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Call me Crazy, but I miss Linux. I didn't really realize it till today.
Some months ago, My employer bought me a MacBook, and, I _love_ it. Don't get me wrong. About the same time, my at home Desktop (an emachines that had-- seriously-- outlived its life expectancy by about 2 years) died of a broken flux capacitor, or something. I have been without Linux since.

Today, I spent a few more hours in the basement with the latest copy of Geubuntu, swapping out RAM and Drives between the three junker machines I have down there, and between the three of them, there is not a single usable/functional computer.

A. I've fired up my ancient xBuntu/FluxBox hybrid laptop-- a Dell Inspiron 3500, just to get me some linux on. and, I realize, I miss it.

Apple's got lots of nice choices for the Open Software enthusiast-- I prefer NeoOffice to Word, for example, but there's just something about the full-on customization that you can make happen on a linux machihe.

So, the question is this, Ubuntu Planet: Where do _you_ suggest turning to purchase hardware in the sub-$300 range. I want to buy, not build, and I just need a box. I have monitors and input devices. Suggestions?

Here's a classic example of a misguided dialog box. It's too much information in a square box presented in a series of convoluted noun-phrases.

Granted, it's a "More details" dialog, so you have to cut it some slack for giving more details. However, instead of giving useful details, this dialog just spits out a bunch of stuff in a huge block of text that pretty much stupidly covers four probable scenarios without giving any meaningful insight.

I suggest, instead, the "details" option offer just that: more details. What this dialog offers isn't more details, it's more words.

I came across it using a Hardy Heron live cd checking on a what I believe is a hard-disk failure that took an otherwise serviceable WinXP laptop down. I wrote this post using the same liveCD. Nice work, Ubuntu guys. The Heron is a great little linux. Even on a borked Lappy.

1. In Windows Vista, I cannot print to my Ubuntu shared printer. No matter how hard I tried. Compare this with the fact that when I have a OSX in the house, it actually prints _better_ to the Ubuntu shared printer than Ubuntu does.

2. Using Windows Vista to move files between Ubuntu drives is slow and crash-prone. I'm not a computer-smart kind of guy, right? I know just enough to be dangerous. Why, using Windows to copy files, do files copy at about 1/4 the speed of the same files being transferred via SFTP?

3. Windows Skydrive, which could be Windows strongest selling point if they didn't screw it up so badly*, doesn't let you upload things in directories. What the good is it then? 

4. Ubuntu is not in the default Microsoft spellchecker. Boo!

*Think on this: How do Ubuntista's counter this argument? Q: Why do you use Windows? A: Well, because with Windows comes 5GB of Skydrive which is mine to do with what I want and I can keep my important documents synched up there in case of a system failure."

A quick follow up on my experience with andLinux

Because of the wacky way that my employer manages its network, andLinux cannot function on my work PC. Sadness. I'll keep plugging away at it, but there appears to be some complicated networking juju going on under the hood that is _far_ beyond my comprehension.

Ever the tinkerer, I plopped andLinux on my wife's Vista laptop this morning. 700MB , and a few WTFs later, KDE 3.5 applications are running seamlessly on Windows Vista. Apart from the massive gaggers that running a giant executable installer caused for Vista, the install was about the same as any other windows install.

But, because andLinux is an Ubuntu derivative, installing the Gnome Aps I miss the most when I'm in Windows was a simple apt-get install away.  Mmmm... Bluefish on Windows, finally.

I can't speak to the security (or lack there of), nor am I willing to give the project a full five stars until sound is running. I mean, the main reason for installing KDE on anything is to get at Amarok. If you can't understand why putting Amarok on as many of your computers as possible would be a life's mission, you're not running Amarok.
Installing andLinux also opens a massive security hole. The fact is, andLinux can read and write from anywhere on the windows partition, and the C:/ drive is set up as the default mount point.  Regardless of who's logged in. So yeah, andLinux can do things to Vista that even vista can't do. Wow!

Anyway, this is, far and away, the _easiest_ way to install linux functionality to your Windows PC. Try it out.

The relatively recent phenomena of "kindling" a laptop confuses and frightens me. I mean, yeah, orienting your screen to the portrait mode is a nice way to read a book, and it's a little unusual, but it's not something unique to Amazon's Little eReader That Could. I've been reading ebooks this way since long before the Kindle. I'm that cool.

Regardless, once you've got *buntu running on your laptop, you need only open a PDF in Evince Document Viewer (Ubuntu's default) reader. Then, if the PDF isn't oriented for portrait viewing, simply click the "rotate" button that suits your orientation preference. (Edit --> Rotate Left) Make sure you're in "Best Fit" mode (View --> Best Fit.)

Wala. You are in "Kindle mode." PgUp and PgDN move you Backward and forward in your document respectively. Holding the control key while pressing the page keys moves them 10-pages at a time. (This is contrary to the keyboard shortcutssuggested on the menu. I suspect this has something to do with "Best Fit mode.")

For extra spice, press the f5 button and enjoy full-screen Kindle Mode.

It's no secret that I'm not a command line guy. I can make my way through the ocassional cut and paste set of command line instructions, and can even ocassionally come up with a very basic command for doing simple things like sending an email or pulling just the *.png files out of a directory and putting them in a new one. But the facts is this: I'd rather GUI than CLI.

So, I'm a big fan of Putty and VNC. Sorry. That's just life. I use Putty becuase it's the easiet way to set up a Secure Tunnel to the machine I want to VNC with, and I use VNC because it's the the most cross platformy of the remote desktop protocols.

But, so far, I don't really prefer any of the clients. Until today.

Cheers to Chicken of the VNC, the OSX VNC client with the best name ever. Also, it works.

Unlike the Tight-VNC client, which I use on my Linux and Windows computers, Chicken of the VNC acutally allows me to log out of my remote session and doesn't break.

Today's Linux Adventure involves Twitter.
Let me start off by warning you: There are no good Twitter Clients for Linux. Believe me, the ones I've tried out today have taught me that.
There seem to be some interesting Command Line versions, which, if I could get to work, would probably be really cool. In fact, building one into conky would rule-- But I digress.

One of the few twitter clients that can be installed and seem to actually work at least half the time is is Twitux.
Twitux has a dinosaur for an icon. It's name references Tux, the Linux mascot penguin thingy. I believe Don Martin might summarize the situation thusly: "Yeeccch."
Twitux loads up and looks and operates like a typical Gnome ap. Look at it in the screen cap that accompanies this post. Twitux is functional but unpolished. It screams 1998. The word wraps seem odd and there's literally no chrome. Also, there's a redundant thing at the bottom that shows (again) the tweet that you click on in the list above. Why does it do that? What good is that?
Twitux is, however, the best standalone twitter ap I've been able to track down for Ubuntu. You can download a package from GotDeb if you want to try it. Part of the problem is that twitter integrates awesomely with IM so you don't need to use a standalone ap, but if you're not using a standalone ap, you're missing out on some of Twitter's awesomeness. (Like a live word count, which Twitux does well.)
If you're not sure what the big deal is about a standalone twitter ap, and you run Windows or OsX, fire up Snitter and see what a fancy-pants twitter client brings to the table. (Snitter's not without its deficiencies as well, but at least it's got some pizazz-- Twitux is like a tan can driving down brown street. Snore-city.)Snitter's biggest drawback is Adobe Air. Most of the development in stand-alone Twitter applications have been on Adobe Air. I dislike Air a great deal, but I, frankly, don't understand why there isn't an Adobe Air client for Linux. (Well, I do, but I don't _understand_ in the _I don't accept_ sense). Adobe, you've disappointed me again.

Look, I don't mean to diminish the work that Twitux's developers have put into creating a desktop twitter client for Linux. They're clearly better programmers than I'll ever be. Twitux a great start in developing a lient for Linux, and certainly the developer has done a lot of hard work to get it to where it is today. Frankly, most of my criticism of the appearance would more correctly be thrown at GNOME's lack of chrome.

I'm doing a second set of backups these days. And, yeah, I'm doing it manually. And it's causing me all kinds of grief.

So, Rsync seems to be crashing out my X session, repeatedly. Why? How? Huh?

I'm guessing, and I've suspected for a long time, that there is a power supply problem with my now almost 4 year-old Emachines PC. So, I'm figuring that my intermittent crashes have to have something to do with the heat that builds up while the drives spinny spin spin during a syncing operation.

But is there anything out there that I can use that will do diagnostics? I, as I have pointed out before, don't do the coding or reading code thing, but I do grock most software pretty well. It sure would be helpful if I had some kind of software that would look at my machine, take a look at some of the logs, system settings, and core-dumps that I'm not doing anything with, and make suggestions based on what it finds.

Imagine a dialog that says "You're running Bluetooth services, yet you've never connected a bluetooth device. Would you like to shut off the bluetooth services?"

And I'd be like "Clickity-Yes!"

or

A dialog that says, "Your system appears to have crashed several times recently. What's wrong with you?"

And I'd be like "I know! I think I'm jinxed!"

Regardless, part of the Linux experince is mucking around in the command line. And frankly, I prefer CLI for stupid little tasks like rsyc, but woudn'it be nice if my OS looked out for me when I asked it to?

I spent the better part of the day trying to get the PlayStation EyeToy functioning on Ubuntu. I think I can say I've succeeded. But at the same time, I think I've hit the wall.  The eyetoy camera works. I haven't really messed the microphone, I assume it doesn't work, but that's fine, there are lots of microphone inputs on this machine.
So, I can make pictures appear in _several_ ways. Certain programs use certain drivers that certainly don't always work. And Flash? Fuggedaboutit.
So, here's the problem. Until the world gets over flash, the only thing I'm really interested in doing with my webcam is almost exclusively flash-based. (See also: Seesmic and Ustream.)
And, as near as I can tell, Linux Flash doesn't yet support the Video4Linux driver, which I'm told is the one I've had the most luck with. And, according to the monkeys responding to this post, "Nobody in the Linux community is remotely interested in using webcams with flash."

So here's a breakdown of my experiments today.
First, here's the eyetoy running in Camorama. It's the first time I got any kind of picture out of it. Yes, it's broken, but I felt this was a big first step.

Without making _any_ changes, here's the same driver and camera shooting video via the Ekiga softphone. (I'm certain I could be doing more with my Ekiga Softphone account along with my Vonage Subscription, but maybe not. That's beside the point.) Notice how it's actually capturing an image that is not broken.

So, I loaded up Seesmic!

No good.
I did, however, record this video for you all. It's five seconds of imageless silence. I like to imagine that it's crashing Seesmic's servers the world around.  See! Linux is Easy.

Finally, I installed camstreams, and it grabbed a bunch of driver packages during the install. Damn you KDE! It worked the best out of all of them. At least I can do webcammy stuff via a manual ftp.

In summary, it is my belief that Webcams via Flash for Linux "Just Working" are a long way off. I'm disappointed by reports that those who have built in webcams in there tiny, tiny Linux laptops have discovered that flash will not work for them either.

Linux will not be a competitor to propriety operating systems until it stops sucking in regards flash. "Wa! This is Adobe's Fault!" people often respond to criticisms of the state of Flash in linux.

It might be Adobe's fault, but it's our problem.