Speeding up computer; dropping swap.

As I’ve written in few posts before, I use IBM Thinkpad T42 for my day to day work. The “forced” operating systems installed is Windows XP Service Pack 2. Unfortunately, the laptop has only 512M of memory, and this often leads to a large “swapping” exercises. We used to “swapping” almost since first hard drives appeared (IBM Winchester was my first one), and we all know how and when it happens.

But this is exactly the problem I’m having – all I do is read email, browse the web, and create documents; sometimes I happen to watch a short movie (or YouTube clip) or listen to music – hardly the most intensive stuff in computing. But it really bugs me to wait for any application to load. Sometimes an applications such as Firefox or Outlook take upto half a minute just to start! And that’s on almost idle system where one or two lite (such as PuTTY or IM) applications are running. This is very irritating, and bugs me more as a current state of things in all systems and in all applications rather than waiting itself.

I’m sure that this behavior while better in other operating systems, is similar in all of them.

So this got me thinking. Today’s memory is cheap. Today’s system are fully capable of handling 4GB of memory. What if I were creating “virtual” volume in memory and mount swap space in it? After all, I use swap for swapping only when system is up. I don’t need it when system is off.

So, I’d equip my system with 4GB memory, giving 2GB of it to the OS, and using the other 2GB as swap space. The intention being eliminating hard drive access as much as possible. Would that work? Would this speed up my system?

Tell me what you think.

-A.

Technorati : Gentoo, Linux, Ubuntu, technology, windows

Geeky Al Gore

While I consider myself a some sort of technically oriented fetish person, I never thought Al Gore is one as well.

Take a look 🙂

-A

Future of proprietary

Wasn’t it like 40 or so years ago when computer users didn’t always buy a software?

It is Bill Gates’ letter to hobbyists which is considered by many an important milestone in proprietary software concept. This concept, which rules in many software markets today, is essentially alienated by open source software.

What is the difference? There is one major different, and not the one many think.

Proprietary software in Bill Gates’ view, is a software product produced by a highly educated team of professionals. As any product made or manufactured it has to be payed for in order to be used. This team will sign you on a binding license (just as a driver permit, which has its rules); this team will not be responsible if this product destroys everything else in your life, and, my favorite, they keep control regarding how you can or cannot use their product.

Open Source software, on other hand, is all about freedom. Not free (by money factor) as many believe to be the main attribute of it, but freedom to use it the way you like. No, it is still not responsible for possible problems in your life, but the actual usage clause is clear:

As long as you’re not changing the product, you may do whatever you want with it. If you do change the product, credit those who had created the base version you changed and publish your changes to everyone who requests it. Obligate others to use the same licensing terms.

This freedom is the most important part. Not the price. Not the vendor. The freedom of use.

So why, then, vendors would fear open source concept?

The problem lays in “property” concept. When someone is speaking about private property, such as house or premises, it is well understood what is it about. But when someone is talking about “intellectual property”, this is much more complicated. It sounds like someone has “patented” his or her own thoughts and other people are forbidden to think those thoughts. And if they do, they either should pay for it or go to jail – just as thieves would.

So until the law implementations of such “property” use would be clear to all, many vendors would prefer using “real commercial” software products.

And I haven’t started talking about DRMed content yet…

Although I prefer Open Source and Free model, I do understand the place of a commercial software products in the world.

Vendors, please, free the use for your products. And you’ll be fine.

-A.

Technorati : technology

Comparison for platforms

I’ve decided to perform comparison research between different OSes that are available for me. I will conduct the research as good and as objective as I can.

I will post the methodology notes and my report later on.

Enjoy all. 🙂

Computing revised Part II

So, in Part I I’ve been talking about how computing has evolved and how can we make it even better. I will continue exploring different users types now, in a race to make the computing easier.

3. Business user.

So, a business user, is as name says, a user which mainly uses computer systems in businesses. Such environments include corporate email systems, corporate applications such as SAP (resource management), databases applications, and such. Requirements of such user aren’t high, but important: she doesn’t need really fast system, but would not appose to one, she doesn’t need a fast applications but would like them. She needs system to be operational, meaning she wants a system to be stable and she’s willing to give up some other features towards that. Interoperability is also very important requirement, as work is needed to be done and no compatibility issues would not be tolerated – if the system can’t deliver, it won’t be used. There’s no or almost no powerful graphics required.

4. Power User

Power user is a user which has high but specific requirements. Those would be:

• a server system (high performance CPUs, bus, hard drives)
• a cluster (high performance networking)
• a graphics render cluster (high performance graphics, networking and sometimes CPU and hard drives)
• a corporate server (may have stability and failover features as main requirement)
• CAD/Graphics developer (would require high performance graphics and CPU)

Such users will choose dominant requirement on computer system, and would trade all other features for a major one. Almost all other features would not be very important. The main requirements can be regarding either hardware or software.

In next part I will continue review of different users of computer systems.

Technorati : technology

Computer for gradma and world domination

This entry was inspired by latest entry in LinuxToday, but refers to such topic as “Computers for gramma” or “Linux on a desktop” in general.

These topics have history now, and they’ve been “refurbished” at least once per few weeks. The major points of those are twofold (althouth highly interconnected). Those points are being:

1. Whether my {favorite non-technical member of the family} can easily use computer?
2. Is Linux ready for desktop?

Please allow me to explain, why those 2 are interconnected.

Well, the first one is well understood. In last 15 or so years, computers transformed from geaky toy to a “in any home” appliance. We do many of day to day tasks with it: We send and read our mail. We read, see and listen to a news. We listen to a music/radio. We watch movies (and sometimes TV). We record music, speech and TV. We play. We talk.

So, if my grandma can operate a TV/VCR, why can’t she operate a computer system? Of course she can. In the matter of simplicity, I’ll ask anyone who is familiar with computers, to perform the following tasks:

• Check/Send an email
• Read/check news on favorite website
• Listen to a music
• Watch a movie/DVD (all legal, don’t worry)
• Write a simple document (such as you shop list)

I’d believe that anyone who’s been using a computer for at least a month, would be able to perform all these tasks.

Now consider the following: the “Alex computer system” that I asked to perform those tasks on has nothing but pretty picture on the desktop, with the following icons:

• Mail
• Internet
• Documents
• Music/Movies

Wouldn’t you agree, that using only common sense performing the aforementioned tasks would not be too hard? Say, Mail would present some pretty interface to email (or Gmail, Yahoo or anything else – all our email interfaces are alike and pretty self explanatory), Internet would fire up Firefox (or any other browser; and all our browser interfaces are alike and self explanatory), Music/Movies would start something like “media center” application (like Windows Media Center/Tivo/MythTv/Telly, or any other similar application) which is pretty straight forward to use and self explanatory, and Documents will start simple document editor, either local or browser-based (they do have similar interfaces anyway, except MS Office 2007, of course).

Now, I still believe, that no age-related neither intellectual issues have been discussed here yet. It is all very intuitive and common sense.

Just like the TV.

So, at this point, considering all I discussed before, could you answer the following question, please, :

Do you know which operating system “Alex computer system” runs? And more important, does it matter?

This is what I’ve been trying to explain. I sustain, that there’s sincerely and absolutely no importance in which operating system powers the all-powerful “Alex computer system“. This, as great result, leads me to the following:

For any such general-purpose computing, Linux-based OS (all you zealots, I know the difference between GNU/Linux and Linux, but I don’t want to go into politics for a moment) is completely ready for massive desktop usage, as long as it can be installed and maintained in a way that makes sense to a general public.

Please, note the “common sense” part. I don’t think that working with “Start” (or “applications” or whatever) menu is very intuitive (although I have to agree that “Applications” is much better than “Start”). To watch TV, one has to press an “on” and that’s it. To play a movie on a VCR one presses “play”. That’s common sense. That’s intuitive.

So here’s my initial suggestion to all those aspiring to “prove” to everyone that Linux is ready. Create an application with the following features:

1. Create a very beautiful GUI with pre-defined tasks, such as those mentioned above.
2. Make sure it works as stable and as predictable as TV.
3. Make sure that interface is consistent thorough the applications.
4. Try it on your not so technical {member of your family} to see whether it is intuitive enough.

Until now, we’ve been preparing to world domination. Now the final part:

When they are asleep, swap the OS to Linux. Enjoy the fruits of your labour.

Heh, that would be fun and easy. Wouldn’t it?

Technorati : technology

Computing revised – Part I

Hi all

This is what I’ve been recently thinking. We’re all hearing a lot about computing development. Our systems evolve. They become more powerful, software more bloated (but sometimes better), and our spending grows.

Why? Why do we have to buy a new computer every few years? Is the one we have not enough anymore? If we consider the tasks we perform on it, then not necessarily. Lets define few supposedly major computer users in the world:

1. Low-level developer
2. High-level developer
3. Business User
4. Power User
5. Home User
6. Gamer
7. Mobile user / Small mobile user
8. Embedded device (special one)

So I will try to explain those types of computer system users. Each user will have different “relations” with hardware and software, and for each one the importance of these lies in different usage patterns. Then I will try to analyze each one’s habits, and try to find ways to improve upon those. In the end, I will try to perform a “research” about how can we make the computing experience better than it is today.

Let me begin then. I’m going to explain what I mean by user types:

1. Low-level developer.

Low level developer in my book, is a developer of computing hardware or devices. This computer user doesn’t generally have high requirements, he often uses very specific hardware/devices or those created by him or other developers alike. Software he uses generally specific as well, and not required by majority of other computer users. His major requirement is that a computer system will work stable, consistent and predictable. There’s almost never requirement of high performance (unless the hardware/device itself created for providing it) or “pretty GUI” (unless, again, provided by the very hardware being developed).

2. High-Level developer.

This type of a user is different from a previous one. This is a developer of a software. Software can be of any kind: Operating system, drivers, office applications, graphical applications, internet/email applications, or games. This type of user will almost always request for the fastest processors available, fastest hard drives available. Multiple processors are welcomed if possible. Graphics power will not always mean much (unless application development requires such a thing). Software he uses is not very special, and can be similar to that used by many other users.

In the next part I will continue talking about different user types, and will explain them more.