The other day, I noticed someone on Friendfeed posted a link to a live USB image of Google’s ChromeOS. I was a bit skeptical at first, as we’ve seen many fake builds of ChromeOS over the last year or so. However, after doing a bit of research, it appears that this is the real thing.
Yesterday, the team behind Linux Mint pushed out the latest version of their Linux-based operating system. Linux Mint 8, codenamed “Helena,” is available for download as a live CD (the “Main” edition) or as a live DVD (the “Universal” edition, which includes support for quite a few different languages, but does not include pre-installed codecs for protected formats like commercial DVD movies) from the Linux Mint Web site. You can also view a list of the new items and features in Linux Mint 8.
Unfortunately, this is only the 32-bit Gnome version of the system, so those of you looking for the 64-bit version (like me) or looking for a different desktop manager (KDE, XFCE, etc.) will have to wait a while longer before those upgrades are available.
Hot on the heels of the Ubuntu 9.10, the OpenSUSE team officially released version 11.2 of their desktop operating system yesterday. The new version of OpenSUSE includes KDE 4.3 and OpenOffice.org 3.1, with preparations for Gnome 3.0 early next year. In addition, OpenSUSE has announced that, from now on, upgrading the operating system in-place will be a recommended option for existing users (previously, as with most other Linux builds, users were encouraged to install a fresh copy rather than upgrading). In addition, it’s now possible to encrypt the entire hard disk and for users to begin using the ext4 file system. From the looks of things, OpenSUSE and Novell are making great strides forward with their operating system. I am curious how this desktop will stack up against the new Ubuntu, which has been getting mixed reviews.
MintInstall, one of the many features that sets Linux Mint apart from it’s brother Ubuntu, has been updated and improved. Clem, the founder and principle programmer behind Linux Mint announced yesterday that he’s created a DEB file for people to begin installing the new program and testing it.
If you are a user of Linux Mint, you should go ahead and download the new version of MintInstall. If you’re not a user of Linux Mint, you should be. :)
Within the last few days, the development build of Google’s Chrome Web browser has made great strides toward being ready for prime time use. Within Linux Mint, at least, the browser supports plugins such as Adobe Flash fairly well, the ability to import bookmarks, history, passwords and other information from Firefox has been implemented and is working properly, and the chrome (the appearance of the window – not to be confused with the name of the browser) is now consistent with the Windows version. When maximized, the tab bar moves into the area normally used as the title bar by other programs, allowing you to use almost as much of the screen as you would in fullscreen mode with other browsers.
If you are running some version of Linux on your computer and you have not yet tested the development build of Chrome, you really should check it out. At this point, the only real issue I am experiencing is that it’s difficult to enable the plugins. I had plugins working properly for a while, but then had to make some adjustments to my Flash installation, which stopped the plugins from working within Chrome. I’m assuming, though, that once the plugins are officially supported by Chrome, they will begin working properly (which will, hopefully, be very soon).
I updated my home computer the other day, installing the latest 64-bit version of Linux Mint. This is my first foray into regularly using a 64-bit version of Linux, so I was not really prepared for some of the issues I experienced. Most of my issues (Amarok not working properly) were easily solved by simply adding some of the default Ubuntu repositories that are disabled by default in Mint.
However, I still had problems getting Adobe AIR and TweetDeck (or Seesmic Desktop, for that matter) to work correctly. After a bit of searching, I found that this is because Adobe hasn’t released a 64-bit version of Adobe AIR, and 64-bit Linux isn’t really prepared, out-of-the-box, to handle the 32-bit version.
I found an article in the Adobe knowledgebase explaining how to get Adobe AIR installed. Unfortunately, the link to the getlibs package in that article is outdated, and it was really difficult to find the real location of that file. I finally found it. This is, apparently, only a termporary location for the package, so I don’t know where it will end up afterwards. There is a topic in the Ubuntu forums where the location is discussed.
