Ditching Windows 7 & Ubuntu - Giving Fedora a Test Drive

I've decided that I'm bored with the dual-booting Windows 7 & Ubuntu 11.04 setup on my laptop.  I've wiped my laptop and installed Fedora 15.

At first glance I've noticed that the "Activities" and left docked favorite applications is a lot like the Unity interface from Ubuntu 11.04.  I've also noticed that the settings menu is very sparse and I think that will cause problems later when I'm trying to modify settings.  I'll just follow online tutorials and rock the command line.   I still miss my Netflix streaming on Linux, but since it came to Chrome OS, a guy can dream it's coming to other Linux OS's right?

Best Default Browser for Mobile Devices

For my Android phone, the default browser is the slowest of any of the browsers that I have used.  Maybe it's because I have an old Samsung Moment running Android 2.1, but I have had a much better browsing experience with alternative browsers.  For the past month I've used the Miren browser as my default browser. I love it's full screen viewing and relatively quick speed.  After trying Dolphin HD, I wasn't particularly impressed.

Hands down the fastest Android browser I've used is Opera Mini.  It's gone back to my default and until I get a new phone with a more updated version of Android, I'm definitely sticking with Opera Mini.

For the iPad that I use, I switch between the default Safari browser and iCab Mobile.  As far as browsing speed is concerned, there isn't any notable difference.  Are there others that are faster?

As you might be able to tell, speed is my #1 priority with a browser.  What is your #1 browser priority?

Solid State Drive: The Most Valuable Upgrade I've Ever Done

A few months ago, I replaced the 500 GB 5400 rpm drive on my laptop with a 64 GB Solid State Drive .

In order to make this hard drive change, I had to make a fundamental shift with how I stored my files so that very little was stored locally.  I mention how I use an Ubuntu desktop with 4 TB of storage to do this in a previous post.  I dual boot with Ubuntu 11.04 and Windows 7 on my new 64 GB SSD and only run into storage issues with the bloated Windows 7.

Boot and program load times
I can boot into a fully logged in and usable desktop with both Ubuntu and Windows 7 in 20-25 seconds. I used to have to wait 60-90 seconds to get to a usable desktop with Windows and 45-60 seconds with Ubuntu using the standard 5400 rpm laptop hard drive.  Load times on programs have also been significantly reduced.  I wait at least 1/3 of the time I used to for programs to load.

In short, a solid state drive is one of the best and most valuable computer upgrades I have ever done.  I would highly recommend you do the same.

Easy way to make Chrome even faster

When I was playing around in Chrome's settings one day, I noticed the Omnibox setting and was excited about it. Pages now load before I even finish typing the urls or search terms.  Here's how to enable it:

Hard drives die. Are you ready for that? Here's how I am.

Research
I needed a way to backup both Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux computers.  After spending some time researching backup programs, I decided instead of using one program, I am using a couple different ones.  I first gave serious consideration to CrashPlan and I will use it if my current setup doesn't work in the long term.

I wanted backup programs that would do automated, scheduled, and uncompressed file and folder backup.  I don't want to rely on a specific program to restore the files.  I wanted them be readily accessible on my hard drive.  If I use CrashPlan, I would have to rely on CrashPlan to re-open my backup files.  Right now CrashPlan is free, but what if they start charing for the restore feature and I have to pay to get my files back?  These are things that I think of and my reason for straight file backup.

Windows 7
My wife has a Windows 7 laptop and I setup the free GFI Backup Home Edition on it.  I have an Ubuntu desktop that has 4 TB of data storage on my network, so that is my backup location.  I have setup daily, weekly, and monthly scheduled backups to backup into separate "Daily", "Weekly", and "Monthly" folders on the Ubuntu Desktop.  This way, if a file is accidentally deleted at any point, we could always go back into a day old, week old, or month old backup and retrieve it.  All daily, weekly, and monthly backups write over the old data when they run.

Ubuntu Laptop

On the Ubuntu desktop, I setup Samba shares, so I could access the files on it from my Ubuntu laptop.  Since I only have a 64 GB SSD on my laptop, I don't store any files on it locally.  I just access them on the Ubuntu desktop storage machine.  I mount the Samba shares when I'm at home and access the files with Tonido when I am away.  Any files that I use frequently, like homework for classes, are stored in Dropbox.

A backup to all those backups

On the Ubuntu desktop with 4 TB of storage, I installed KBackup.  All of my personal documents, music, and pictures that are stored on the Ubuntu Desktop, as well as my wife's daily, weekly, and monthly backups are backed up on a daily basis to a 500 GB My Book external hard drive.  This way I am prepared in case my first backup hard drive fails.

I love to be prepared for any computer disaster. Now it's your turn to be prepared!  Please comment with your backup solutions.

Streaming my entire music collection with Audiogalaxy - New Genie mode great addition

I use Audiogalaxy to stream my entire music collection.  It is fantastic and I love that I don't have to store my music on my laptop or phone.  I have a computer at home running 24/7 and it has the Audioglaxy client running on it.  With that running, I can stream my music from any web browser and the app for my Android phone.  On my phone, it works on both 3G and Wi-Fi.  I don't like to spend time making playlists, so I usually end up shuffling everything and skipping lots of songs that I'm not in the mood to listen to. Audiogalaxy released a new feature last week called "Genie" mode.  It's like the "Genius" mode in iTunes.  With the new "Genie" mode, I can just find the type of song that I'm in the mood for, click or touch "Genie" (in browser or on my phone), and then I'll get all the music like that song.  I'll go for hours now without skipping songs.  It works really well and I'm really glad to see this new feature.

Good Bye Amahi, Hello Ubuntu and Tonido

Amahi Problems

For some time now, I have been running an Amahi Home Server on one of the desktops that I built. I was initially very excited about the Fedora based home server, but ran into many problems.  It ran great when I had one hard drive, but when I bought an SSD and two 2 TB drives I ran into trouble.  I followed the directions on how to add a second hard drive, but they didn't work.  I had to learn how to edit the fstab file and mount the drives myself, which I did and am now grateful for knowing.  After mounting the two drives, I added them to the Greyhole shares.  Every time I tried transferring the files over the network, the 32 GB SSD would fill up and the transfers to the 4 TB of space would fail.  I wiped the system and partitioned the drives on the clean install following these directions.  Now the SSD never filled up, but the transfers still failed.  I even tried mounting the shares locally and transferring the files via USB hard drives, but that failed too.  One of my main purposes of using an Amahi server was so I could stream my movies remotely and I never could.  The Amahi app Jinzora said that it could do that, but it was never able to stream any of my movies, no matter what format the files were (mp4, wmv, avi, mov).

Great things about Amahi
Videos 5 was the best thing about Amahi.  I could stream all of my mp4 movies to any HTML5 capable browser, such as the iPad.  It worked quite well.

Ubuntu and Tonido
I have wiped Fedora and Amahi and installed 64 bit Ubuntu 10.10 on the same desktop.  I setup Samba shares on it, so all computers on my home network will have read and write access to the files on that computer.  I then installed Tonido on it.  Tonido is great because it's like setting up my own personal cloud.  I initially ran into issues because they don't have a 64 bit installer for Ubuntu, but after following these directions, I was able to install it and get it running.  I can now access all of my files remotely and stream all of my movies!

Ubuntu 11.04 Works Now

My main disappointment with Ubuntu 11.04 has been resolved.  The latest round of updates has fixed the issues with my video card not being supported.  I no longer have black bars everywhere where menus should be.  I can actually see the Unity menu and use the computer:

Now it's time to explore the new version of Ubuntu!

Disappointed with Ubuntu 11.04 beta

I recently upgraded my primary laptop from Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 11.04 beta (http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/natty/beta).  I love GNOME (http://www.gnome.org/) and was weary at first about the switch to Unity (http://unity.ubuntu.com/), but after reading more about it I was excited to give the new Unity interface a try.  Instead of getting to play with the new interface, I was greeted with black bars where the Unity menus and dock should have been:

I am now forced to login to the "Ubuntu Classic" mode until more updates come out that fix my issue.  I really like Ubuntu and was very disappointed that my video card was not supported.  Here's to hoping that gets fixed soon!  If it isn't fixed, I may switch to the new GNOME 3: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/04/gnome-3-released-to-be-available-for-ubuntu-11-04-via-ppa/