs and DVDs is also very easy with the built-in tools. It would be nice if Dell included more robust burning software (perhaps Nero Linux) and DVD software capable of playing commercial DVDs without installing software of questionable legality (at least in the US).

The Bad

Video

Every page where Dell advertises the 1420N should include a bright red notice to warn potential buyers that Ubuntu currently has no 3D video driver for the integrated Intel X3100 graphics card. Trying to use 3D applications such as 3D screensavers or enabling Desktop Effects (aka Compiz) will instantly freeze the window manager and leave you with little choice but to forcibly power down the computer. Even the external monitor port (VGA) does not work!

Intel has released drivers for the new Santa Rosa mobile platform (including the X3100 integrated graphics), but these drivers are not supported in the current version of Ubuntu. This is the age-old story of poor Linux driver support for new hardware (and I’m sure everything will be supported once Gutsy Gibbon is released in October). It does seem that two companies like Dell and Canonical could find a solution to this problem other than shipping unsupported hardware. Why couldn’t Canonical push out the necessary video drivers for Dell owners? Shipping notebooks with no 3D video support is simply unacceptable. If Dell and Canonical want to reach more users and be taken seriously, they need to step up their cooperation and start shipping computers that work correctly out of the box.

Hibernate and Suspend

The hibernate and suspend functions worked well out of the box. However, after a few hours of use, these functions stopped working. Thinking I had probably installed something that messed things up, I used the Dell utility (available in the GRUB startup menu) to restore the notebook to its factory condition. After the 15 minute reinstall process, hibernate and suspend worked again. Unfortunately, without installing any additional software, the computer quit hibernating and suspending correctly after a few days. Trying either of these functions completely freezes the OS and forces you to hard reboot the notebook. This is another problem that I’m sure will be fixed in Gutsy.

Final Thoughts

Overall, as a Linux geek, I’m very happy with my decision to get the Inspiron 1420N. The notebook is by far the fastest I’ve ever used (it could be even faster with a 7200rpm hard drive) and it’s comfortable to work with on a desk or on your lap. The price (depending on what coupon codes you can find) is reasonable and comes in quite a bit cheaper than a Macbook. Unfortunately, Dell and Canonical have fallen short of releasing a truly great product. With just a little extra work and closer attention to the pre-installed software and drivers, they could be shipping the perfect Linux notebook. The way it is now, I wouldn’t recommend this notebook for anyone who’s not a seasoned Linux geek.

Related posts:

1. Dell Inspiron 1420N with Ubuntu Unboxing
2. Switching From OS X to Ubuntu: 10 Things I Miss
3. Install Ubuntu 7.04 on Your Intel Mac with VMware Fusion

Overall, the unboxing process and first few hours with the machine are going well. I’m writing this post and even edited and uploaded the photos from the Dell – all with no extra software installed. While Dell still has a long way to go to catch up with the style and elegance of an Apple unboxing, it seems like they’ve come a long way over the last year. I’m just happy to have a computer running Ubuntu out of the box. Ah, the smell of freedom is in the air!

Check back later for more reviews and info about this latest Dell Ubuntu offering. Update: The review is online now.

The box that DHL dropped off.

Looks like this one was made in Malaysia. Thanks for the info Dell.

They made sure that the first thing you see is the recycling kit. That’s kind of cool.

So far, things are looking pretty nice.

It seems like they just threw all the junk that comes with the computer in the box. It works, but it doesn’t look so great.

Of course, it doesn’t come with much but a power adapter (and an extra battery I ordered).

And a bunch of pretty much useless books. The only thing worth keeping here is the CD.

I didn’t order any OS support with this computer. Thankfully, they have a sticker on the disc pointing us to Ubuntu’s community support site.

Ok, this looks pretty nice.

But they put so much tape on the styrofoam that I had to go get a knife to get it open. Not very classy.

Finally got it open!

I ordered the “Expresso Brown” colored notebook. Looks black to me!

It doesn’t look too bad when opened up. And the screen doubles as a mirror!

The bottom of the machine is functional but ugly.

No Windows sticker! I could do without the extra “n series” logo.

A Windows key on an Ubuntu machine, sort of a bummer.

The machine boots up to the Dell EULA.

Related posts:

1. Review: Dell Inspiron 1420N with Ubuntu
2. Goodbye Windows (Sorta)
3. Matt Mullenweg Interview

N800 Skype startup

Skype main screen

Skype dailing

Making a Skype call

Skype history

Get the Nokia N800 and accessories here

Related posts:

1. Nokia N800 Gets Firefox 3 Rendering Engine
2. Nokia N800 Price Drops While Gaining New Features
3. 10 Ways The Nokia N800 Is Better Than Apple’s iPhone

In our testing, we found that most AJAX based sites worked much better with the Gecko engine. GMail and Google Docs worked well but Google Reader crashed the browser. Popular social networking site digg.com worked much faster than with the Opera engine. Overall, sites rendered much more like you would expect on a desktop browser.

The MicroB project is still quite new but looks very promising. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can download MicroB from the project website and give it a try. Here’s a short video we made showing MicroB in action and its integration with the N800’s built in RSS reader.

Get the Nokia N800 and accessories here >>

Related posts:

1. Google Maps on the Nokia N800
2. Nokia N800 Price Drops While Gaining New Features
3. Skype on the Nokia N800

This puts Safari in the territory of the bad guys

With the release of Safari for Windows, Steve Jobs has placed key Apple software squarely in the sights of the world’s black hat hackers and script kiddies. Security researchers and hackers, who have always been annoyed with Apple’s arrogant claims of security, now have direct access to pound on Apple software on their own turf. Within hours of the release, security researchers are already finding vulnerabilities “popping out like hotcakes“. Some of these vulnerabilities are reported to also work on the production version of Safari for OS X.

Safari on Windows becomes a huge attack surface

If Jobs and company manage to get just a tiny percentage of the current iTunes users to switch to Safari, we could soon have millions of people surfing the web with Safari on Windows. With iTunes, Apple has seen its share of vulnerabilities, but iTunes is not on the front lines when it comes to the virus/malware wars. The browser is the front line of defense against internet vulnerabilities, after all it’s the thing you use to browse the internet! Just ask Microsoft and Mozilla, securing a browser is no easy business and requires constant patches and vigilance. So far, Safari has not been much of a target for hackers, but if Apple successfully doubles or triples its market share, Safari will become a much more appealing target – no more “security by obscurity.”

This move could compromise Mac OS X and iPhone security

The core rendering engine for Safari is called Webkit. Webkit was originally taken from the open source KHTML browser engine and is now used as the core HTML and JavaScript rendering engine not only for Safari but for Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. Safari and Webkit are also central to the iPhone. Apple is even telling developers to develop for the iPhone with Safari. I’m afraid the bad guys will soon be targeting OS X software and possibly the iPhone from the comfortable surroundings of their Windows machine. It’s entirely possible that an exploit found in Webkit on Windows could be exploited in OS X Mail or the iPhone.

Apple can be very slow at releasing bug fixes

Traditionally, Apple has very slow turnaround times for fixing bugs. Symantec recently reported that in the second half of 2006 “there were 43 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X and a 66 day turnaround on fixes.” This slow response time for releasing security fixes is simply unacceptable in the current, often hostile, Internet age. Microsoft has addressed this problem over the last few years by throwing more developers and money at Internet Explorer. Apple most likely does not have as much money to throw at Safari development as Microsoft and it may prove difficult for a handful of developers to track down and quickly fix Safari for Windows bugs. Mozilla generally gets patches out much quicker due to its strong open source community. While Apple has made a small attempt to lure developers to Webkit, it seems only half heartedly open source. One gets the feeling that it’s only open source because it has to be, not because Apple really wants community support and involvement.

Safari for Windows could damage Apple’s reputation

Talk of security vulnerabilities in Apple products will only damage Apple’s image of being secure. These days, many people assume that Apple is more secure than Windows. If the news is suddenly (and consistently) filled with news of Safari security problems, this assumption could quickly change. In short, Apple is opening themselves up to a lot of potentially very bad press.

Apple’s track record with iTunes and Quicktime does not give me hope

Apple has a practice of developing new iTunes and Quicktime releases in complete secrecy (sometimes even keeping information from their own support staff). They generally release applications immediately after some keynote by Steve Jobs. In the past year, there have been many problems with iTunes upgrades crashing computers and iPods. Customers are often left out in the cold as even Apple tech support has yet to see the new version. I can tell you that it’s annoying when your iPod crashes, but if this practice is carried over into Safari releases, it could prove much worse than annoying.

This is BETA software but is being pushed like the final product

Steve was quite clear when he said that Safari 3 is a beta right now. Beta generally means that it’s not ready for production use and should be used with caution. Recently, the word “beta” has been attached to every piece of software that people want to push to the mainstream but where they want an easy excuse when things go wrong (Gmail for example). Apple is not treating Safari 3 like beta software! It has placed Safari 3 in prominent locations all over the Apple website including the home page. Pushing buggy software out the door to millions of users is just not a good idea and increases the chances that the bad guys will find holes.

These are just some ideas that came to my mind. Hopefully Apple will figure everything out and all my security fears will be proven wrong. Well, I guess we can hope.

June 14, 2007 Update:

Looks like Apple is staying on top of the bugs. They’ve already released Safari for Windows 3.0.1. Keep up the good work Apple!

Related posts:

1. WebKit Nightly Builds Offer Great New Features For Web Developers
2. 10 Ways The Nokia N800 Is Better Than Apple’s iPhone
3. iWish iHad an iMac