This is the first review I’ve been able to follow my rules for so you can imagine I’m more impressed then usual. I did have my share of thing I didn’t like but no OS is perfect. So for performance PCLinuxOS delivers better then any livecd Linux. It’s pertty fast, I got lots of programs open, and theres now lagging which is good. There are alot of great features as well. YOu can preview files in the file viewer, the wireless is configurable but I couldn’t find the driver it wanted so wireless is possible but a pain none the less. In terms of looks, I’m not the biggest fan of KDE and the fact that you can’t change the resolution as simply as on other distro’s however PCLinuxOS looks pretty In terms of usability wireless is a possiblility which I really like, it comes with all the programs you need, theres no need for codecs to play mp3’s you get firefox an instant messenger open office the gimp and much more right from the go which I really like. If the screen resolution was actualy adjustable without going through any trouble and the wireless automaticaly configured I can assure you this would be the distro if I do go through with a bet to only use Linux for a month, this would be the one I use because its very usable, fast, good looking, has lots of programs and feautres and I really like it but until those two change I’m sticking with windows and when iTUnes comes along for Linux as well I can say this will be the distro I switch to but it’s still to yet meet my three demands that Linux is gettign better at meeting.

I just happened to come by this distro by chance and to be honest its the best so far. Linux Mint 4.0 is based on Ubuntu with more of a Windows Vista styling. It’s very customizable, runs fast off the live cd, is pretty good looking too and runs on the gnome desktop. The slogan for Linux Mint is from freedom came elegence and this is true, it has a more elegent feel then Ubuntu does but has the same functionality but seems a bit more customizable. It performs well, looks just as good and has all the programs that come with a standard Ubuntu instal. So you get firefox, pigeon messenger, open office, the gimp, you can even get things like google earth and f-spot. The multimedia section of Linux Mint is upgradable with software and codecs but out of the box its your basic linux multimedia functionality which isn’t very good unless for some reason you use ogg vorbis. There’s not a whole lot of differences though in Linux Mint and Ubuntu so my Ubuntu article will also cover it. I’d like to note though its only avalable through torrent download off thier site www.linuxmint.com  if I have the url corect if not google it it should be the first result. All in all if I had to use Linux to replace Windows Linux Mint so far would be my choice.

To take a little side note I’d like to drift into a company that I’m not to fond of. Microsoft. Microsoft has had good years but recently they’ve been really stupid for lack of a better word and I’ve been generaly unimpressed. However thier beta’s are always perfect for me, if Microsoft has a beta and I can test it you bet your ass I will because I know its the good one. Every beta I’ve ever tested for Microsoft for me has run 10 times better then the final version. Service Pack 3 for XP is a different story. You’d think running a beta service pack would cause instability and problems for a computer however I will say this SP3 runs perfectly stable. Any problems I have had are not resulted from SP3 I have slow internet which is a combination of unresponsibness from Safari and Bell and Internet Explorer is just crap so its hardly even usable but at least its crashing less now after instaling SP3. All in all for the first time in over a year I am finaly impressed with Microsoft and I’m hoping that when SP3 goes into final (and I’m hoping it does) I’m hoping it’ll be even better then it is now and not worse like everything else I’ve seen. Also I’m excited for Vista SP1 because maybe then Vista will be useable.

So it is a little soon but I was bored so I decided I’ll review the latests Fedora release (Fedora and all in all I really didn’t like it. For performance off the live cd it was very slow even for a live cd and I hit a point where it just stoped. This was defenitly a very windows ME like version of Linux. It was very buggy, slow, there was no wireless and I couldn’t open up the network manager. I couldn’t even access my harddrive but when I pluged in my iPod it poped up right away which I found strange. There was no option to even get mp3 codecs in the defaul media player.  Programs were plentiful, yet I can’t tell you what any of them really were it was a guessing game trying to find what to use and I didn’t see anything like The Gimp or Firefox or Gaim all I saw was oddly named programs starting with a K propietary to Fedora and possible the KDE desktop. However for lack of an IM client and a browser that felt like IE 6 and just the feeling of an older version of windows with some widgets and no name propietary software I was very unimpressed and displeased. The look and feel of the system alright, like I said very windows like so the adverage windows user would be able to navagate it clearly. I did break the rules on this review again though because after 5 minuits of trying to get to wordpress I could not stand it any longer, and I couldn’t find any program that would have any use. If I were to have to chose between Windows ME and Fedora 8 sadly I would take Windows ME no questions asked.

So begins the start of my project. Linux has made a great impression on me, I really like it and most people when they first use it either love it or feel that its unnecisary to replace Windows with it. Although it can replace Windows completely its hard to do so for some users and takes adapting to. Never the less Linux is a great open-source alternative to windows and lets face it 99.9% of people switching to Linux or looking to are probably Windows users (this is just a guess though if someone has actual numbers post em in a comment). So before I start my review of Ubuntu I’m going to state some rules for the reviews of Linux that will be in effect after this review because of certain circumstances. Now shall we begin with the rules?

1.  All reviews will be done based on THE LIVE CD (so this will not be a full review of the OS because I don’t have a spare computer right now to instal each distro)
2. I must have spent AT LEAST one hour using the distro no matter how fustrated it may make me
3. All reviews (excluding the first) must be writen while using the distro
4. Readers are encouraged to suggest I review a certain distro, this way they may not have to go through the trouble of testing it themselfs.
5. Only open-source distro’s that are completely free can be used with all the standard programs on the cd
6. All will be done on the same computer

Now that the rules are laid out I’ll give some information on the laptop I will be using. All the tests will be run on my Dell Inspiron 1300 (unless something happens to the computer) It has a 1.4 ghz Celeron M processor, 512 mb of RAM and a Toshiba dvd-rw drive, mixed with intel gma 915 graphics, and an 80 gig 5400 rpm hard drive.  Now for review one, Ubuntu. One of the most popular versions of Linux and so far the only distro I have used. This one is the rule breaker and the more bias one because I had a Linux computer running Ubuntu 7.10 but only the live cd version was used on this laptop. So I’ll start in an important section which is performance. Even off the live cd which I’ve tested on a few computers I found it fairly fast although Festy was faster off the live cd but only on computers with 512 mb of ram or more I couldn’t even get it to run on a 2 year old budget computer. But any decent computer now a days will run it fine especialy not off the live cd. The programs bundled with Ubuntu are great, you get a multi service IM client, Firefox, Openoffice, The Gimp and a few other good programs. The only program I couldn’t find a good replacement for was iTunes.  Music playback was actualy my bigest problem with Ubuntu for its lack of mp3 support but theres ways around it. Stabality wise, its very stable even off the live cd, and everything runs smothly. Internet, eithernet worked great but wireless no matter what I did I could not get it to even turn on my wireless card let alone do anything past that this is still a major problem making it impossible for me to recomend Ubuntu for people who need wireless internet at all. Games, for the sheer lack of them out there I’ve found that Ubuntu does really well in the gaming department however this is based off of having it instaled on a desktop and therefor gamign performance wont be a part of my other reviews. All in all Ubuntu is a great start for anyone lookig to go into Linux and if your not tied down to any windows or mac specific software I highly recomend it as a start to the UNIX evironment and exploring new OS’s.

If Steve Jobs ever see’s this he’ll probably laugh at it but this is a really good stratagy. This only shows profit gain for them exept for losing money from ringtones but whats a buck a ringtone compared to 400 an iPhone? No one on the god damn plannit will buy 400 ringtones I am willing to bet on that one so there is defenitly more profit in here. The iPhone is utterly amazing hacked, and its possibliities are endless, with them coming out with an SDK for third-party apps it adds some possibilities but they are limited for sure and this way Apple doesn’t have to do anything about the third party apps. Not only does it take work away from Apple anyone who hacks thier iPhone loves it waaaay more then when they first bought it and it opens up to having unlocked iPhone which means they can come to say Canada where you can’t get an iPhone which opens up a new unintended market for Apple. Also the 2 limit iPhone purches should be uped because what if your loaded with cash and have a family of 5 and all want iPhones? Well to bad. This would turn away customers instantly unless you have 3 people with credit cards. Not only that but the resell market closes off a bit as well. So really why should Apple allow hacking? Well it draws more customers, draws more money, opens up new markets for the iPhone and new uses for it, it could help draw people into buying more Apple products, like say iPod Classics for people who have more songs then I’ve heard in my lifetime maybe even bring some people to using macs? The point is if one product can impress your customers to a great length they will stay customers and will explore some of your other products and with any luck Apple could expand its already large fan base and gain even more grounds in the market.

This is the birth of my tech blog.  and some things in the begining might not be up to date and some things bias, although I’ll do my best to be as unbias as possible. I’m basicaly gonna blog about whatever in the tech world I feel I should say but I’m willing to take sugjestions for new posts, just put in a comment for your next blog you should talk about … and I will probably look into it and write about it. I’m creating this blog for a few reasons. 1) to carry out The Linux Project as I call it where I will be reviewing live versions of different distro’s and I’ll go into deeper length in the first post of it. 2) to inform people  of things like Linux and the advantages it holds over Windows. and finaly 3) I hope that maybe I can get enough buzz to send messeges to company’s for improvments on stuff like in my next blog why Apple should embrace iPhone hacking.