aGNUdomain.net unplugged

Attack of the Androids TV with Mat Lee, Richard Hay ...

aNewDomain.net and aGNUdomain unplugged -- Here's the latest episode from our Mat Lee's Attack of the Androids.

This week, the guys are talking about their first smartphones -- Richard Hay has a piece on his first Android phone on the main aNewDomain.net site today -- and the 40th anniversary of the first mobile call. A Motorola exec made it from the first commerically available mobile phone, the Motorola DynaTAC, in 1973.

Check out Attack of the Androids, below.

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Hands-on with Ubuntu Touch Preview for the Nexus 4

aGNUdomain.net - This weekend I formatted my Nexus 4 and loaded up Canonical's new Ubuntu Touch Preview.  I was impressed by its polish and beauty.

Ubuntu Touch launched Feb. 19, 2013. As aGNUdomain's Ant Pruitt explained,  Ubuntu Touch is Canonical's attempt to break into the mobile market. Smart Linux users already know how to run full-fledged Ubuntu on some Android devices,  but this preview marks the first time Google released a developer version immediately installable on the latest four Nexus devices from Google. 

If you have a Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 or Nexus 10 -- and you're feeling adventurous -- you can download the Ubuntu Touch preview code now. 

Installing Ubuntu Touch was simple, though the current installation method is only supported using Ubuntu for desktop. After downloading the code only one command is required: phablet-flash -b. 

If you are inclined to check out Ubuntu Touch yourself, be warned that your entire phone will be erased during the installation process. It is also possible that you could break your phone. 

In reality there is not too much to see at this point. The folks at Canonical correctly labeled this release a "developer preview." You can think of it more like a model home. It is certainly a beautiful operating system but is hardly functional. 

If you would rather wait for a more fleshed-out version of Ubuntu Touch, included are some screenshots of it running on my Nexus 4. Enjoy! 

Have you flashed Ubuntu Touch? Do you think it has potential or is another non-starter? Leave a comment on the site and over on Google Plus.

For aGNUdomain.net, I'm +Eric Finkenbiner. 

Ant Pruitt: Linux. Why Do You Run It? Readers Respond, Complain

aGnuDomain, the aNewDomain.net spinoff soon to launch with a focus on Linux, today brings you Ant Pruitt -- and a question no one in his or her right mind would ignore.

By Ant Pruitt, aGnuDomain.net:  I've been a fan of the Linux operating system for several years now. I discussed how much I enjoy using the Ubuntu Linux distro in an aNewDomain.net article and, thanks to you readers, the piece is reaching a lot of folks. I'm humbled.

I believe my first version was 9.x, but I am now up to version 12.10 and the Unity interface.

Originally, I installed Linux because my PC at the time had very limited hardware. The CPU was a single core chip and the memory was barely useful with just 1GB on board. There wasn't much else I could do to the rig that would allow Windows XP to run better or even upgrade to a newer version of Windows. Via my Google+ and Twitter feed, I polled my followers and circles. I asked "Why are you using Linux on your computer?" The feedback was tremendous from my fellow geeks. Here are the results. 

Image credit Ant Pruitt for aGNUdomain  

 

I based the poll question on the three fairly-broad parameters above:

• Hardware limitations on current PC  (low RAM, slower CPU, etc ...)
• To better protect users from malware
• To geek-out with something new

 As you can see from the pie chart, my circles and followers wanted to just geek-out. I can't disagree. I enjoy playing around with my Linux distro as well as adding different free and open source software (FOSS) for daily use. 

Those that voted also had an opportunity to comment on the poll. Sure, geeking-out on something new was the poll's leading vote recipient, but most of the comments were dealing more with how powerful Linux can be, as well as support for FOSS. Hobbyist developer and XDA-Developers contributer Adam Outler says via Google+:

Ant Pruitt, your poll is invalid. I am an avid Linux user but I don't use it for any of the reasons in your poll. I support open source. I dislike having to pay when there are open source solutions whereby using those solutions contributes in a small way to betterment of the future of software. 

Patrick Archibald loves to geek-out with the multimedia options such as XBMC and MythTV software packages, he told me.

I enjoyed using Apache for serving up my multimedia over 3G as well as Plex Media Server.  All are great tools. 

So the verdict is in, so far. Those of us currently running a Linux distro are believers of supporting the free and open source platform, and we enjoy getting more performance out of computers that other operating systems haven't been able to provide.

Thank you to everyone that participated in the reader poll. You rock. For anewdomain.net and aGnuDomain.net unplugged -- aGNUdomain.net is launching soon, I'm Ant Pruitt 

Burn the Heretic! John Carmack Talks Linux Gaming and Steam

John Carmack, the man behind some of the most influential video games of all time, caused a flurry of discussion over on Reddit last week when he expressed his opinions regarding native Linux ports of popular video games. Carmack's response on Reddit was an eloboration of  a Twitter update he made on Feb. 4th where he stated that, "Improving Wine for Linux gaming seems like a better plan than lobbying individual game developers for native ports."

Carmack's logic is simple: There simply is not enough potential to monetize a native Linux port for game studios to invest the time, money and effort. So what if you started a company which ported popular games to Linux on behalf of a publisher? Carmack states that even if you were able to show a potential profit, it would need to be significant in order to recoup the high ancillary costs that most large publishers incur regardless of the size or scope of a port. 

What is the solution to this problem? According to Carmack the solution is to invest more resources into projects such as WINE, which allow for the installation and execution of Windows applications in Unix-based operating systems. He states that, " ... figuring out exactly what the difficulties are and making some form of 'D3D interop' extension for OpenGL to smooth it out is a lot easier than making dozens of completely refactored, high performance native ports."

At the end of his explanation Carmack also stated that Steam could be, "a plausible path forward." 

This spurred responses from gamers in the Linux community who have been feeling optimistic regarding native ports of Linux games following Steam's long-awaited release of the Steam for Linux Beta client. Some expressed concern regarding the current state of WINE. Even in games which are listed as Platinum, there are still a litany of errors and fix-me's that occur when those applications are run.

I certainly would like to see the application continue to grow and improve, however this does not mean that I do not want native ports of my favorite games to show up on Linux. While I'm not convinced that WINE is the right permanent solution to gaming on Linux, I think that it is a viable option for those of us who would prefer not to dual boot to Windows.

What do you think? Leave a comment or start a discussion on Google Plus. I'm +Eric Finkenbiner for aGNUdomain.net

Linux Command Cheat Sheet: Valentine's Day Gift for the Linux Geek You Love

aGNUdomain.net unplugged: As we ramp up our upcoming aGNUdomain.net site, I thought this Linux Command Cheat Sheet from Dave Child was ideal -- it is the money if you want Linux commands at your fingertips or as a Valentine's Day 2013 gift for someone you love who loves Linux. And it's free, courtesy cheatography.com. Yum. Beats chocolate. Not diamonds, though.

Linux Command Cheat Sheet from Davechild Linux Command Line -- at anewdomain.net with Gina Smith, John C. D... by

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David Street: What's GNU: Richard Stallman's GNU versus Linux Demystified

aGnuDomain.net unplugged -- By David Street, aNewDomain.net: You think you knew GNU. So do a lot of people. Richard Stallman does an amazing job in his GNU history and explainer to dispel myths about it.

Read the whole story here from Stallman writing for GNU.org.  Here's an excerpt from Stallman's excellent piece. Scroll after the excerpt because it gets better.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux,” and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: The whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux ...

Many users do not understand the difference between the kernel, which is Linux, and the whole system, which they also call “Linux.” The ambiguous use of the name doesn't help people understand. These users often think that Linus Torvalds developed the whole operating system in 1991, with a bit of help ...

Programmers generally know that Linux is a kernel. But since they have generally heard the whole system called “Linux” as well, they often envisage a history that would justify naming the whole system after the kernel. For example, many believe that once Linus Torvalds finished writing Linux, the kernel, its users looked around for other free software to go with it, and found that (for no particular reason) most everything necessary to make a Unix-like system was already available ...

They found an incomplete GNU, though. The free software was the end result only and solely, Stallman says, because the GNU Project was on a project to build it since the mid 1980s.

Read The GNU Manifesto.  In it, Stallman and his fellows clearly spelled out their mission of creating a free, open-sounce (and Unix-like, in that) system. Do you recall the initial announcement back then? That initial announcement presciently set out the goals and plans for GNU.

But did you know that the GNU system was alm? By the time Linux was started, GNU was almost finished by the time Linus Torvalds started to work on his version of the Unix-like kernel, now known as Linux. 

And those, like the work of Don Knuth (TeX) and Bob Scheifler (Remember X Window, the 1990s GUI?), were supposed to be projects for a single task.

In his excellent piece on gnu.org, Stallman gives us a rhetorical well worth considering:

If we tried to measure the GNU Project's contribution in this way, what would we conclude? One CD-ROM vendor found that in their “Linux distribution,” GNU software was the largest single contingent, around 28% of the total source code, and this included some of the essential major components without which there could be no system. Linux itself was about 3 percent (then) ... the proportions in 2008 (were) similar. Linux (was at) 1.5 percent and GNU packages were 15 percent ... so if you were going to pick a name for the system based on who wrote the programs in the system, the most appropriate single choice would be “GNU.”

Note, again, as Stallman does, that the GNU Project never was a project for developing a text editor. "It was not a project to develop a C compiler, although we did that," he writes. "The GNU Project set out to develop a complete free Unix-like system: GNU."

Torvalds of course played a huge role. His Linux in 1992 completed GNU to create a combined Linux/GNU that was free, open, workable and extensible.

Did you know there are completely free GNU/Linux distros? Two are Ututo and gNewSense.

But keeping GNU/Linux distros free and available means keeping Linux free, too.

Bottom line, as Stallman points out, calling Linux the word "Linux" is confusing because it clouds the fact that, while the kernel in fact is Linux. But the system as a whole is GNU -- plus Linux. Tell your friends. Education is good.

Good links to find out more include:

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html 

http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?Linux 

 

 

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