Yesterday, Tom’s Hardware posted a review of the KPC, a $200 PC that runs Foresight Linux. ($99 refers to the barebones version, which means the version with not all the parts installed.) The interesting thing about the review was the amount of time they spent on the operating system, and the conclusions they reached (spoiler: mostly positive.)

Most reviews of inexpensive Linux PCs tend to view Linux as not as good as Windows without really appearing to have investigated Linux for more than a few minutes. You would not expect Tom’s Hardware to be much different, since their main audience is Windows gamers, so I would expect them to be biased towards Windows, if anything. Surprisingly, however, they spent three pages of their review discussing the operating system. There were some weird parts of the review, such as complaining about Firefox’s compatibility with some web pages but not about Open Office being incompatible with some Office files, but overall the review seemed very reasonable and concluded that Foresight Linux was quite good.

It is not fair to judge based on only one review, but it seems like this review might be a lesson to other reviewers. Don’t assume Linux is not as good as Windows, try it out and investigate for yourself before coming to any conclusion.

Adobe Air is a technology that allows certain web applications to be run on the desktop, as if they were normal desktop applications.

According to the Adobe Air website, Adobe Air “lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that deploy to the desktop and run across operating systems.” Essentially what that means is that developers can use tools and techniques that are already familiar to them and create web 2.0 applications that will not only run inside a web browser, but also on the desktop, regardless of the operating system that desktop is running.

At the time of writing, however, Adobe Air for Linux is not feature complete, so not all applications will work perfectly.

One of the main barriers people face when moving from one operating system to another is applications that don’t run on their new operating system. This creates an uneven playing ground where the operating systems on top have a huge advantage over other operating systems, regardless of technical merit. Web applications started to solve this problem, because most web applications can be run on any operating system, but web applications have one major disadvantage: they require an internet connection. Air lets developers create web applications that will also run on the desktop, removing that one major disadvantage and allowing web applications to finally level the operating system playing field.

For Linux, if Adobe Air catches on, many new applications will become available for it, not because they were developed specifically for Linux, but because they were developed for any operating system. This means switching to Linux is likely to become very easy in the future.

For a guide on installing Air on Linux, see my tutorial “Adobe Air on Linux: What, Why, and How“.

With the release of Ubuntu 7.10 and Fedora 8, Phoronix did some performance testing of the two distros. Who won? See page 5 of the Phoronix article.

Phoronix just reviews the PC Doctor Diagnostic Kit, a kit a various hardware and software to help you diagnose hardware problems, from the perspective of a Linux use to decide if it is worth the $400 price tag. I will not spoil the answer. Sorry.

I have been playing around with OpenSUSE 10.3 a lot more and I have some additional thoughts. Most of my notes from last time have been about the installation, but now that I have worked with 10.3 some more I have a better feel of the real OS.

I really only have one complain against OpenSUSE 10.3. My complain is that to access your any applications except for your “favorite” application and the two most recently used applications (yes, I know you can change the configuration of GNOME.) I also don’t like that the “Install programs” application gives the package name, not the name of the application, and that the update manager does not tell you anything about the updates, but these are minor problems. Overall, great distro.

I don’t think I will do a full review, but here are my thoughts on OpenSUSE 10.3. I am writing them down as I install/use 10.3. (This time not in a virtual machine.)

- The green theme is nice.
- The installer is nice for new users, but annoying if you need to change the advanced settings you need to find them yourself from the “Installation Settings” screen.
- The partitioner is one of the worst I have ever seen. There is no graphical representation of the partitions. There is no way to see the amount of space used in each partition. To make a new partition you need to tell it the number of the cylinder to start at! Do your partitioning in GParted!
- Under advanced on the “Installation Settings” are the boot loader settings. The default location for my hard drive setup is the partition I am installing it to. Yay!!! It also picked up the other Linux distros on this computer!
- Now installing…
- There is a slide show of cool features of OpenSUSE (although it changes kind of slowly), detailed information about the installation, and release notes to look at while the installer works away. It is not a live CD, though, so no surfing the web while you wait.
- Now rebooting… choosing to install again… Oops! That was wrong! I was supposed to choose “Boot from Hard Disk”, I think.
- Hmm… it booted into the first time setup… I think that means that it overwrote my GRUB…, grr… (It did, but it also recognized the other OSs.)
- Allows you to update from within the installer.
- Installation Done!

- Seems like a very nice distro, but only time will tell. Compiz Fusion is pre-installed and easy to set up. I have only two complaints: It did not detect the right resolution automatically and the Install Software application gives the name of the packages, not the name of the program which can be confusing to new users.

Overall, I like OpenSUSE 10.3 so far. I will update you if I have anything new and interesting.

I am sure many of you have seen stories like this about some business switching to Ubuntu and saving a ton of money, but the reason why this got my attention is that I have been noticing recently that Ubuntu really seems smoother then other Linux distros. I am sure many of you will disagree, but I now see why everyone calls it the best distro for newbies. Granted, there are many other newbie-friendly distros, but Ubuntu really seems to just work. Some things that really stand out to me (not that I am saying these features are specific to Ubuntu) are the Add/Remove programs application being the obvious package manager and the more advanced version which controls individual packages hidden in the System menu, the restricted drivers manager making it easy to use non-free drivers easily, and just generally the hardware support.