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Archives for December 2009

Diet Chromium OS

Google Chrome OS requires a 4GB USB stick. If you need a smaller version, check out Diet Chromium OS which need only 1GB. From the Yahoo article:

Many of the builds thus far have been targeted at specific hardware configurations, such as one made available by a Dell employee designed for the Dell‘s Mini 10V netbook.

The Diet Chromium build has a smaller footprint, but promises wider hardware support. Diet Chromium comes courtesy of a UK student and programmer known as Hexxeh. Hexxeh explains that he constructed the build in order to “fill a gap that hadn’t been filled.” His Web site offers instructions on how to install the lighter Chromium build on Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

Ian Paul will show you how to install a more standard build of Chrome OS right now.

Using Google Public DNS

Google just announced today a new public DNS aimed at making browsing even a faster experience. DNS or domain name servers are servers that translate domain names to IP addresses that computers can understand. Having a faster DNS can definitely make surfing the web a faster experience. In the past, I’ve used OpenDNS as an alternative to my ISP nameservers. Now Google has their own.

nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

To use Google DNS.

In Windows, you can open up your network interface IP properties and enter the Google nameservers. In Linux, you can place the Google nameservers in resolv.conf. In your router, you can replace your ISP nameservers with Google’s nameservers. Complete instructions on how to use Google’s nameservers are available from Google’s website.

Google DNS was no surprise to me. It makes perfect sense. What’s next? Web hosting.

Does Ubuntu Really Need A Longer Release Schedule?

LinuxPlanet.com brought up a good debate if Ubuntu needs a longer release schedule. Ubuntu releases a new version every six months and a LTS or Long Term Support version every two years. Here’s my take on it. Like a little kid in a toy store, I always get excited when a new version of Ubuntu comes out. I’ve gone so far as even upgrading my desktop to a Release Candidate prior to the announcement.

Along with the excitement comes disappointment. Twice, I’ve had to revert to the previous versions due to bugs and problems with the latest Ubuntu release. The bugs are not always fixed in the first few days. Sometimes it takes months. At the moment, I’m still running 9.04. So, I’ll wait a few months before moving to 9.11. Dell and other hardware vendors also practice the same. Dell currently sells Ubuntu 9.04 versions on their website.

So, what do I recommend. I recommend Ubuntu switch to one a year release schedule. I know it seems like a long time between releases, but six months goes by really fast. If the development team takes their time to work out bugs and do more testing, then Ubuntu can really focus on delivering a great product with every release. Yearly is not as taxing as six months. A yearly release will also work hand in hand with the LTS version. It will be every other LTS release instead of 3 releases for every LTS release.