1.  It’s beta.

2. It’s beta.

3.  Ok, really, it’s beta!  Then entire purpose of this machine is to find out what sucks, report it to Google, get updates, report more bugs, ad infinitum.

For those of you that haven’t read another review and want the specs on this machine, go here (them come back!).  To me they don’t matter much and this is why…

This computer is about the OS, not the damn hardware. Branded hardware will be better.  It just will, I promise.

I opened the case and I was greeted with a Chrome logo before I could get the screen fully opened.  As instructed, I “gently” pressed the power button, went through 4 quick steps (including a self-portrait) and was logged in using my Gmail credentials.   Without any annoying prompts or fuss all of my Chrome options automatically synced with the computer.  I was at an immediate advantage since I use Chrome as my primary browser — all of my plugins, bookmarks, options and history were included.  No annyoing login prompts for Gmail, Google Docs or any other Google services.  One of the coolest features of this is that I could go login to any other computer running ChromeOS with my Gmail credentials and it would do the same thing.  ANY ChromeOS is YOUR OS.  Some people may be put off by this ubiqutious mesh of all your data from any location but what you should keep in mind is that (best estimate) 95% of the data you access is “in the cloud” and not stored on the actual laptop anyway.  This thing only has a 16GB SSD inside.  Sure, lots of room for plenty of personal information, but from everything I’ve seen, it’s purpose is simply to keep only what is needed to run the OS on the laptop.  Your security really goes as far as how secure your password is and how much you trust Google with your data.

ChromeOS is a different experience.  You’ll actually feel right at home if you have already used the Chrome browser, but if not, you might be in for a rude awakening.  There is no Start button akin to Windows nor a comforting Apple logo in the top left corner.  The browser is the OS and the OS is the browser.  Everything is accessed from a single interface – no desktop, no icons, no wallpaper.    You start with one tab open.  With the unibar you can type in a web address, search term or you can use it to access a myriad of other features using special keywords that let to get into guts of the OS and tweak features.  So far, the available apps are lackluster but if Android Market has been any mark of  future success these will improve  in quality and in number quickly as well.  Do I have to remind you this is all still in beta?!

So far, I’ve had a lot of fun using the unit.  My son spent a large amount of time watching episodes of the Simpsons in Flash and he found it perfectly acceptable.  I can keep the unit on the coffe table as a general purpose machine.  It awakes from sleep faster than you can get the screen open so anytime you feel like reading a book or checking the weather, it’s right there.  The battery lasts around 10 hours and I have found I can use it for almost any task.  I can even get an ssh connection on a different screen and use a predefined key on the keyboard to switch between the shell and the OS.  Outside of video/picture editing and gaming — the latter I don’t do on a computer anyway — I really can see a slighly more powerful version of this computer with a release version OS as something I would use as a primary computer.  Becuase of my job, I’ll likely need a full desktop OS for some time but when I’m not working  I can chat, surf, word process, do spreadsheets, listen to music, watch streaming movies/tv/videos and 99% of the other tasks I do on a computer these days, all on a laptop expected to cost under $400.  Hardware is overrated and specs mean shit for almost all computer users.  My grandma doesn’t care how fast her CPU is or if her video card drivers are up-to-date, she just wants to look at pictures of her grandkids or videos on YouTube with as little hassle as possible.  Most people do I think.

I see a bright future for this new type of ubiquitous computing.  Imagine it: one login, any computer, anywhere and you have instant access to all of your everything.  That last sentence screams SECURITY ISSUES but I also have (a probably misguded) trust in the security systems that will be in place by the time this type of scenario actually is a reality.  Whatever the real future, from my perspective, it’s off to an exciting start.

This is great if your e-mail server allows relaying (if it does, you are crazy) or if you want to go edit configuration files on your mail server to allow relaying from certain hosts.  If you have a well configured mail server like the one at my organization, SMTP Authentication is enabled for all e-mails accounts that need to send through the server.  You can get XenServer to use SMTP auth as well, you just have to add a few lines to a configuration file to each server in the pool.  If you have a lot of servers, you WILL want to script this.

XenServer (we are talking Citrix here btw, not opensource Xen) uses sSMTP to send mail.  There are two extremely basic configuration files in /etc/ssmtp — only one of which you need to deal with.  With your favorite text editor, open /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf from the command line on your server and add or modify the following lines:

authUser=<receiving e-mail address>
authPass=<password for e-mail>
mailhub=<your mail server>

If your mail server supports it, you can also add these two options:

authMethod=cram-md5
useSTARTTLS=YES

That’s it! Save the file and copy it to all servers in the pool.  Pool notifications will now be sent using SMTP authentication to whatever server you specify.  Maybe Citrix will get their head out of their asses on this one eventually but until then…

1. My son loves to play Guitar Hero III (I know, I know, “Frets on Fire”, but he’s particular)

2. I can watch HDTV with my TV tuner in Vista (and this won’t be a problem with Kernel 2.26)

Today I decided to boot into Vista so I could watch some TV.  That was over an hour ago.  First, Vista wanted to update.  I had rearranged my hard drive layout a couple weeks ago so it decided to re-detect all my hard drives as well.  Once the update process –that took 30 minutes — finished, I had to reboot, install pre-shutdown updates then I had to wait for post-boot “update configuration” to finish.  Once I got to the desktop it decided that my sound should only come out of my USB headphones which was fine, but annoying.

I have become a full-fledged Windows hater.  It’s bloated, can’t detect the simplest of hardware without a driver disk and the constant reboots for software/driver updates is stuck in the 1990′s.  If it wouldn’t devastate my son to lose Windows I would format the spare HD and use it to hold something useful — like maybe a oepnSUSE partition?

I am a Linux crusader trying to convert the masses.  If you somehow stumbled across this and you are thinking about switching to Linux but the command line scares you, start off with some of the more user friendly distros like Ubuntu, Fedora Core, or openSUSE.  Use it for one month.  I promise you can do EVERYTHING in Linux that you can do in Windows (and you can usually do it 10x faster not to mention you don’t have to spend a penny on software)

Get one of the distro’s here:

Ubuntu

Fedora Core

openSUSE

At home I use Linux and Windows, at work I use a Mac.  I enjoy aspects of all three OS’s but for a while Mac’s have had a killer app that was not available on any other OS.  This applications biggest asset was what it didn’t do — Get in the way!

The app is called Growl and it provides useful notifications only from applications you want to monitor.  For example if you are chatting with someone and reading an intriguing article from Wired but your browser is taking up the entire screen.  With Growl there is no need to flip back and forth between the browser and the IM client, instead Growl pops up a small, non-obtrusive “bubble” with the message from your friend which “floats” there for a few seconds, then goes away.  Growl works with a grocery list of applications to display useful information you may want to be aware of like completed downloads, new IM’s, new e-mails and so many other things.  If you want tend to the notification you can click on the bubble and the appropriate application will be made active, if not, it will just fade away after a few seconds.

For you Linux users out there an application with the same idea in mind is available called Mumbles.  It works with the Gnome desktop and can be installed via a source or a .deb package.  The range of supported applications is not as vast but the ones that matter to me work out of the box — Pidgin, Firefox and Thunderbird.  More support is coming and what is available is already a must-have.

Finally, for you Windows users an app called Snarl is available.  The current issue with Snarl is application support.  I believe it’s on its way to being a great app — just give it a few months.  It does have a developers guide available for anyone who wants to add Snarl functionality into their existing application.

While all three apps serve the same purpose Growl is by far the pack leader.  It has been around the longest and provide support for tons of applications. (Both of the others are admitted attempts to bring “Growl” functionality to the respective OS.) If you are on the computer even half as much as I am I can assure you that once you use these apps you will wonder why someone didn’t think of this a long time ago.  Don’t just take my word for it, download the apps and give them a test run!

Growl – http://growl.info/

Mumble – http://www.mumbles-project.org/

Snarl -  http://www.fullphat.net

I landed a job at a web-hosting company.  It wasn’t just any job — it turned out to be one of the best things in my life thus far.  I work with a small group of extremely talented people whose combined knowledge could overload a supercomputer.  I have superiors but they do not make me feel inferior.  I not only get to come up with ideas but implement them.  I spend most of my time dealing with server related issues but my input in many areas of the company is respected.

I have the joy of getting paid to “play” with computers, help customers avoid certain web disaster, become a Linux guru and, with the help of my co-workers, learn the skills it takes to be a damn fine system engineer.

I hope anyone who reads this has the opportunity, at least once in their life, to truly enjoy their career.  There is nothing better in life than enjoying what you do for a living.

Why all this security?  No, I don’t have government secrets but assuming you know all of the passwords (an no, they aren’t all the same) you would able to access all of my work stuff.  My “work stuff” is my life and since my laptop is basically a grab-and-go piece of hardware (a small Dell Inspiron 700m) I want to make sure that if I were ever to be stolen it would basically be useless to the person who nabbed it – at least without a complete format of the hard drive and new OS installation.  I even have the BIOS password protected and the hard-drive set to the first boot device so getting a new OS installed wouldn’t be a simple process.

I don’t go so far as to encrypt my entire hard-drive because like I said, I’m not harboring government secrets, but unlike the government officials that have let their laptops “disappear” I would be willing to bet if they took even half the security measures I did the rate of data-loss due to lost laptops would drop dramatically.

How far do you take your computer security?

Although there are hundreds of distributions they can be separated into four main categories based on the way packages are managed (or are not managed) in each.

1. RPM Based

RPM (Red Hat Package Manager) based distributions are the mostly widely used. They account for approximately 50% of total Linux distributions (unverified source). Some of the more popular RPM distributions are: Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS, Mandrake and SUSE. For more information on what RPM is and can do, see the Wikipedia article on RMP.

2. Debian

Debian based package management is handled by a powerful software tool called “apt” (Advanced Packaging Tool) Without digging too deep into apt, in short, it handles “.deb” files, installs and configures them. A simple command like apt-get install kde would install the entire KDE window management program and configure it for my system. Some of the more popular Debian distro’s are Debian (the original), Ubuntu, Knoppix and Linspire.

3. tar.gz based

G-zipped tar-balls are used as the primary installation source for installing and upgrading packages on some Linux distro’s. Managing a system using this type of installation source is usually reserved for advanced users. Although a package manager is used (generally pkgtool) it doesn’t check for dependencies. If you want to install software that needs other software to make it work, the system administrator is responsible for making sure the required dependencies are installed. The most popular distribution of this type is Slackware.

4. Source (all packages are complied from source code)

Linux distro’s that compile packages from source are often used by only the most “hardcore” users that want to control every aspect of system configuration and installation. The benefit is complete system control but the downside the time it takes to install packages. Because each package is installed from source code it has to be complied before it can be used. If you want to become a Linux expert (or already are one) then source code-type Linux distro’s are the best way to go. The most popular source-code based Linux distribution is Gentoo. See my previous post on Linux from Scratch if this sounds like something you would like to tackle.