Latest build of Chromium on Linux is the most stable yet

This release is now starting to do a decent job with flash, but not perfect yet. In honesty the only application that I have managed to get it to fail on is Google Analytics, which is somewhat amusing, but I'm sure there are others.

However the improvements in the options dialogue are very much moving towards the beta release, and they are almost now finished, except the nss certificates and the langauages selections.

The overall speed is still there, and that doesn't appear to have changed much during the development cycle so far. I have also noticed that the v8 java script engine has been moved into it's own library file, and is a separate part of the installation , and update. If you select the developer/task manager however, it still announces a silly number of CPU's, but at least all the processes are correctly displayed, and you can end a misbehaving tab.

It's still not there for prime time yet, but it is still on course for an autumn beta without a doubt.

It will be very interesting to see which, if any of the main Linux distro's start to include this in their default install or package libraries as it will be a differentiator against the me-to with firefox. That is of course apart from their own Google OS ;-).

Cloud based features in the Netgear 1100 NAS server

It is becoming obvious to everyone in IT that you can't ignore the cloud any more as it is appearing everywhere, especially in new appliances that are starting to offer additional features that allow you to backup to the cloud.

This rack mounted NAS box , uses Linux, and offers all the normal features you would expect, like NFS,CIFS,AFP etc. It also however adds in an additional feature, and that is an option to sign up with Netgear to backup you data to the cloud. Now I know about all the security issues that surround this debate with secure transfer and storage and who has control of the data once it is stored, but for many small/medium sized companies, this really does take away a lot of the pain of making sure your data is backed up and stored safely.

As a user of Dropbox already for backing up certain data, I can definitely see a use for this service, even if you don't want to put all of the companies most vital data into the cloud just yet.Is it any more risky than asking someone to do backups onto tape, and then safely store those offsite? How many people in a small/medium company regularly check the tapes or test the backups? I would suspect a small percentage, so not only does that take up a lot of time, it does not guarantee success. While sending your data to a professional company that specialises in data backup and restore would offer a decent alternative. The costs are also compelling when put up against the cost of tapes and off-site storage. The cost of fast,reliable tape units are expensive and the tapes to go in them are also not give-away.

Well I embraced the cloud years ago, and I have not had any ill affects as yet, but I watch server hard disks fail on a daily basis, and they really hurt customers. The watch word here is just be careful on the services you select, check exactly what you are getting and look at the small print. Always make a point about checking the security in transfer and storage and who has access to the data once it's in the cloud. As with all things in this area, it will eventually come down to your level of risk acceptance.

Mozilla Labs Weave project is really taking shape

What is it? A bolt on to firefox to store your bookmarks and other browser data in the cloud.

I have used a few of these cloud based bookmark systems in the past, with varying degrees of success, and I have just started testing the Mozilla labs Weave system and it is working very well indeed. I have it talking on three separate systems, including one virtual image and they are syncing perfectly. It means I no longer have to have a different set of bookmarks on different machines, which is not very cloud freindly. The performance is the best I have experienced, and it really happens in the background without you noticing. You can select what parts of your locally stored data you wish to send in to the cloud with a bolt onto the Firefox (3.5 is required) options/preferences window. I like the fact you can encrypt locally and then send the data.



It would be great and extremely useful if it opens its doors eventually to other browsers like Chromium and Opera, and hopefully this will happen. As they are all open source the opportunities are more obvious that with a closed source product like IE.

I think we will start to see a lot more tools and utilities like this moving forward as the cloud becomes the storage system of choice for your information. The data you send to the Mozilla servers is whatever you choose from the list of options, and it is encrypted with a passphrase only you know, so there can't be any data mining without you knowing it. Security is always key in the cloud and can not be ignored, so I think this system works well.

I would definitely recommend giving it a go.

Redhat puts next Enterprise version into beta

Redhat announced several months ago about it's new virtualization strategy, and all the new tools that it would offer over the next 18 months. Well one of those building blocks has gone into beta, and I expect it to get shipped - version 5.4 - around the Redhat summit in Chicago at the beginning of September.

The main features I was looking for were enhancements in all the virtualization components, and I haven't been disappointed, all of the building blocks have had major upgrades, plus the inclusion of KVM, which currently appears only in the x86_64 version. Things like virt-manager which normally only get a minor point bump, have seen a big change from 5.3 to 6.1

The kernel has been bumped up to 2.6.18-155 kernel, and all the other major components have had the usual patches and updates. As with all these point releases, you are not going to see much difference on the cover, it's what has been happening underneath on this one that is important.

If you use Redhat for your virtualization host platform, then this latest release will definitely be of interest to you. I will post back once I have run it up on real hardware to test the KVM, as the i386 version just offers the Xen improvements.

Installing Karmic Koala in VirtualPC - a great relief after Windows 7

After my fun and games with Windows 7 yesterday, I downloaded the latest alpha build of Ubuntu 9.10 - Karmic Koala - to have a look at the new and emerging features, but also just to check how this installed with VirtualPC v3.02, and was it quicker and any easier. The resounding answer is definitely yes. I just pointed the virtual CD/DVD drive to point to the downloaded iso image and started the virtual machine.

I booted into the live cd and had a look around first, no issues, everything just worked. I then clicked on the install icon, and six screens later clicked on install, must have taken me five minutes in total. The install to the virtual hard disk took another ten minutes including installing the tools and voila , I now have a fully functioning, fast booting OS to explore. What a difference to yesterdays downloading fest. and installing three applications to just stand still.

That is the big difference, after that 10 minutes, everything is installed and ready to go, the photo album manager, music player, browser, full office suite, photo editor, voip tool, IM tool, etc etc and the candle stick maker.

I have absolutely no doubt that if every user had to install Windows 7 from scratch and all their applications , people would love it a whole lot less, and it is one of the reasons that the pre-installed monopoly for Microsoft is such a bad thing for consumers and the computer industry.

I just hope that Larry Ellison of Oracle fame now throws his hat in the ring and does something interesting with open source on the desktop, along with Google, Debian, RedHat, Canonical, Novell and Apple. I think we can say for the first time since IBM and OS/2, Microsoft has some serious and large competition to it's monopoly. I hope everyone delivers on this potential, as the real winners will be all of us.

Windows 7 a lot of money for not very much

I keep around an old windows XP virtual machine for things like CV's that agents will only take in word format, and I haven't been bothered to change it over to Google docs yet, but I will. So this VM gets powered up now and again on my Ubuntu Desktop to do this one task, and then it gets put away again.

So I thought I would take the Windows 7 7100 build for a spin and try it in VirtualPC, as I had already built a test VMware one. Well, the install went pretty well and once it had rebooted I was sat with an empty desktop, with no applications again. I fired up IE8 so I could download Mozilla Firefox, and it forced me to go to the Microsoft home page. I then downloaded some anti-virus software - AVG - and installed the Virtual PC drivers, another reboot.

I finally installed all the Microsoft patches and another reboot. It must have taken me about 45mins in total, to end up with a working virtual instance, and all I had installed was a browser and the anti-virus. Now that's OK, as I will put on my copy of Office, and I can continue to edit those CV's, but I then got to thinking about the point of this.

With virtualization and the standard hardware reference model that you get, I don't ever need to upgrade my XP virtual image, and it will continue to work until I can be bothered to move it to Google Apps. I know you won't be able to get security updates etc, but then I don't use it for seriously surfing the web anyway. I can also run it with no network connected if I wanted, and isolate it from the outside world , simply for it's legacy value.

So the question here is, why would I possibly spend £200 on Windows 7, the answer is I won't. When the RC runs out next year, then I will just delete the VM and that might be the driver I need to move over to Google apps completely.

I think a lot of people need to think very hard about upgrading to Windows 7, it might be new and shiny, but what exactly are you getting for you hard earned money. In my opinion not a great deal. Especially when you could go and buy a brand new Acer Netbook for £149 with all the software you could want, and spend the rest on treats for yourself.

Getting Ubuntu 9.04 to work properly with VMware workstation

I had a need today to get an Ubuntu 9.04 image working with VMware workstation 6.5.3-build-156735 and I noticed several things were not working correctly, including shared folders, timesync and the mouse being uable to move between the host and guest operating systems smoothly.

I have been beta testing the latest VMware workstation product - workstation 7 -, that is about to be launched, so I thought I would give the the VMwaretools that come with that a try. I opened up one of my Linux virtual machines on the Linux workstation that has it installed and then grabbed a copy of the VMwareTools-8.1.0-169612.tar.gz. I then put this on a USB key and copied that over to the other machine. That did the trick.

All is now working properly, and the Ubuntu image is playing nicely with Windows XP as the host.

I'm trying to track down a better way of getting access to the latest tools, like a simple URL, but as yet the only resource I can find is the open-vm project, which is behind the VMwareTools, but the latest version of these would not compile on this version of Ubuntu due to a library mis-match.

I will update this post if I track the link down.