Chrome browser finally available for Linux

A beta of the Google Chrome web browser is now available for Linux.

About time!

Downloading now ... as I write this. Expect more after I install it.

Available in .deb (Debian) and .rpm (Red Hat/Fedora) binaries.

Try it with me, y'all penguinistas!

Running bombproof Vector Linux on netbook

When it comes to computers, I'm always up to something. It's probably one of my failings.

Although my netbook works very well with the mini-Linux system I recently installed, I wanted to standardize things a bit. I've been working toward a "final solution" that mirrors the system I have on the desktop unit.

So, I was up until around 3 a.m. one Saturday morning, installing a new operating system on the netbook. I am now using Vector Linux, a Slackware-based, rock-solid OS.

It wasn't difficult, but then I've installed many a system on my computers. Really, the only part that was different was that the netbook doesn't have a CD-ROM drive. I was using a thumb drive for the dirty work.

But it's up, running, and all that good stuff.

Part of it is, as I mentioned, I just can't leave stuff alone. In fact, that's partly why I needed to make changes to the netbook anyway -- in full experimental flight I toasted the Windows XP installation, corrupted some system files, and was left with a rather expensive paperweight until I broke out the tools and thumb drives.

In the interim I ran Puppy Linux, a fast little system that weighs in at less than 100 megabytes for the download. It's one of those simple-as-it-gets systems, blistering fast and a joy to use. Really, it's almost too much fun to be on a computer.

But Puppy Linux is a little squirrelly when it comes to downloading and installing new software. That's something the developer is working on and while he's making some real strides, it's not there yet. Plus, I wanted my laptop to have the same system I have on my desktop. Some consistency is always a good thing. That's why I opted for Vector.

OK. Linux is Linux. It's all built around the same kernel, the same X windowing system, the same basic command-line programs you never see. Over the years the gap between the graphics-happy Windows and stodgy command-line Linux has closed, but the solid UNIX base remains. Plus, Linux is free, and tailor-made for those of us who keep experimenting and breaking things.

Vector Linux is based on Slackware, which is probably the most stable, most Unix-like of the Linux versions. I've followed its development for several years, and it was the version I've stayed with the longest. I'm using version 6.0 on the netbook, the same as on my desktop. In fact, it all came from the same download.

See, that's one of the things about Linux. The licensing is different. You can take a download and set up as many computers as you want with it, and there's no Bill Gates around to tell you you're a pirate. In fact, this share-the-love practice is encouraged. I can burn as many CDs of the system as I want, give them away, sell them for a few bucks, as long as the GPL license (which they call a "copyleft") is intact.

Again, installing is a little problematic on the netbook because there's no CD-ROM drive. The best workaround is by using Unetbootin with a thumb drive. I put Unetbootin and the Vector Linux .iso file (which is what you get when you download) onto the drive, then used a Windows computer (had to go to the library for that) to install Vector on the drive so it will boot up. Then clear up some room on the netbook hard drive, use gparted to create a partition for Vector, and reboot with the thumb drive. Follow the prompts on the screen (on my Acer, I hit F12 for boot options), and install Vector on the new partition, a process which sounds dangerous but it's a simple matter of following the prompts. Then put Vector on the GRUB boot loader (a simple cut-paste in a text file), reboot, and I'm running my new system.

OK. That's the simplistic version, and I know I lost many of y'all here. Let's just say I've done this a few times. Don't be surprised if I eventually put together something more detailed, something you can download.

The big zillion-dollar question: Did I lose my work files from the old Windows system? No. They're all there, and I can open and edit every one of them. What's even better, I have an emulation program called WINE that will run most of the Windows programs. In fact, the Windows installation is untouched. Should I rebuild my broken system files and get XP to work, then I have a choice of which system to start when I turn the computer on.

A couple of things still need work. At first Vector didn't recognize my onboard condenser microphone, ruling out recording. Strangely enough, though, I downloaded my favorite sound-editing software (Audacity) through Vector's repositories, and the mic works well with that. I kind of wish I knew why it would suddenly work, but I'm not going to complain. It took a bit of experimenting to get the webcam going, though it's not something I expect to use. So at least these issues are resolved.

I'm still looking for software that would put the laptop in hibernate mode when I close the lid. So far I'm not having much luck. The computer continues to run and the screen saver kicks on, so there's still some battery drain. Unless I find a handy program I can plug in, I may have to recompile the kernel. Now that's getting into territory that's way advanced for me.

But everything else works just fine. My wireless connection works as it did before. I added some of the pretties, installed Open Office, included my favorite news feed reader, and the netbook is battle-ready. With a system that's practically bombproof.

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You tell me: Does the thought of installing a whole new operating system scare you? Do you break a lot of things while experimenting, or do you leave well enough alone? Any suggestions for my hibernation problem? Use the comments section for feedback.

Screenshot:

Vector Linux running on the netbook. The graphics interface is xfce4. Programs visible are Open Office, and xmms music player. Oh, if you insist, that's a command shell in the foreground, 'cause it IS Linux. I actually use mine. To the right is the gkrellm system monitor. I shot the background photo in Hawaii. Enough eye candy for you?

Chrome OS promising, but it's more for the future

It won't be ready for the general public for another year, but the sneak preview of the Google Chrome OS is generating quite a buzz.

It may be a Windows-killer, some claim. It'll put Linux on the map, say others. It'll be a fiasco, say still more pundits. So far, nobody's neutral.

Google Chrome, built from the Debian GNU/Linux operating system (which I've always liked), is designed for the ultralight, ultracheap netbooks that are not really built for much more than Web browsing and lightweight office work. And the Chrome system is really little more than a front end for "cloud computing" -- the use of online applications and storage.

According to the Google blog:

... it's all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs ...

That in itself is enough to really stir the pudding in the computer world.

I guess that's the future of computing, and it stands to reason that one may not even need a hard drive in the future. That's the trend I'm seeing carried out to its logical conclusion, though it doesn't mean I have to like it.

I've fooled around some with online applications, such as Google Docs. While they're OK, I have trepidations about using these for everything. I've also played with bubbl.us, an online mind mapping program. While these concepts are great for portability -- you can access your stuff from any computer without even a thumb drive. I'd rather keep my documents on hard drive. I'm even chary about backing them up online, and I like a lot more choice about what applications I do use. But from what I've read, the Google Chrome system throws you right into the future.

Although InfoWorld’s Randall Kennedy says Google’s Chrome OS will be a big failure, Robert Scoble thinks it's just ahead of its time:

... what about my son who is in high school? By the time Chrome OS comes along in big numbers he’ll be in college. Why take a $1,000 computer to class? Couldn’t he do everything he needs to do on a low-cost computer that’s lightweight, replaceable, uses low power, and just uses the web? Absolutely. InfoWorld is making assumptions that the world is going to stay the same. That simply is NOT true ... what will run on these new devices? A heavyweight OS like Windows 7 that takes me 40 seconds to boot up and does a ton of stuff I really don’t need, or a new OS that just has Google Chrome as its centerpiece?"

Even with nothing but a Web browser? Scoble says this:

... hey, I just wrote this post on Google Chrome while sitting listening to Marc Benioff at the TechCrunch Real Time Crunchup. I have not seen a single thing demonstrated on stage yet that won’t run on Google Chrome OS ... this is a winner, but on a new field ...

I may download the Chrome OS and give it a shot, though I'm not all that enthused about it. Since it's a front end with little more than a graphic user interface, a few core programs, and the Chrome browser, why does the download weigh in at around three gigabytes?

Out of the box, the download on my current Linux operating system is a tick over 700 megabytes. And that includes all the programs that make the computer a self-contained one. You can get surprisingly complete Linux distributions on a 100-megabyte download.

Still, I'm intrigued by this system, and hope it is adopted early and often. There's no secret that I'm a big fan of Linux, and the Chrome OS may finally dissolve the perception that Linux is too busy being geeky to be useful.

Now, understand that none of this is carved in granite, or even in bologna. This sneak preview is available in source code format, and it'll be a while before the final, battle-ready version is ready. In the interim, those who grabbed the download are essentially beta testers. Run it, crash it, make note of what you did, and report back to the developers.

The new operating system still begs the question: What will it do with Microsoft's death grip on the PC market?

Taking the pundits' comments and working the middle ground, the answer is not a lot. TechCrunch writer M. G. Siegler suggests Chrome will nibble into the bottom end of the Microsoft market -- the netbooks, the cheap computers. But until Windows 7 was released, Microsoft had conceded that end of the market. Most netbooks came with some form of Linux preloaded, while a few had Windows XP. Part of the game plan behind Windows 7 (which I'm not going to review; I'm more interested in open-source software) was to recapture some of the netbook users, and by most accounts the new Windows is one of the best systems Microsoft has ever produced.

Siegler writes:

... Google’s positioning for Chrome OS reads like a page out of Apple’s playbook, only from the opposite direction ... Apple, of course, takes the opposite approach, targeting the high end of the market with their high-quality and high-margin machines. If Google is successful with its Chrome OS netbooks (let’s call them ChromeBooks), what we could see is the squeezing of Microsoft, an idea I first laid out a month ago. With attacks from the top and bottom, Windows will be relegated to the middle. And ultimately, if Google has its way, marginalized ...

Stay tuned.

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After rough start, Firefox marks fifth birthday

I never would have expected this. Firefox is five years old.

Despite its promise from the jump, Firefox spent its beta period without any real identity. Literally.

At first no one was really sure what to call it. For a while it was known as Phoenix, then Firebird. I believe the developers had to come up with a fast name change because there's another piece of software called Firebird, and branding is a big thing in the computer world.

With such an inauspicious beginning, it's amazing to see that the product survived, let alone developed a reputation as a stable browser.

To further confuse things, Firefox is open source, meaning you can take the code, tweak it, build something else from it, and rebrand it. This was done with Debian Linux, as the Firefox brand is copyrighted though the source code is not, so that thing that looks and feels like Firefox is called Iceweasel or some such thing. I've also used BonEcho, a rebranded, stripped-down version of Firefox for the ultralight Puppy Linux.

For a while, one of the lesser-known and more tongue-in-cheek Firefox extensions available was called firesomething, which would put a whole different name on the browser every time you run it. The name on it may be SnowSnake this time, and maybe something like BlizzardLizard the next. It was a goofy extension, but brought a chuckle to this user who remembered Firefox's early search for a name.

The browser made it out of beta and released Version 1.0 five years ago this week. Within four days, more than a million people downloaded it. I was one of them.

I was one of the early Firefox adopters. I was running an assembled-from-scratch computer, and already I was sick of Internet Explorer's balkiness and security leaks. I went to the old Mozilla suite, and when that company announced it was throwing its resources into a new, browser-only project, I had to try it out.

The design was a thing of beauty. You were getting a basic browser, and you'd add whatever you feel you needed to it. Now, five years later, the modular design remains. My Firefox has the experimental Google Gears extension, plus the LastPass password keeper. But the biggest extension I have is ScribeFire, which allows me to compose blogs within the browser and post them seamlessly. ScribeFire is big, adds more bloat to the browser, and is sometimes buggy so I'm a bit lukewarm about it. But I use it.

A caveat about Firefox: The more add-ons and extensions you install, the slower it will run. It's like running a car with all the options instead of a model with power nothing and the kind of air conditioner you get when you open all four windows. But even with a lot of chrome on it, Firefox is a good browser, stable, and secure. The developers stay on top of things, and are quicker to solve their bugs than the Microsoft people are at admitting there's a problem with IE. For a while, Firefox had a problem where it would blow up in your memory and consume every CPU cycle you had, but that was solved several updates ago.

Over time, Mozilla dropped its old browser and made Firefox its big Web browsing application. Recently, some fans of the old Mozilla browser took the source code, tweaked a few things, updated the whole thing, and released it as Seamonkey.

Now, Firefox is taking a decent chunk of the browser market. It's the main browser by about 25 percent of Web users, but that's a funny number. Firefox is not routinely installed on computers out of the box, and many users tend to stick with what's already on the box -- like Internet Explorer. Figure it. To use Internet Explorer you unpack the computer, plug it in, and double-click on the big "e" on the screen. You have to go out of your way to get Firefox -- and then install it yourself. But, Firefox now grabs a bigger share than the obsolete IE version 6, which is still a step ahead.

Recently, MozillaZine announced that Firefox was present on a majority -- 50.6 percent -- of computers, based on numbers by the exo.performance.network. So someone, somewhere, is doing an awful lot of downloading.

But while Firefox has seen some real growth lately, the year-old Google Chrome is growing even faster. Roughly four percent of computer users are making Chrome the prime browser, so that one has a way to go, but the growth rate matches the buzz it's generating. I played some with Chrome, but its development has primarily been on the Windows and, more recently, MacIntosh side. Still, I'm pleased by its lightness and speed -- by comparison a fully-loaded Firefox is kludgy -- but Chrome has an unfinished feel to it. I do suspect that, once it is ported to Linux, I may put it on my front line.

Firefox is still my go-to browser, but mostly because it works better with much of the stuff on the Web (particularly the experimental Google Labs widgets). It's probably a little bloated for my taste, though. Much as I tend to shy away from those large, do-everything suites (such as Open Office), I like Seamonkey (the rebuilt and reissued Mozilla browser suite) a bit better. Even with the built-in mail reader and HTML editor, its design is lighter than the browser-only Firefox. I do like Opera for the same reason, though it hasn't caught on in the mainstream computer world at all. Too bad. Opera is the only one that has a chance of outrunning Chrome in a speed test. Both of them are much quicker than Firefox, while IE lags so far behind you'd need searchlights to find it.

But if you want pure speed, Lynx runs circles around all of them, including Google Chrome. But since Lynx is text-only, you might have a problem watching those YouTube videos on it.

Many social-media games turning into scams

I can't get into Facebook. I do have an account, though I use it more to communicate with some of my friends. And I can't see spending a lot of time on it to play the games.

I have some friends who are seriously into the Facebook games and applications. Farmville, Bejeweled, YoVille, and Mafia Wars are real popular among the people I know. I can't be bothered with that stuff myself. I go on Facebook maybe long enough to check my messages, say hello to a few friends, and log off to check my Twitter account.

At first glance the Facebook games seem to be harmless fun. I understand you play many of them in levels; you clear the first level and move up to the bigger and better stuff -- much like the old-school Mario Brothers game or Dungeons & Dragons. So far, so good.

But TechCrunch has been working on a series of articles on the social-media games, and writer Michael Arrington smells a lot more scam than score.

With a lot of these games, there are two ways to hit another level: Earn it by playing well enough to clear the level you're on, or pull a George Steinbrenner and buy a new level. With real money. Your real money.

Already you can see this coming, if you're half perceptive. The game gets you hooked. It's like any other "progressive" type of game, and I can vouch for that. I've spent many hours trying to crack the combination on FreeCiv, an open-source version of Sid Meier's Civilization. Next I know the sun's coming up, my legs are frozen in one position, my left hand is all cramped up from pushing the mouse around, and my butt lost all feeling hours ago. So I can understand that.

But crank in the buy-ins and the special offers, especially if you're frustrated at the %$&#! game and your brain is fuzzed over from a marathon session, then things get real interesting.

On Oct. 31, Arrington wrote this:

... these games try to get people to pay cash for in game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won’t pay cash, a wide variety of "offers" are available where they can get in-game currency in exchange for lead gen-type offers. Most of these offers are bad for consumers because it confusingly gets them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers). And it’s also bad for legitimate advertisers. The reason why I call this an ecosystem is that it’s a self-reinforcing downward cycle. Users are tricked into these lead gen scams ...

Here's one scam, according to Arrington:

... users are offered in game currency in exchange for filling out an IQ survey. Four simple questions are asked. The answers are irrelevant. When the user gets to the last question they are told their results will be text messaged to them. They are asked to enter in their mobile phone number, and are texted a pin code to enter on the quiz. Once they’ve done that, they’ve just subscribed to a $9.99/month subscription. Tatto Media is the company at the very end of the line on most mobile scams, and they flow it up through Offerpal, SuperRewards and others to the game developers ... nothing in the offer says that the user will be billed $10/month forever for a useless service.

Had enough yet? Here's another:

Video Professor ... users are offered in game currency if they sign up to receive a free learning CD from Video Professor. The user is told they pay nothing except a $10 shipping charge. But the fine print, on a different page from checkout, tells them they are really getting a whole set of CDs and will be billed $189.95 unless they return them. Most users never return them because they don’t know about the extra charge. Woot. Again, sites like Offerpal and SuperRewards flow these offers through to game developers ...

Slashdot, one of my favorite sites for geeky news, says this about the TechCrunch articles:

... the system is rife with scams, and many game developers turn a blind-eye to them, much to the detriment of the players and the legitimate advertisers — not to mention the games that rightly disallow these offers and fall behind in profits. The article asserts that Facebook and MySpace themselves are complicit in this, failing to crack down on the abuses they see because they make so much money from advertising for the most popular games ...

If you play these online games -- or if you're thinking about it -- I highly recommend these three TechCrunch articles, all by Arrington:

Part One - Social Games: How The Big Three Make Millions

Part Two - Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell

Part Three - Two Companies That Said No To Social Media Scams

I'm getting awfully tired of doing these pieces on Internet scams. I'd rather do how-tos and reviews any old day. You think these scammers can give me enough of a break to pursue this? C'mon guys ... at least do it for my convenience?

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Internet reaches middle age

Although few had even heard of this Internet thing (then known as the "information superhighway" until the early or mid-1990s, it got its real start 40 years ago this week.

It was Oct. 29, 1969 when the first two nodes of ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California. And unless you were one of the guys on the inside, you really didn't know or care.

I was a bit of a late adopter. It was 1996 when I used a noisy modem to link into an Internet provider in a nearby city. My computer was an old Leading Edge XP, with an 8088 processor, Hercules graphics card, DOS 5, and 2400-bytes-per-second modem. I used Procomm to link up, and the text-only Lynx browser to surf.

This wasn't the first time I'd used a modem. By then I was an old hand at sending text files point to point over the phone lines. I worked for a newspaper in Kingman, Arizona at the time, and generated a lot of stories from my home office in Bullhead City, 40 miles away. I'd call the publisher, Matt, and tell him to set up the computer for incoming copy, give him five minutes, then send the stuff. Soon Matt would see my text streaming across his screen, a character at a time. One of my other reporters would send me his copy from his home office, I'd edit it from home, then send it to the home office the same way. I was even able to execute commands on my home computer (the Dos-driven PC) from the MacIntosh at work, using an old-school program called Telnet.

Once I got the knack of surfing the Internet, it became a bigger part of my life. And I remember telling my parents about my experiments. Dad was already good with computers -- we'd traded software for several years -- but he wasn't sure about this online thing. A curious toy, he concluded.

At the time, Netscape was the go-to browser before Internet Explorer nuked it in market share. There were rumors that you might be able to surf on the same infrastructure that your cable TV used, and much faster than dialup. Companies began building their own primitive Web sites, and ordinary people were cobbling together their own Web sites on GeoCities (which shut down a few days ago). It was a whole new world out there, the Wild Blue Yonder.

It's been 13 years since I fired up my first Web browser (Lynx, by the way, is still available and still text-only). But a lot has changed since then. Rather than write for print, my work shows up in the ether of the Internet and many of my readers are on the other side of the world.

I've developed friendships with people I'd never met, and who live in places I've never visited. I've discovered musicians I've never heard before and downloaded their music. I've downloaded entire a lot of software and quite a few operating systems -- and asked questions about the software online. I've communicated with a Linux developer in Australia and let him know how I was able to get his system to run on computers that even he wasn't sure could be done. I've debated many a subject online. I've set up the computer to download news from several hundred sources at a time.

I'm an experimenter, and can't leave stuff alone. Besides Netscape, I've used Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Seamonkey (which is what Mozilla has become), Opera, and Google Chrome. Firefox is my most-used browser now, but I notice Seamonkey is now in 2.0 and it deserves a look.

Instead of listening to a whining modem, I go straight wireless. I have about a half-dozen places where I go to do my work -- some indoors, some outside, and I'll unpack my netbook, hit a few buttons, and talk to the world. In fact, once I left dialup I had no earthly reason to even keep a landline -- a cell phone on my hip, wireless Internet close by, a second, Internet-based phone line through Google Voice, all my communications needs are met.

Even then, I'm a bit of a primitive. My cell phone merely makes calls and sends off text messages. It doesn't browse the Web. I can send short text messages to Twitter or this blog, even an email, but my single-function LG doesn't stack up to those iPhones or Crackberries that do everything.

When you consider the all-purpose cell phones, netbooks, laptops -- and I recently read about a pen that's really a computer -- you just may see desktop computers as another dying breed. Even hard drives may become a thing of the past, what with USB thumb drives and online file storage. Some of your netbooks work with just internal flash storage and USB drives, without a hard disk in sight.

The folks at UCLA and Menlo Park had no idea at the time what they'd started.

(Screenshot: The old text-based Lynx web browser, where I made my first forays on the Internet, is still around. It's shown here with Firefox 3.5.3.)

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You tell me: Remember your first time on line? Care to share? Use the comments section for your input.

Site outlines 10 ways to spot an Email scam

I've spent a bit of time looking at some of the nefarious things that can find themselves on your computer courtesy of the Internet. You can get bad programs, spyware, viruses, and some eerie email at the click of a mouse.

What with the speed and ease with which one can send off mass emails, the scammer has all the tools he needs to separate many people from their dollars. And you've probably seen a few of these messages showing up in your inbox -- maybe even a few this week.

From switched.com, here are 10 red flags that the email you've received is probably a scam:

Look for things like requests for personal information, lots of misspellings, clickable Web links, innocent-sounding surveys, that "hot tip" you don't remember requesting, unsolicited attachments, and you-must-act-now pitches.

From Switched:

If you see the phrases "verify your account," "you have won the lottery" or "if you don't respond within XX hours, your account will be closed," it's a scam – every time. Hit the delete button and don't look back.

This is one you should delete, kill, whatever you do with it.

It's a jungle out there. But then you already knew that.

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