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Sabtu, 30 Juli 2011
LinuxCon Preview: Details on the Watson Exhibit
After strutting its stuff on Jeopardy! earlier this year, IBM's Watson will be included at LinuxCon in a special exhibit August 17-19, 2011. We got some time with the IBM Power Systems Product Marketing Manager Ian Jarman to better understand what we can expect and what Watson and its IBM team have been working on since their very public victory earlier this year.
Please tell us about the Watson exhibit planned for LinuxCon. What should attendees expect?
Jarman: You can try your luck against Watson in a simulated demonstration of the system used on the Jeopardy! show. You'll also be able to learn more about the technology behind Watson, including its impressive 90 IBM Power 750 servers, with 2880 POWER7 processor cores and 15 TB of memory. Most of all, I hope you share some of the passion and excitement that I and so many others feel for Watson. The most moving moments I experienced on the project were actually during some of Watson's pre-show sparring matches. These were held in the IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights in the small, practice Jeopardy! set right by the Watson machine room.
Playing against two previous Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions contestants, Watson cruised to victory in the first game. Seeing Watson in action close up, you couldn't help but have a very deep and special feeling of pride for all the people on the IBM Research team. In the second game, however, a young defense analyst from Washington D.C. hit the two daily doubles and won a close game. I happened to be sitting next to her mother in the audience just a few feet away, and I could literally feel her love and pride at having such a talented daughter. So, I left IBM that day knowing just how difficult it was going to be to compete against Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in the exhibition match. The stakes and the risks were going to be very high indeed. And this grand challenge was not going to be about man v. machine; it was going to be about people at their very best.
Photo Credit: John Tolva
Since its impressive appearance on Jeopardy!, what has Watson and the Watson team been working on?
Jarman: The IBM Research team has switched its attention to commercializing Watson technology, with health care as their first target. We don't expect Watson to replace doctors, of course, but we believe that Watson's DeepQA technology will be very valuable as an advisor in medical diagnostics. And the fact that Watson was based on commercially available Power 750 servers, makes it easy for us to scale Watson down to a system designed for a group medical practice.
Why is Watson based on Linux? What advantages does Linux give the supercomputer?
Jarman: Actually, we don't view Watson as a supercomputer. Compared to the Power 775 Supercomputer that has up to 500,000 POWER7 cores, Watson looks like a fairly small cluster. Instead, we prefer to talk of Watson as a workload optimized system, using a cluster of commercially available servers. In any case, using Linux was vital to the IBM Research team as they based their Watson development on a number of open source technologies, including Java, Apache, Hadoop and Apache Unstructured Information Management Architecture or UIMA. Watson also was a great showcase for Linux on Power Linux, demonstrating POWER7 scalability and performance in a unique Linux benchmark.
This is such an important year for both Linux and IBM. Linux turns 20 and IBM is celebrating 100 years. How has Linux shaped the kind of company IBM is today? How has it contributed to your company overall?
Jarman: In 2000, Linux received an important boost when IBM announced it would embrace Linux as strategic to its systems strategy. A year later, IBM invested US$1 billion to back the Linux movement, embracing it as an operating system for IBM servers and software. IBM’s actions grabbed the attention of CEOs and CIOs around the globe and helped Linux become accepted by the business world. By inserting IBM developers directly into Linux communities, IBM engaged Linux development in natural ways, as a team of individuals, rather as than a lumbering and monolithic corporate contributor. IBM learned that involvement required influence in place of control and embraced the broad Linux community—benefitting greatly from the wisdom of the crowds. In 2011, Linux is a fundamental component of IBM business—embedded deeply in hardware, software, services and internal development. It is present in every IBM business, geography and workload, and its use only continues to increase.
IBM’s success today, and in the future, is inextricably linked to the healthy growth and expansion of Linux development.
For more information about Watson's appearance at LinuxCon and how you can test your own knowledge against the machine, visit our LinuxCon website.
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Jumat, 29 Juli 2011
JP Morgan Uses FPGAs Accelerators for Risk Analysis in Near Real-time
In this video, Peter Richards and Stephen Weston from J.P. Morgan present a Stanford Computer Systems Colloquium discussing their use of Maxeler Technology. The company has acquired a 20 percent stake in Maxeler.
Computerworld UK is reporting that JP Morgan is now able to run risk analysis and price its global credit portfolio in near real-time after implementing Maxeler Technologies FPGA-based accelerators.
Comments (0)Prior to the implementation, JP Morgan would take eight hours to do a complete risk run, and an hour to run a present value, on its entire book. If anything went wrong with the analysis, there was no time to re-run it. It has now reduced that to about 238 seconds, with an FPGA time of 12 seconds.
Being able to run the book in 12 seconds end-to-end and get a value on our multi-million dollar book within 12 seconds is a huge commercial advantage for us,” Stephen Weston, global head of the Applied Analytics group in the investment banking division of JP Morgan, said at a recent lecture to Stanford University students.JP Morgan uses mainly C++ for its pure analytical models and Python programming for the facilitation. For the new Maxeler system, it flattened the C++ code down to a Java code.
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In a Flash, Adobe's 64-Bit Flash for Linux Is Back
It was only a month ago that Adobe cut off Linux's AIR, so bloggers may be excused if they were a bit surprised by last week's news. Namely? In yet another twist in the company's on-again/off-again relationship with our favorite open source operating system -- a roller-coaster ride that involved taking away 64-bit Flash for Linux last year -- Adobe has now apparently seen fit to bring it back again. Don't look now, but those neck pains you feel just may be whiplash, and you're not the only one.
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Blender Conference 2011 Registration Opens
The Blender Foundation is seeking submissions for the tenth annual Blender Conference, which will take place from 28 to 30 October in Amsterdam. Those interested in attending can register now for an early bird discount
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Bilski's Growing Up, and Smacking Down Some Bad Software Patents
When the Supreme Court declined to speak to software patenting in the Bilski case, there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in the open source software world. The new Bilski test for patentable subject matter looked at first like the status quo for software patentability. But, being the sort of person who tries to check clouds for a possible silver lining, I noted a possibility that courts and the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences would read the test to invalidate some software patents. Comments (0)
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Modular Touch-Panel Systems Based on New ARM9 Module
Techsol released two Linux-ready, computer modules incorporating ARM9-based, 454MHz Freescale i.MX233 and i.MX283 system on chips (SoCs). The TSCM-233 is based on the i.MX233 SoC and offers 64MB of DDR RAM, while the similar, Ethernet-enabled TSCM-283 is based on the i.MX283 and includes 128-256MB DDR2 memory, and both are available with optional I/O boards and display subsystems....
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'Low-Power' Server Packs 384 Dual-Core Atoms
SeaMicro says it has packed more Intel Atom processors into a new device it claims is the most power-efficient x86 server on the market. The SM10000-64HD has 384 N570 chips, 1.5 terabytes of DDR3 memory, up to 64 SATA hard disks or solid state drives, and from eight to 64 gigabit Ethernet ports, the company says....
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Kamis, 28 Juli 2011
Marketing Tool OpenEMM Gets New Interface
Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:00 The H
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OpenEMM 2011, an open source tool for carrying out newsletter and email marketing, offers a revamped user interface and new functions for users and administrators
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IBM ‘Blue Waters’ Super Node Washes Ashore in August
Big Blue has been talking about the Power7-based “Blue Waters” supercomputer nodes for so long that you might think they’re already available. But although IBM gave us a glimpse of the Power 775 machines way back in November 2009, they actually won’t start shipping commercially until next month – August 26, to be exact.
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Google Code Gains Native Git Support
Sunday, 17 July 2011 22:00 The H
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Google has added native support for Git, the distributed revision control system developed by Linus Torvalds, to its Google Code project hosting site
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Nano-ITX Board Saves Power with Single-Core Atom
BCM announced a Nano-ITX motherboard that includes a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor and supports dual displays. The NX450N has Mini PCI Express and CompactFlash slots, two SATA ports, gigabit Ethernet, plus an optional TPM (trusted platform module), the company says....
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Zinio Adds Full Froyo and Gingerbread Support, Now Available for All Android Devices
Earlier this summer, Zinio released its reader app for a small handful of Android tablets, bringing more than 20,000 full-format magazine titles to the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and a half dozen other slates. Now, the app is available for all current Android 2.2 Froyo and 2.3 Gingerbread devices, including tablets and smartphones. At launch, you'll have access to a dozen free current issues, including ESPN The Magazine, Maxim, and Robb Report.
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Test-Driving VirtualBox 4.1 on Linux: Bumpy but Pretty Good
Oracle released VirtualBox 4.1 on July 19 with a slew of improvements ranging from usability improvements to rasing the ceiling for RAM to 1TB for 64-bit hosts. With 4.1, we decided to take VirtualBox out for a spin and see how it handles.
I've been using desktop virtualization since the early days, when VMware was a scrappy little company shipping a nearly unheard-of product — a desktop virtualization tool that would let you run Windows in VM in Linux. No more dual-booting for those folks who had to have access to Microsoft Word or QuickBooks but wanted to enjoy Linux as their desktop of choice.
Fast forward to 2011 and users have a lot more choice. VirtualBox is at the top of the list for Linux users for a number of reasons: It's free as in cost and speech, because it's GPL'ed. It's packaged up for a number of distributions and easy to install, and it's easy(ish) to use. Let's take a look at the latest release.
Typically, I use VMware Workstation. In part out of force of habit, in part out of necessity. I'd tried VirtualBox in the 3.x days, and found it wanting quite a bit. VMware, though a pain to install and pay for "just works" for me. With VirtualBox 4.1 I wanted to give VB another go and see if it'd improved enough to turn to for my day to day work.
It was really easy to install VirtualBox 4.1 — and would have been even easier if I wasn't looking to go with the very latest release. I'm using Linux Mint 11, which already has VirtualBox in its (well, Ubuntu's) repos, but I needed to add Oracle's repos for 4.1. This took about two minutes and a short dive into my /etc/apt/sources.list.
Well, almost. While the main package is GPL'ed, some extensions for VirtualBox that provide niceties like USB 2.0 support, RDP, and PXE boot are in an extension pack that is under a proprietary license. It's also free as in beer, but it requires a separate download. Again, it's easy to install, but one additional step.
Finally, on Linux Mint, I also had to add my user to the vboxusers group as well. How's this compare with installing, say, VMware? I'd say VirtualBox has a slight edge given that VirtualBox often requires compiling kernel modules — which requires installing a bunch of packages for many users that don't necessarily have all the kernel headers and development tools to compile them on-hand.
Most of my use of desktop virtualization boils down to testing Linux distros. It's been more than a decade since I needed Windows, and I'm pretty light on working with the BSDs. I check in on them now and again, but for the most part my use is about running various Linux distros to test the latest and greatest or to for reference. (For example, installing or using a program on Debian-based vs. some of the popular RPM-based distros.)
This time around I tried VirtualBox with the experimental images for Debian GNU/Hurd, a BitNami virtual machine for VMware, and loading up a couple of regular distros from scratch.
The results were a bit of a mixed bag. The Debian GNU/Hurd install went well, until it was time to reboot and try it out. At that point, it froze entirely. I'm not entirely sure if that's a problem with VirtualBox or Hurd, or a combination of both. I was able to install and run Debian GNU/Hurd under KVM, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done yet to get it ready for prime time.
Unfortunately, things didn't go very well trying to import the machine from BitNami. I got a slew of errors before even getting to the point of trying to turn the VM on.
Installing regular distros, that went well. VirtualBox handles those just fine, or at least the handful I tried. Admittedly, I didn't try every Linux distro.
A couple of comments on the usability of VirtualBox: it's good but not great. VirtualBox has a few rough edges that really make me scratch my head. For example, if you want to install a Linux distribution in VMware it's pretty simple to figure out how to add an ISO image to boot from. You don't get the option to add an ISO image to VirtualBox until you start the "first run wizard" and then it's not intuitive. You can only add an image by clicking a fairly non-obvious folder icon on the right-hand side of the dialog next to a drop-down menu that shows the physical optical drives.
The defaults are very resource stingy, at least in my opinion. For example, I've run into problems with VMs in VirtualBox because it provides such a stingy amount of video RAM for its virtual machines. It also is very conservative about RAM, disk sizes, etc. This isn't a major deal — you can configure all of this — it just takes a bit longer than it should and can be frustrating if you're creating a lot of VMs.
For grins, I thought I'd see what would happen if I tried booting a Mac OS X DVD in VirtualBox. As most folks know, Apple doesn't want you running OS X on non-Apple hardware and is pretty touchy about running it in a VM as well. VirtualBox does have some support for OS X Server, but it's apparently limited to Mac hardware — when I tried to boot the DVD I got an error saying the platform is not supported. I'm not dinging VirtualBox for this one, though. It's one thing if VirtualBox has trouble running an OS that's not specifically designed to prevent being run on standard hardware, but the VirtualBox devs aren't exactly getting a lot of support from Cupertino to run Mac OS X on Linux.
As much as I would have liked to have road-tested the 1TB RAM limit for 4.1, I don't have any machines with that kind of RAM. It is pretty cool that they're supporting that, though.
VirtualBox has a couple of features I really like that are worth mentioning. For example, you can set up a VM for remote display so that you can run a VM on one machine but view its display on another. Even better, VirtualBox offers VBoxHeadless to run VMs on systems without any local display at all. I haven't used this one extensively yet, but look for a tutorial soon on running Linux headless.
VirtualBox 4.1 is pretty darn good, especially given what you pay for it. Is it as good as VMware? No. But, despite a number of minor annoyances, I have to say that I do really like the latest iteration of VirtualBox. It's not quite as easy to use or as intuitive as VMware Workstation — but at the low, low price of "free," it's hard to complain too much.
Whether you want to run multiple Linux distros, run Windows on top of Linux, or Linux on top of Windows, VirtualBox should be your first stop.
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Rabu, 27 Juli 2011
Test Driving GNU Hurd, With Benchmarks Against Linux
Last week there was a GNU Hurd status update, which generated a fair amount of attention as it stated there are plans for a Debian GNU/Hurd release in conjunction with Debian "Wheezy" when it's out in late 2012 or early 2013. After being in development for more than 20 years, the Hurd is finally taking some shape. The Debian GNU/Hurd installer for Wheezy is even now working, which I tried out and ended up porting the Phoronix Test Suite to GNU Hurd. In this article is a brief look at Debian GNU/Hurd along with the first-ever benchmarks of Debian GNU/Hurd against Debian GNU/Linux.
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Mandriva Joins the CompatibleOne Consortium
Mandriva has joined the CompatibleOne consortium and will contribute towards its effort to provide cloud systems based on open standards and interoperable open-source technologies
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RecallMonkey Brings Simple Search to Firefox History
Where was that page you were just looking at a few days ago? If you're a Firefox user, answering that question just got a lot simpler. Yes, the browser offers simple bookmarking and niceties like bookmark folders and multi-browser sync — and yes, there are hundreds of add-ons to help you categorize, tag, export, import, and file your links in every conceivable way. But all too often, re-finding that page you just took a casual look at is still easier to do with a Web search engine — and that's the premise behind RecallMonkey, which gives you a search-engine-like interface to your own browsing history.
In earlier times, primitive Firefox users trying to claw their way back to a particular page from their history had but one way to do it: open up the "Show History" pane (Control-Shift-H on Linux), and sift through page after page of URLs. There was a simple pattern-matching search box, but the results it returned were inflexible (no fuzzy matching or complex queries), and there was no search-within-results option with which to drill further in. In desperate moments, later Firefox users had another option: start typing words into the Location Bar (a.k.a. "Awesomebar") and wait patiently while the browser churned up a few page titles that vaguely matched ... most of the time. No one was happy with either option.
RecallMonkey takes the Web search experience as its cue. It is a product of Mozilla's Mozilla Labs R&D group, and specifically an outgrowth of Prospector, an experiment to make browsing friendlier by making better use of data about your browsing session — what sites you visit, when you visit them, what you bookmark or tag and what you don't.
The basic idea of RecallMonkey is that in place of the History window with its static, sorted list of URLs you've visited, you can access a live-updating, JavaScript-powered search engine that mines that same history, but in a more natural way. Like Google and the other major Web search engines, RecallMonkey's results start with a search term, but allow you to exclude or prioritize particular domains, narrow the time range displayed, and highlight URLs you have bookmarked. The search is not limited to exact matches, either, taking a page from the popular search engine services and offering some degree of "fuzzy" matching.
Just to be clear, RecallMonkey does not present you with different items than Firefox's static History view component or Awesomebar — it just uses a ranking algorithm and the aforementioned utilities to give you a better chance of finding what you're after than does a simple keyword-based match. It also runs within the browser window, so you can even pin it as an "app tab" and have it at your fingertips all day long.
Aside from the feature set itself, another nice thing about RecallMonkey is that it is written entirely in Mozilla's new, lightweight Add-ons SDK — meaning the complete experience is handled in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. That means wider compatibility with different versions of the browser, a faster development cycle for the engineers at Mozilla Labs, and vastly simplified installation.
You do still need to visit the RecallMonkey add-on page to download and install the extension. The current release supports all versions of Firefox since the 4.0 release. However, because RecallMonkey is not written in XUL, chrome, or other hefty extension mechanisms, there is no need to restart Firefox. You can start using the extension immediately after the Add-ons wizard says it is finished.
At least, that's the theory. The one wrinkle worth looking out for is that RecallMonkey adds an item to the browser's History menu, and this menu item may not appear immediately. It will be present when you next re-launch Firefox, though. But you can still fire up RecallMonkey with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-M. This opens a new tab, loading a distinctive resource:// URI.
What you get is a search box across the top and four refinement tools down the left hand side. Search queries are live, with results updated as you type. The list is sorted — although I cannot find any in-depth documentation of the algorithm, it seems to weight frequently-visited pages higher, and try to mix in results from multiple domains. Only one screen-ful is loaded at a time; as you scroll down additional hits load on-demand.
For now, the refinement tools include a time selector with five options (Last 24 Hours, Last Week, Last Month, Last Year, and All Time), a "Prioritize Bookmarks" check-box, and tiny little arrows and X's next to each result. Clicking the X excises the entry's domain from the results and adds it to an "Excluded Sites" list on the left. Clicking the arrow adds the domain to the "Prioritized Sites" list.
It seems that both of these site-based features are limited to the base URL, which is useful but has its weaknesses. I'm hopeful that further refinements will let me differentiate between (for example) search results originating from www.google.com/search? and Google Reader pages originating from www.google.com/reader/view/. It does not appear that there are any special operators (such as using the plus sign to require an exact match for a particular term), but double quotes do seem to be interpreted as a phrase search.
In any particular search, the prioritize and exclude filters help you hone your results quite quickly. The live-updating list is fast, and to my eye the fuzzy matching (however it is done) does not produce any significant number of head-scratching "false positives." I'd rather see an actual description of the search algorithm than have to figure it out on my own, but then again this is a Labs release, not a finished product.
Speaking of which, as convenient as RecallMonkey is, you can never forget that Mozilla Labs tools are, ultimately, experimental. There are risks, and producing bullet-proof code is not the goal — learning is. RecallMonkey's functionality might be one of those experiments that (like the Internet) proves so useful that it quickly outgrows the lab and engulfs the world. On the other hand, it might be more like any of the more numerous experiments that escape from the lab, and wreak widespread havoc on the world ultimately being destroyed (see any number of old Sci-Fi movies for reference).
After my own tests, I definitely lean towards the "useful" outcome, but even so the present-day extension comes with some caveats. After using RecallMonkey for a few days continuously (keeping it open in a tab), I found Firefox's in-page content to be slower and highly prone to spontaneous crashes. No such trouble was found when closing RecallMonkey in between uses. I obviously cannot prove that RecallMonkey was the culprit (in part because I use about a dozen extensions — not even Mozilla Labs can guarantee that independent extensions do not interfere with each other), but it seems like the most likely source. Because the XUL UI was unaffected, page content's poor responsiveness is more likely to be due to the JavaScript engine than anything else, and RecallMonkey is a JavaScript-driven extension. Your mileage may vary.
Still, when used with restraint, RecallMonkey offers a noticeably nicer experience than the default session history interface. This is also the first Add-ons SDK extension I have tested, and I was impressed by that feature as well — enough so that I have started looking into the SDK itself.
I hope RecallMonkey is here to stay, although it desperately needs documentation of the search matching heuristics, a few more search operators, and to properly set its page background color rather than just assume we all use white. The alternative is to go back to using the History pane, or worse yet, to count on Awesomebar's unpredictable black-box matching. Neither one gives you much power to shape the search process, however, and giving users the power is what open source — and Firefox — are all about.
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Chrome OS Gets Hacked Via ScratchPad Extension
In a preview of a demonstration at the upcoming Black Hat security conference, a security researcher has demonstrated how browser extensions can be used to compromise Chrome OS. WhiteHat Security specialist Matt Johansen reported spreading a note containing malicious code via the ScratchPad extension....
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Linux Foundation Releases New White Paper on FOSS Compliance for Suppliers
The Linux Foundation strives to provide relevant, useful guidance to organizations setting up their free and open source software (FOSS) compliance programs. Last month, we released a white paper titled “A Five Step Compliance Process for FOSS Identification and Review.”
Now, we are releasing a freely available new white paper “FOSS Compliance Practices for Supplied Software.” It examines compliance practices needed when software supplied by a third party vendor is brought into the code baseline of a product to be distributed externally. The white paper discusses requirements a company should impose upon its suppliers to disclose FOSS in their deliverables and to provide what’s needed to achieve compliance. The paper also discusses steps a company can take to review and validate the FOSS disclosures made by its suppliers. In addition to those topics, the white paper addresses measures a company can undertake to assess its suppliers’ compliance capabilities.
Take a look!
Open Compliance Training Class Offered in Conjunction with LinuxCon North America
Once again, an onsite open compliance training course will be offered directly after a major Linux Foundation event. We’ll deliver LF384, “Overview of Open Source Compliance End-to-End Process” right after LinuxCon North America in Vancouver, on Saturday August 20, 2011 at the conference hotel. It’s important to The Linux Foundation to provide every opportunity to the community for learning and exchanging ideas about compliance. By hosting this one-day training course in conjunction with LinuxCon, we hope to increase access to important content on open compliance and to provide a classroom environment for collaboration on this topic.
The full-day course focuses on how to organize and manage the compliance function so that your company can benefit from FOSS while complying with all license obligations. If you’ll be responsible for implementing your company’s compliance program, you’ll surely profit from this class. Just go to http://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=923767 to register. And, by the way, you can register for the course even if you don’t plan to attend LinuxCon. If you have any questions about registration, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . If you have questions about the course content or you’re interested in the course but can’t make the event in Vancouver and want to find out about other course offerings, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Check out the LinuxCon conference site for more info about our 20th anniversary celebration of Linux (including black tie gala(!)) and a great technical program that features a number of compliance talks by industry experts.
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Selasa, 26 Juli 2011
Hurd Progresses - Debian GNU/Hurd by end of 2012?
When Debian 7.0 releases, a Wheezy GNU/Hurd could be included if things go as planned
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Open Source and the Democratization of IT
The latest BriefingsDirect podcast discussion centers on how the role and impact of integration has shifted, and how a more comprehensive and managed approach to integration is required, thanks to such major trends as cloud, hybrid computing and managing massive datasets. Moreover, the tools that support enterprise integration need to be usable by more types of workers, those that are involved with business process activities and data analysis. The so-called democratization of IT effect is also progressing into the world of applications and data integration.
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QA Community Coordinator Required
I am looking to hire a new member for my team (the Community Team) here at Canonical. I am looking for a bright, motivated, and experienced person to build, maintain and develop a cohesive, productive and effective Ubuntu QA community.
This role will be full-time working at Canonical, you will be working from home with regular travel to various events (such as UDS and team sprints), and you will be working in a fast-paced, productive, and energetic environment. This is a really exciting role that is designed to bring huge value to the Ubuntu community in the area of quality by refining, optimizing, and growing our QA community participation.
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PCLinuxOS Review: What Does PCLinuxOS Have to Offer?
In the quest to find the perfect Linux distribution, we often hit an obstacle that makes the grass look greener on another distro's lawn. When we reach that point, the first instinct is to turn to another distribution and hope that something fresh will also be something better. This time around, I decided to see if PCLinuxOS was indeed greener.
Time and time again, I have learned that something new is not always something better. Take Ubuntu's switch to a new desktop shell with Unity in Ubuntu 11.04. This switch has left a number of Ubuntu users pondering other distributions in search of more familiar territory.
One user-friendly distro that's popular is PCLinuxOS, and they have just come out with a new release. But what does it have that other distros do not? That's my goal, to explore PCLinuxOS and see what you can expect that you won't find elsewhere. And, with that said, let's dig in.
There are two different desktops you can opt to go with on PCLinuxOS: KDE or LXDE. KDE is an obvious choice and is offered by plenty of distributions. LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) on the other hand is primarily distributed by Lubuntu and Knoppix. Because there are already two other distributions shipping with LXDE, what about the PCLinuxOS take on this desktop would make anyone want to use PCLinuxOS over these two distributions?
The first thing a user might notice is that, out of the box, PCLinuxOS is set up with both NVidia and ATI fglrx support built in. No matter which type of graphics card is on the machine, PCLinuxOS — with the LXDE desktop — should work great! With either Lubuntu or Knoppix (should anyone actually use Knoppix as a desktop distribution), it is likely that either proprietary or extra drivers will need to be installed to get the same working graphics as found in the out of the box experience of PCLinuxOS.
Another out of the box experience users will appreciate with PCLinuxOS is with multi-media. Instead of having to mess around with installing the proper codecs to get various multi-media files to work, those files should simply play — out of the box. A welcome change for anyone frustrated with having to always install extra packages just to play music or video.
PCLinuxOS has one of the strangest takes on package management I've run into on Linux. PCLinuxOS is based on Mandriva, so it uses RPMs. I will admit that I've always been a fan of RPM and Yum for managing packages. What I've never been much of a fan of is PackageKit. PackageKit is a graphical front-end used to handle RPM and Yum, as well as Debian packages when used on those distributions. PackageKit has always (in my opinion) been inferior to the likes of Synaptic. And that is where PCLinuxOS shines. The developers of this rpm-based distribution have taken the Synaptic front end (usually associated with apt and apt-get) and added it as the package manager for PCLinuxOS.
Although I say that the PCLinuxOS take on the package management is strange, in my opinion this was a very strong move on the developers part. Synaptic is far and away easier to use than PackageKit. This ease of use, however, comes with a price — outdated software. The Synaptic version installed is a few releases out of date (and will remain that way because of the way it is set up to work with rpm.)
The LXDE flavor of PCLinuxOS ships with two different control panels — the LXDE control panel (see Figure 1) and the Mandriva control panel (see Figure 2).
The simplicity of the LXDE control panel will please the purists at heart.
Each panel offers different tools and a completely different take on administering a system. The LXDE control panel offers a very minimal, simplistic approach to the control panel and focuses on the desktop. But even with this minimal take on the tool, much can be done here. From the GDM login screen to session saving to screen resolution to much of the appearance of the desktop — the LXDE desktop is nearly completely covered by the control panel. But when it comes to system configuration, the Mandriva control panel (branded as the PCLinuxOS Control Center) is the place to be.
This is where nearly all system settings are taken care of.
Thankfully, the PCLinuxOS developers included the Mandriva control panel so system settings would not have to be done via command line or through multiple tools chosen from a hierarchical menu system. Of course, this isn't really anything new to Linux distributions as most newer releases now make use of a control panel-like tool. PCLinuxOS is one of the few (maybe the only) that offer a control panel for the desktop and a separate control panel for the system.
One of the more refreshing aspects I found with PCLinuxOS was the list of software pre-installed. Instead of the usual line up of pedestrian software, this distribution includes some unusual (and welcome) suspects. This list includes:
Claws Mail: One of the most configurable and powerful e-mail clients available.Bleachbit: Outstanding system cleaning application.Clementine: DAAP server.Flashplayer-plugin: That's right, a distribution finally installs Flash out of the box.The Gimp: Linux isn't Linux without The Gimp.Of course, if the KDE version of PCLinuxOS is installed, the standard KDE software will be included. And according to the PCLinuxOS web site, Dropbox is supposed to be pre-installed — it is not.
There is a mis-perception with PCLinuxOS in that it is an ideal distribution for new Linux users. I have to disagree with that sentiment. I'll explain. Distributions built for new users tend to pull back on the users' ability to tinker. Why? Because when new users tinker, they break things. Take Ubuntu, for instance. With Ubuntu it's much harder for a new user to break the install than, say, a Fedora distribution.
PCLinuxOS falls in place nearer to Fedora than Ubuntu in that more things can be easily broken. Just open up the PCLinuxOS Control Center (Mandriva control panel) and look around at what can be tinkered with. For example, a new user could easily install a web server, an ftp server, configure NFS or SMB sharing, or easily modify security settings. On a distribution for a new users, these configuration options would be a bit less obvious and/or easy to access.
Does this take away from PCLinuxOS as a distribution as a whole? Not in the slightest. In fact, I would recommend that anyone looking for a distribution to alleviate the Ubuntu Unity/GNOME 3 headaches should give PCLinuxOS a try. Which flavor depends on exactly what is desired from the desktop. If a desktop resplendent with special effects and eye candy is preferred, go with the KDE flavor of PCLinuxOS. If a lightweight, faster, minimal (yet highly functional) desktop is preferred, go with the LXDE flavor.
The latest release of PCLinuxOS brings to the table a good amount of relief for those suffering from the upheaval brought about by the release of some of the game-changing desktops that have come to light. Although I don't believe PCLinuxOS to offer any one single deal breaker or deal maker aspect, it's still a solid distribution that does have a few unique twists to the Linux desktop distribution.
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