Author: jdeslip

The hardest part of using Linux is often installing it.  Over the last couple of years, Linux has come a long way in terms of hardware support, and these days it is relatively rare that an installation of ubuntu/fedora will be lacking any drivers for your machine. However, installing any OS can still sometimes be a tedious task and one that scares the wits out of the average computer user. And, for the expert users out there, it’s just more fun to buy a computer with Linux already on it and not have to pay the Microsoft tax – even, if you are going to put your favorite distro on it anyway.  You can find Linux servers sold all sort of places, but where can you find Linux desktops for sale? Here is a list of places I have had good experiences with or have had heard good things about directly:

Dell http://www.dell.com/ubuntu

I bought a laptop (1420) from dell with ubuntu preinstalled.  It showed up and all of the hardware immediately worked flawlessly: webcam, wifi, suspend/resume, audio, compiz etc…  The good thing about buying a dellbuntu, as opposed to a computer from Best Buy, is you can be absolutely sure that everything will be supported.  Beyond piece of mind, buying an ubuntu machine from Dell sends a message to the big manufactures that there is a demand for Linux and Linux support on their computers.

ZaReason http://www.zareason.com

ZaReason is a local Berkeley company that sells preinstalled Ubuntu desktops and laptops all over the world.  They also sell Ubuntu swag such as case badges to replace any “powered by windows” stickers on your old computers (of which I have bought to give away at our meetings).  The prices start low and the computers are available with many customizations.  Whenever you buy a machine from ZaReason, they include a screwdriver in your package, letting you know that you are free to tinker with your computer.  If you want a preinstalled Ubuntu computer with great Linux support and would rather promote a small Linux only dealer than a big corporation like Dell, consider ZaReason.  I intend to buy my next computer from them.

System76 http://www.system76.com

Like ZaReason, System76, sells preinstalled Ubuntu Laptops / Desktops (and now they have their very own netbook).  They were one of the first companies to sell their own Linux systems and have a large user and support community (including their own forum at ubuntuforums).  Hardware support is flawless and they have a wide array of machines designed for everyday users, to business laptops to servers.  I have never had experience with a System76 machine, but have heard nothing but good things.

EmperorLinux http://www.emperorlinux.com

Unlike System76 and ZaReason, EmperorLinux does not create their own computers.  They get high-end computers from Dell/Lenovo (including several tablet options) and install Linux on them for you.  These are great for power users who want a high end (or business) machine with Linux on it.   But, it does not have the advantage of being a true Linux computer from start to finish.

LinuxCertified http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html

Linux certified also sells some preinstalled Linux laptops/desktops. I know very little about these machines, but they are worth looking into before you decide on a purchase.

Netbooks

Since the EeePC, a lot of netbooks have flooded the market, most with a Linux option.  I own and love the EeePC 901.  It originally came with a somewhat lame Linux distro based on Xandros.  However, I have installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it, and it is a great little Linux laptop.  Here are EeePC Linux options available at Amazon.Com:

http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1243048858/ref=sr_nr_i_1?ie=UTF8&rs=&keywords=Linux%20EeePC&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3ALinux%20EeePC%2Ci%3Aelectronics

HP SUSE Probook

Finally, it looks like HP  is getting back into the game…

http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=3732

Additions from the Comments:

Puget Systems http://www.pugetsystems.com/ – Looks like they sell both Linux and Windows custom PCs.

Pioneer Computers (Australia) http://www.pioneercomputers.com.au/ – Live in Australia?  Try this.

Los Alamos Linux http://laclinux.com/en/Start – One of the oldest Linux sellers.  Looks like they are similar to EmperorLinux in that they mod Lenovo’s for example.

Affordy http://www.affordy.com – Looks like another company similar to System76 and ZaReason.  Nice to have options – good review below in comments.

eRacks http://www.eracks.com

linPC http://linpc.us

IndaMixx http://www.indamixx.com Recommended in email.  Looks like a nice portable multimedia system.

EightVirtues http://www.eightvirtues.com

Diverse Technologies http://www.dt.com.au/linux.php

PsyStar http://www.psystar.com/linux

Also, as one of the commenters kindly pointed out, Linux.org has a list of some vendors (though, since they are missing most of my original suggestions, it is certainly no master list):  http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/index.html

I thought I would quickly post a link to a great article on phoronix about Moblin V2 beta.  I will definitely be trying this out on my Eee this weekend.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=moblin_v2_ui&num=1

Edit: Here is an awesome video I found at engadget as well: http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/20/moblin-2-0-beta-impressively-demoed-on-video

How bad do you want Netflix on Linux? Lots. Do you want it enough to beg Microsoft for it?  Whoa now… :/

Miguel de Icaza recently revealed in his blog, http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/May-04.html#comment-9068857, that Netflix won’t be coming with Moonlight 2.0 (as was largely anticipated) unless Microsoft actively intervenes and ports its DRM stack to Linux.

Miguel suggested that we put some pressure on Netflix and Microsoft directly, asking that they do this. There was a thread created on the Silverlight forum pleading with Microsoft to port its DRM stack over. So far, the responses on the thread vary between desperate sob stories and cookie cutter anti-MS attacks.

What is the solution to this mess? Clearly, Netflix shouldn’t have chosen an engine that doesn’t have cross-platform support for its streaming video service. But, what can Linux Netflix users do now? Well, you could cancel your account, as many are suggesting.  But, I like the Netflix regular disc service too much for that.  You can run an XP virtual machine in VirtualBox. This works quite well.  However, firstly, it isn’t really linux, and secondly, it doesn’t really help people running Boxee or MythTV (i.e. me).

Is it better to compromise our principles a bit to get a service we want? Should we boycott Netflix until they change services? Perhaps we should just spin around in circles and cry because we are so confused…

Get your RSS feed readers ready because here is my list of the best sites/feeds to stay in touch with the latest developments in the linux community.  This is the short list — there are many personal/professional blogs/sites that should be included in  a full list.  But, most of them are aggregated in the following sites.

Phoronix

I list this site first because it is my new favorite Linux news site.  Actually, it is much more than just a news site; they produce a Linux benchmarking suite called PTS (Phoronix Test Suite) that tests the performance of every aspect of the Linux system including cpus/compilers, graphics cards/drivers and kernel/distro releases.  This benchmarking alone is instrumental in helping Linux progess, but they also provide a news feed of generally well thought out articles on important releases  and software and hardware developments in the Linux ecosystem.  If you have limited time and can only follow important hapennings in the Linux world, I suggest you subscribe to Phoronix’s RSS feed.

LXER

LXER.com is a comprehensive Linux news agregation site for Linux stories.  You can think of it like slashdot for only Linux.  Articles are posted from a range of sources including personal blogs and professional journals such as CNET, ArsTechnia.  LXER combined with Linux Today (see the following) cover all your basis as far as linux news goes.

Linux Today

Very similar to LXER but with  a separate submission process.  Linux Today also has its own set of original articles.  The site tends tends to promote a range of articles from the extremely important to trivial, but is a good browse for any Linux enthusiast.

Linux.com

This used to be a Linux news aggregation site similar to Linux Today and LXer, but it was recently purchased by the Linux Foundation.  They have released a beta version of the new site including social networking features, a comprehensive forum and the ability to create your own Linux articles.  When it goes live, it should be a very nice Linux portal.

Digg Linux

Of course, who can forget digg.com’s linux’s section (and the linux upcoming section)? While it has a lot of overlap with LinuxToday and LXer, it is a good interactive supplement to your daily Linux news dose.

And we shouldn’t forget about the great Linux forums.  Here are the ones I actively particpate in:

linuxforums.org

ubuntuforums.org

fedoraforum.org

Another great way to follow developments in the Linux community is through linux podcasts.  A few come to mind (jupiter broadcasting and linux outlaws), but this is really a subject for another post.

EDIT: Here are some user conributed sites from varous comments:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/

http://www.linuxinsight.com/

http://lwn.net/

http://www.osnews.com/

http://www.linuxleak.com/

NetApplications’ hitslink.com just released their april market share stats and linux passed 1% for the first time ever.

Here is a plot of the linux market share for the past several years based on hitslinks’ stats:

1 in 100 desktops/laptops is now linux according to hitslink.  Hurray.  While this number may be a low estimate due to linux users visiting different sites or hiding their browser identity, the main thing to take away from this is the trend: up!  Over 300% in just a few years.

I have been out of town lately; so, not a whole lot has been accomplished on the BerkeleyLUG front in the last few weeks.  I hope to push things further along in the next few weeks.

I thought I’d kick things off a bit with a new post about an awesome (and fairly new) program/service for linux called Dropbox.

If you are like me, you have several computers that you use on a regular basis.  A desktop/server, a laptop, a netbook and a work computer.  It is annoying to have to manually sync files between them by email/flash-drive/ssh etc…  For example, I am often working on a paper at work and want to continue working on it home.  Or, I want my pictures to show up on all my computers when I get them off of my camera.  Same thing for my music, when I buy it (DRM free from AmazonMP3 or Emusic).  For the longest time, I was using rsync to satisfy my syncing needs.  Now, don’t get me wrong, rsync is awesome, but it is less than seemless.  At best I need to click an icon that launches a script to do the sync.  However, dropbox is seemless.  It comes as an extension to nautilus and creates a folder called “Dropbox” in your home directory.  Everything you put in that folder is automatically synced to your private webspace and your other computers.  It all happens in about 5 seconds.

For free, you can sync up to 2GB of of space, and, for a small monthly fee, (which I updated for after testing it for a few days) you can sync up to 50GB.  The program itself is opensource; you are paying for the webspace and bandwidth.

The way I use to sync most of my home director is to have most of my directories located in ~/Dropbox which I symlink to ~/ – the ones that aren’t symlinked are the ones I don’t want synced.  I recommend everyone check this out if you have multiple computers.  The program is awesome, the devs love linux/opensource and are open to suggestions and are extremely active.  A new test version hits the forums several times a week.

The Linux Nvidia driver is a contentious subject, I know.  Forgetting the fact that it is a proprietary binary blob, I think the 180.29 release of the driver release  was their best in years.  Not only did it greatly improve 2D performance on several of my machines and fix numerous bugs, but it added something called VDPAU.  What VDPAU does is offload video decoding/playing from the CPU to the GPU; so, video playback should be smoother and allow you to more easily run other tasks while HD video is playing.

I decided to try this out on the mythbox I built recently to capture the digital HD signal that is freely broadcast over the air these days.  I have an onboard Nvidia GeForce 8200 video card and am running Mythbuntu 8.10 with mythtv 0.21-fixes.  Jean-Yves Avenard backported the 0.22 vdpau elements and created a Mythbuntu repo to upgrade the default packages (it also contains the 180.29 driver).  A discussion of Mythbuntu itself is coming soon.

The results are simply amazing.  The CPU usage on 1080p/i HD video has dropped from ~70% to < 1%!  There isn’t much to say but wow!  It did solve several issues with stability of HD playback in mythv due to high CPU usage and generally gave much smoother transitions.  So, thumbs up to the NVidia Linux devs, the MythTV devs and the Mythbuntu team.  Try it out for yourself if you have a Mythbox and an NVidia card.

People (including myself) criticize NVidia for not open-sourcing their driver, but, at the end of the day, it still gives the best performance and end user experience if you ask me.  That may change in a year as the open-source ATI driver matures.  But, for now, NVidia is still king of Linux graphics.

We are still working out the details of the BerkeleyLUG meeting locations and times.  However, I thought I would also use this space to write regularly about new and interesting developments in desktop linux.

I’d like to start, by pointing peoples attention to two games I have been playing on my ubuntu-eee (now easy-peasy) based Eee 901. I’ll probably write a separate entry on easy-peasy itself sometime soon.

The first is a free and open-source game that has been around for quite awhile called, The Battle for Wesnoth.  It reminds me of a  Super Nintendo game I used to play a lot in middle school called Ogre Battle but with better characters, graphics and gameplay.  Basically, it is a turn based strategy game with a lot of RPG elements like attributes, a story, and awesome artwork.  You basically build up an army through completing ~ 1 hour long campaigns to take back the land of Wesnoth, of which you are the prince and rightful ruler of.  I think it is my new favorite FOSS game of all time (I know there are some good 1st person shooters out there as well: openarena, nexuiz etc..).  The developers have a trailer at the website above, but here are a few screenshots:

The next game I have been playing was just realesed for Linux on Friday: The World of Goo.  It is a really fun game that has existed for Windows/Mac and Wii for a few months.  The developer always emphasized the DRM freeness of the software, intrusting his users to do the right thing without encumbering their experience.  It seems a lot of Windows/Mac users didn’t respect this because it was estimated that 95% of the copies were obtained illegally.  He turned to Linux as an opportunity to increase sales.  This makes a lot of sense to me because Linux users are not known for pirating software – choosing free, open-source and DRM-free options instead of illegal ones.  The World of Goo is not open source, and costs $20, but it is definitely worth it.  It’d be worth it just to send the message to developers that they can make money on Linux apps if they treat users with respect, but the game itself is a blast and easily worth the money on its own.  The goo website also has a trailer that you should check out that does a better job describing the game than any screen caps could.