Linux

So much for Linux as the “people’s” OS

August 21, 2009 By Dan Perlman Leave a Comment

If you’ve always bought into the idea that Linux was written and maintained by geeks and hackers in after-hours ventures — all for other geeks and hackers, think again.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols on Computerworld analyzed a report from the Linux Foundation on who writes Linux and found that Linux is written by big companies for big companies.

Here’s the top ten contributors to Linux:

Red Hat: 12.3%
IBM: 7.6%
Novell: 7.6%
Intel: 5.3%
Independent consultant: 2.5%
Oracle: 2.4%
Linux Foundation: 1.6%
SGI 1.6%
Parallels 1.3%
Renesas Technology: 1.3%

Big businesses write Linux because big businesses use Linux.

Filed Under: Linux, News

Google Chrome for Mac is so cool, now finish it!

June 8, 2009 By Dan Perlman 1 Comment

The Chrome team has released a developers copy of the browser for Mac and Linux, so far Google Chrome has just been available for Windows.

While to call me a developer would be a gross misuse of the term, I’ve been using the browser ever since it was released last week. It is so cool. Well actually so fast!

The team admits it’s far from finished. Among other things, it doesn’t print, it doesn’t display YouTube-like videos and there seems to be not much in the way of bookmark management. So let’s give it a number and say it’s 75% done. What it does well is render a web page really fast and when I’m digging around the web that’s what’s most important to me.

The Chronium Blog warns you not to download this version unless “take great pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing software.

How incomplete? So incomplete that, among other things , you won’t yet be able to view YouTube videos, change your privacy settings, set your default search provider, or even print.”

It hasn’t crashed for me in about 20 hours of use. The only gotcha for me was when checking a blog post and panicking when I couldn’t see the YouTube video, but I had been warned.

mac_chrome_screen

Anway, if you live life on the bleeding edge and are so Type A that anything faster is better, download the browser and give it a try on Mac or Linux.

As for me? I’ll probably use it for most of my work on my slight aging Macbook because it just makes the experience so darn fast!

Filed Under: browsers, Google Chrome, Linux, Mac, Technology Tagged With: google, Google Chrome, Linux, Mac, Microsoft Windows, YouTube

A rumor we hope is true

December 30, 2008 By Dan Perlman 5 Comments

There’s a rumor making the rounds today that Google might announce a Mac version of their free Picasa photo organizer at 2009 MacWorld and we think that would be just great.

We got the rumor from the Googling Google blog over at zdnet and it would make sense. The story of a Mac version of Picasa has been kicking around at least a year since TechCrunch carried this one, Google Developing Mac Version Of Picasa , Due To Be Released This Year.

Why the excitement?

No matter what the PC or Mac fans tell you, there’s not really much difference between what you can do with a PC or a Mac, but Picasa is one of the coolest, most useful pieces of software that can’t be run on a Mac (the other, if you really want to know, is Microsoft OneNote). Making Picasa available directly available for the Mac would be one less reason to need to run a solution likeVMware’s Fusion which allows you to run Windows on a Mac.

There is already a slightly lame version of Picasa that runs on Linux. It’s somewhat lame because it uses WINE technology to work. WINE is the famous, this-would-be-so-cool-if-it-only-actually-worked way of running Windows on other platforms without needing Windows, kind like how useful it might be to have your blood pumped through your body without needing a heart.

Picasa for Macs Might Launch at Macworld 2009 [Picasa]

Filed Under: freeware, Linux, Mac, Technology, Windows

XMind Mind Mapping Now Open Source

November 17, 2008 By Dan Perlman 1 Comment

xmind-logo

The full-featured XMind, mind-mapping, application that previously sold for $299 a copy has been open sourced and is now available without charge. It’s cross-platform and available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

It has been one of the better professional applications for creating the mapping diagrams that are an intuitive way to take notes, brainstorm, collaborate and manage projects (among other things).

Let’s Start Getting Things Done with GTD

October 22, 2008 By Dan Perlman Leave a Comment

A popular methodology for task management is based on a book by David Allen called “Getting Things Done”. The main concept of the methodology is that for your mind to work effectively, it has to stop spending all of its time just remembering what has to be done next and instead working on the actual actions of doing it.

According to the methodology, your mind should be emptied of these “open loop” distractions of “to dos” by storing them all in some kind of “trusted system” that you can then organize anduse to refer back to all your tasks.

The “trusted system” can be a notebook or a PDA or something on your computer.

gtd-logo GTD-Free is a application that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux and is a straight forward implementation of the GTD methodology and can be used as the trusted system and for organizing your tasks.

The workflow for GTD consists of 5 steps, each represented by a process in GTD-Free. The Organize and Review steps are combined – and Do is called Execute (which sounds a little like the task is given a blindfold, a last cigarette and put up against a wall).

The basic idea is to do a “Collect(ion)” of all the tasks you’re carrying around in your head and “untrusted” systems (like stickies).

The next step is to Process the tasks by going from the top to bottom of your list, one at a time, determining if an item requires action and then filing it, throwing it away or incubating it for later action.

Then the Organizing step determines the next action the item requires to complete it and organizing it so that it can be done when ready. Reviewing the categories should be an on-going process done daily with a major review done weekly.

Do is pretty simply, when you finally start working on the items to get them finished.

GTD Workflow:

Collect
Process
Organize
Review
Do

GTD-Free is a great free way to begin to explore GTD and to find out whether it makes sense for you. If you like it, there are scores of other systems to help you collect, process and organize your tasks. We’ll be reporting on others of them here at Enquiring Mimes from time to time.

Download GTD-Free [via lifehacker]