My old rusty thorsmork couldn’t play flash HD video any longer. Although I do not plan to retire it yet, I needed a new computer.
My wife was not that happy to have another ugly PC in our apartment, and thus she offered me an iPad! Not really open source, but she chose well as there is no satisfying foss solution for a tablet PC yet, IMHO.
A tablet cannot replace a complete PC, but I use my PC much less now, it can be a week without using it. And it would be even less if I would have a real keyboard for the tablet!
Adobe released yesterday a preview of Flash Player “Square”. It includes native 64bit support and IE9 hardware acceleration enhancement. Yes, you’ve got it! Adobe is again supporting a 64bit release of their plug-in and for all 3 platforms: Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Note: there is a free (libre) alternative to Adobe Flash product called Gnash, however it is still far from being stable enough on all web sites to be widely use. But anyway, it is a highly interesting project which have made recent huge improvements towards reliability and speed. You should try Gnash first and if it doesn’t work for you, then go for Adobe.
Update: Flash Player “Square” is now Flash Player 11, and there is a second beta released this August 2011.
Since Google released its Public DNS, I was curious about how it would really perform. Thus, I have looked around and I have found a script on the internet that I ran at home, here are the results:
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| Domain | My ISP | Google | OpenDNS|
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| lifehacker.com | 17 ms | 68 ms | 68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| facebook.com | 18 ms | 69 ms | 68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| manu-j.com | 19 ms | 79 ms | 70 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| reddit.com | 58 ms | 88 ms | 66 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| tb4.fr | 16 ms | 64 ms | 67 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| bbc.co.uk | 55 ms | 65 ms | 67 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| lemonde.fr | 58 ms | 63 ms | 78 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| dailymotion.com | 58 ms | 66 ms | 68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| faz.de | 57 ms | 65 ms | 99 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| gmx.de | 56 ms | 62 ms | 68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
Google Public DNS and OpenDNS performed quite similarly. However, my own ISP is still quicker to respond, a possible answer is that Google DNS in Europe are located in Frankfurt, Germany.
N.B.: these tests were performed on a wireless link under Mac OS X Leopard in Toulouse, France. If you want to run the script on a Mac, you should change the first line of the script to #!/bin/bash
The major problem faced by 64-bit Linux users is getting Flash Player to work properly on the platform. With the latest version of Ubuntu, it installs the 32-bit release of Adobe Flash Player along with the necessary 32-bit libraries so it can work.
Gnash, the free (libre) alternative is not enough mature to work on all web sites. But Adobe is currently working on a 64-bit version of its player. It is now available in the labs for download. This is still a beta, so using this plug-in could make your browser unstable (also see warning at the end of this post).
Before installing it, you should remove any previous installation of Adobe Flash Player, you can use Synaptic (System -> Administration) for this purpose.
The downloaded file has the extension .tar.gz, it is a compression format like ZIP. You can double-click on it and extract the file (libflashplayer.so) to your home directory, or use the command line: “$ tar zxf flashplayer11_rc1_install_lin_64_090611.tar.gz“. Now, you need to copy the extracted file to a system directory, close all internet browsers before doing so. It is assumed that the extracted file is in your home directory.
You can now launch Firefox or Chromium on your 64-bit system and watch Flash media content. My own experience is a more stable system! But do not forget, Flash is not a free software.
Updated 2010-06-08: Adobe issued a security warning for all Flash players (all platforms) covering 10.0.45.2 and earlier release. Which most probably means that it includes the 64bit version as well (this is not confirmed). The only safe version (recommended by Adobe itself) at the time of writing is Flash 10.1 RC which is sadly 32bit-only.
Updated 2011-08-13: Adobe released a second beta of Flash Player 11 which as 32bit and 64bit implementation. This release includes also an Adobe Flash system preference. Just uncompress the .tar.gz file in a temporary directory and copy the uncompressed usr folder to your root ‘/’ directory.
Updated 2011-10-01: Updated for the first release candidate of Flash Player 11.
Google Chrome is an internet browser (or navigator) based on the free software project Chromium. Chrome is long available on Windows, but only really recently is it available on Mac OS X and Linux, though still under “beta” (meaning testing/experimental) stage.
I have been using Chrome or Chromium without any obvious differences (at least on Linux).
So why Chrome/Chromium when there is already Firefox? First it is a matter of choice, I could answer you why so many different vehicles? Second, I like the look and feel of Chrome, it optimises the use of screen real estate, it is not cluttered with many menus or actions on the toolbar and it seems to always know where I want a new tab to be opened. Third, it launches really fast.
Déjà Dup is a Gnome-based backup tool that aim for easiness. It provides transparent encryption of your data, can store to an external hard disk or a remote storage (SSH server or Amazon S3) and offers schedule backup.
The tool is extremely simple to use. It offers two big buttons, one for manual backup and one for restoring. Those two functions are accessible in the menu too, as well as preferences and help. That is all.
The article on ZDNet is about why Michael Krigsman (CEO of a IT consulting company) loves Windows 7, hates Linux and thinks the Mac is lame. The article is pretty short and gives 3 reasons to be satisfied by Windows 7, by presenting an old screenshot of Linux to present it in a miserable way and displaying a fake version of Apple Mac vs. PC advertisement. All a good laugh if it was not serious.
After reading Michael’s post, I cannot help but remember this: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”
Avahi is a protocol implementation that is using the Zeroconf protocol specification to discover services available (and advertised) on the network. Avahi really does simplifying the configuration and use of certain services that are supporting it.
Of course, Avahi is integrated with Ubuntu and it is pretty easy to activate it.
In the Gnome main menu “System” -> “Administration”, there is an item called “Services”. Simply launch it and scroll down the list of services until you find Multicast DNS service discovery (avahi-daemon). Select it and close the application.
Application like Rhythmbox, Gaim/Pidgin, etc. will now be able to use this service. You can for example share your music on the local network. So, your siblings can access your music library and listen to it too. I will write a short article on it soon.
On some of my Ubuntu systems, I had to tweak a system file before it was working. Continue reading if you are in this case.
Recently, I have been configuring Avahi on my laptop and desktop computers and I wanted to evaluate its possibilities. The first obvious choice was using Rhythmbox to share music within the two computers. But that was too easy, basically once Avahi was configured, I had nothing else to do, it just worked…
Thus, I wanted another challenge and I was remembering that Gaim (now Pidgin) should support the Bonjour protocol. Bonjour is an implementation of Zeroconf made by Apple and release as open source. Avahi is another implementation of Zeroconf and is readily installed on Ubuntu by default, though not activated. However, the installed Gaim on Ubuntu 7.04 cannot create a Bonjour account. That was just the excuse I needed to take some times getting Pidgin and installing it.
The installation will describes how to install Pidgin with support for Bonjour and Avahi on Ubuntu 7.04, and I will try to keep it the easiest possible. However, you will have to use the command line. No worries, though, as I will try to make it easy! A second little chapter will explain how to activate Avahi. This guide has been validated on both the 32bit and 64bit versions of Ubuntu.
As you know Safari 3 is now beta and available for both Mac OS and Windows platform. However, it seems that Apple underestimated the development state of the Windows version. Developing software is like respecting the alphabet order, no letter (or phase) should be skipped. Apple should have thought twice about that before releasing there public beta of Safari 3 for Windows. It is hardly beta software.
Recently, I have been configuring 
A second little chapter will explain how to activate Avahi. This guide has been validated on both the 32bit and 64bit versions of Ubuntu.