Web review

It could sounds ironic, but the main feature I miss from Windows Seven – when I’m using a PC with Windows XP – it’s that little button on the bottom-right corner of the screen. Nina, an MBA accounting student I know, talks about how useful this button used to
be. It has the same functionality of the old “Show desktop” button on XP, but its position allows me to “launch” the mouse in that direction, without any precision, and click it to get all windows hidden.

Of course, someone released a tiny (and free) utility to backport this feature to 9 years ago, on Windows XP
It doesn’t need to be installed, just download and start it (and maybe put it into the “startup” section of your Start Menu)!

http://ceiiular.deviantart.com/art/Show-Desktop-133022210

As I stated some days ago, I’m testing Windows 7 beta 1. Honestly, I’m very satisfied by the new operating system of Microsoft, that seems to be “What Vista wasn’t”. Because of my satisfaction, I’m trying to give my little help sending feedbacks to Microsoft when I encounter some bug or when I find that usability/user experience is not optimal.
I’m saving my feedbacks locally to keep a trace of what I suggested… and maybe to check if these things will be corrected in the final version.

I will also paste them here to make others know… and to collect some comments from readers of Web Review. leggi tutto »

Today I fixed a new problem with my test installation of Windows 7 (first public beta): Avast! Free – my “default” antivirus, was causing random system crashes. After some tries, I understood that blue screen of death was occurring during internal network activity. To be more precise, the problem is located in the use of shared folders (aka “samba shares”, for Linux users) and it involves the tdx.sys file, that seems to be often a protagonist of BSODs. leggi tutto »

Post updated at 13:50 (GMT+1) on June, 17th 2009 – Now Windows 7 RC1 is public and available to everyone.
As anticipated by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES (Las Vegas), Windows 7 first public beta is now available for free download.
Windows Vista users are free to get and install it on their computers as update.

The download is Beta licenses are limited “only” to the first 2,5 million of users.
This version will expire on August, 1st 2009.

At this moment, official pages don’t seem to offer the link to start the download. (Windows 7 official site – Post on Windows 7 official blog), but… leggi tutto »

The Aspire One is a netbook from Acer, very similar to the Asus Eee PC. It’s sold at about EUR 200 in Italy, and it offers an 8.9″ display (1024×600), a 1.6Ghz Intel Atom CPU, a 8Gb SSD drive, with integrated Wifi, Mic and webcam.
It’s a nice product, but the Linux operating system with it is shipped is not so good (it’s a personalized and branded version of Linpus – a Taiwanese distribution for low-resources PCs).

I tried a couple of alternative OS (for example Ubuntu Netbook Remix), but none of them fully fit on it: too weight, drivers problems, etc. leggi tutto »

Since some times I’m thinking about a couple of things I’d like to tell to the whole Linux World. I chose to tell them from my blog: I hope that my english will not penalize too much the readability of my ideas.

“Dear Linux“,

I esteem you very much: since several years, you’re the only and real alternative to Microsoft Windows (and to Apple OS). A free alternative, the result of an intensive collaboration between thousands of international open source developers.

You’re already famous to be a wonderful server platform: Linux and Apache are spread and worldwide appreciated; the launch of the most recent distro’s (like Ubuntu, of course) demonstrated that Linux is ready to be a plausible desktop system.

BUT.

But after all those efforts, after every try to transform Linux to make it look like a “normal” operating system, for home use… there’s always something wrong.
Everytime I read debates on web forums between Windows and Linux users I ask to myself the reason why Linux developers don’t do that final step. Why don’t you want to change those (not many) details that prevent final users to approach this great operating system?

I made a list of 3 things to do… to make Linux become an easy desktop system. I’m sorry, I’m not a developer (I’m just able to code scripts for web pages).
Please do them for me. Please do them for us

1. Software installation
Linux OS installation is usually easy, at least like Windows (sometimes Linux is quicker!). How can it be possible that, if I want to install a new application that isn’t included by default (in Synaptic, etc…) I still have to type hard-to-remember commands?
Same discourse about editing repositories lists (do you call this “intuitive”?); I deliberately omit the hypothesis about self-compiling from sources.
I saw that (recently) there was some efforts in this way (Autopackage). It’s imperative to make this (or a similar one) the default installation platform for Linux desktop systems.
Stop waiting users to learn how to install Linux binaries, they will not do it. They’re only waiting to do double-click on an icon and to see a wizard.

2. System Setup
Yesterday I was playing with a new install of Kubuntu: in the control panel there is a lot of options: I can customize every small corner of my desktop, from the look of the windows to the number of virtual desktops.
Unfortunately, I can’t change resolution of the screen to 1440×900 (my monitor is a 16:10) because the res selector show me only 640×480, 800×600 and 1024×768. I had to change manually the config file of the Window manager to add this resolution… after a reboot it was perfect. Why it didn’t appear in the control panel?
Do you expect that a person without good general experience with computers will understand that he has to open a terminal window, type sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf, scroll to “Screen” section of the text file, add its custom resolution, save and reboot?
I remember that, when I had a CRT monitor, I spent about 45 minutes to search informations on the Internet about how to raise screen refresh from 60Hz to 85Hz. THIS is an important part of a good control panel, people need this: icons, colours and windows transparency can wait.
Any ordinary setting that an average user would want to change must be accessible by windows/buttons/sliders, using the mouse. Microsoft Windows does it, why Linux can’t?

3. Drivers
… see point 1. Newest Linux distributions are very good with hardware recognition: I installed Kubuntu on my home PC and it dectected more peripherals than Windows. But if a single device is not automatically recognized during first install, it’s the end.
Driver installation must be easy as installing an application in Windows: download a file from the web, double click on it and follow instructions.
In addiction: we know that Linux is penalized by hardware manufacturers, and often single developers release home-made drivers for devices that aren’t officially supported. It’s important to create a global repository of drivers on the Web, to let users save time and find the most part of their drivers in a single place.

You can say that I’m polemic. You can say also that I’m rude and ungrateful, but this isn’t the sense of my post. I wrote this open letter because I find ironic to have a so good and FREE operating system like Linux is, and to see it incomplete.
The features I talked about above are so easy to implement (for skiled persons like Linux developers are). Add them to Linux and I promise you that it will start its hyke to Windows monopoly.

The news is not… new, but nowadays a lot of tutorials about how to install Apple’s OS X on an x86 computer are available, and the procedure is now followable by (almost) any PC user.

I want to remember to everybody that it’s illegal to install and use OS X without a valid licence. I take no responsability for any invalid use of this tutorial.
In addiction, please take note that the following procedure may cause a data loss, so do only if you know what are you doing.

We’ll see how to install OS X on a Windows XP machine, on a 7Gb dedicated partition. So you have to prepare your hard disk with:

- The first, primary and bootable partition with a normal Win XP installation;
- A second empty NTFS primary partition;
- Any other partition you like.

Please refer to other documentations if you don’t know how to deal with hard drive partitions. You can use, for example, Partition Magic to change your HD partitions… anyway if you are not experienced in partitioning, my tip is stop here

Then, you have to get some software:

1. an Ubuntu Linux Live CD: you can get it, or you can download it… it’s free. A valid alternative to Ubuntu that I found is Knoppix STD: use it if you’ve problems with Ubuntu;
2. VmWare Workstation it’s a commercial application, but a free trial is available;
3. The Deadmoo’s OS X Linux distro: this is available on P2P networks, usually under tiger-x86.tar.bz2 filename. I want to remember again that you’ve no right to download and to use it, if you don’t have a valid Apple’s OS X Licence.

- Boot from Ubuntu (of Knoppix) Live CD;
- Open a Terminal Window, get administrative rights (it should be sufficient to enter the command “sudo su“)… and type:
cfdisk /dev/hda
- The CFdisk utility will start: choose the partition where you want to install OS X (it should be the second one, but please make attention!) and choose “TYPE”. Now write “AF” (without quotes, of course) as type, and confirm changes choosing “WRITE”. The partition you chose will be erased and it’s type will be set to AF (Apple Format).

Now reboot, go back to Windows XP, install and open VmWare.
Create a new “FreeBSD” virtual machine. When asked to choose the primary hard drive for the virtual machine, choose your phisical hard disk; Also add a second hard drive to the virtual machine: the virtual drive inside Deadmoo’s archive; insert your Ubuntu CD and make sure that your phisical DVD/CD-rom reader is enabled in the virtual machine.
Then start the virtual machine and press on ESC as the machine begin, to enter boot menu: choose to boot from CD. Ubuntu should start booting in the virtual machine’s window. On the contrary, if you see Windows starting, immediately turn off the virtual machine and check CD-Rom settings (in this case, the CD boot has not started and your Windows XP is going to start into itself!).

When Ubuntu is ready, open a terminal window and type a command like this:

dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=/dev/hda2/ bs=8192
hdb (2nd hard drive) should be the mounted Deadmoo’s image: our source;
hda2 should be the 2nd partition of the 1st hard drive (our phisical one): the destination.
CHANGE HDB1 and HDA2 with YOUR SETTINGS!

If you’re not sure about partitions, type:
fdisk /dev/hda -l
to get a list of your connected hard drives and relative partitions identifiers.

The process will take about 5-10 minutes. At the end, you can shut down the virtual machine.

Download this file.
It contains a file named chain0. Extract it to the root of your C:\ partition and add the following line:
C:\chain0=”Mac OS X”
to your C:\boot.ini file.

Now reboot your PC and choose Mac OS X at the boot list screen. Then the “Darwin boot” will ask you to select the partition with Mac OS X installed: select it with arrow keys.

Now try to type -s and then enter. If everything goes ok, at the prompt type:
sh /etc/rc
passwd curtis
passwd root
and enter your new password when asked. If anything is wrong, try to boot with -x or without arguments.

Please take note that sometimes it’s needed to boot several times (with -s, -x, or with no arguments) to get OS X work… I don’t know the reason, but it happens!

Finally, yesterday my new PC has arrived: a Sempron 3000+ 64-bit (this, and the flu I got, are the reasons because I skipped a day of update of this blog).
I installed Windows x64, the XP 64 bit version. Here are my impressions, my tips and the reason because I came back to “normal” XP, renouncing, by now, to get the “full power” of my new CPU.

• XP x64 is fast, very fast, this is clear starting from the basic “open and close” of the windows, there are no pauses, it’s really comfortable to use it;
• it’s a pity that Internet Explorer, available in 32 and 64 versions, must be used in 32 version, because every Flash animation or every ActiveX in pages don’t work with 64 bit version;
• More than 1 hour to force installation of my ATI Radeon 9000 driver: ATI stopped to support older video board with 64 bit drivers. Finally, I made Windows recognize it as the newer Radeon 9500, with some modification to the installation .inf file, but it was really annoying…
• The good TrayZone app doesn’t work in Windows x64 (I already wrote to the author of this little tool to ask him if he can prepare a modded version);
• Luckily, the drivers for my satellite TV board SkyStar2 are available also in x64 version, but the modified version by MiBi doesn’t exist, to make work the rotor of my sat antenna
• I had big problems also reinstalling Eurobarre (even if I succeded forcing also the installation of this application).

Considering that those troubles were concentred in a few hours, while I was reinstalling the softwares and settings I keep in my system, I can tell you that… World is not ready for Windows x64
Just to tell it in a better way, this power is tasty, and it would be nice to use it: but for the moment, using a 64 bit CPU in full power mode is ok in a server, or if we’ve some special need (computer graphic, ray-tracing, if we need large computing power), and it’s ok for very PC passionate people. For normal users, or for… medium geeks like me, it’s better to wait a little more that the diffusion of 64 bit CPU reach the majority of the users, and so that every driver and applications will be released in 64 version. By now, it’s too soon.

Anyway, if you want to try Windows XP x64, I can suggest patience and articles like this, and of course some searches with Google to make it work, with nice habits or punches, our old applications. Good luck ;)