Chris Wiegman

Archive for the ‘Computers and Tech’ Category

So I’m perplexed. Every time I startup Firefox 3.6 on my mac I lose the last folder in the bookmarks toolbar. Moving it out of the toolbar and back in fixes it until the next time I start the browser. Anyone else seen this? How have you fixed it?

Take note of the "Web Dev" folder in the toolbar on the left. Notice it doesn't actually show up in the toolbar.

1. More Adobe support for Linux
   I love my Ubuntu, but as a web developer it can’t be the only computer I work on due to it’s lack of support for Photoshop. Sure there is Wine and other hacks to get Photoshop working, but it doesn’t compare with the native environment on my Mac. In addition, although Adobe reader is handy, having Acrobat pro would be nice for the times when I have a form or some other document I want to do more with than just print to PDF.
2. Easier enterprise functions with Google Apps
   We love out Google Apps, we would just like a few more features to help out around the office. Better contact management and task list support would go a long way.
3. More Android Apps
   As the platform is relatively new on the mainstream market this shouldn’t be a problem, however I’m going to list it here anyway as it could make my phone a whole lot cooler.
4. Less Reliance on Flash
   As with Android development I think the writing on the wall is there for this as well. I would just like to not have to install Flash player on every browser I use in order to do basic web browsing.
5. The Death of IE 5/6
   I’m tired of having to make sure sites work with old versions of IE. ‘nough said.

So the Holiday break is finally here. After what has been one of the most hectic semesters of all it couldn’t have come soon enough. The down time, while a needed break, also affords me the time to contemplate what will be next and, maybe more importantly, what I’ve accomplished.

Looking back there are a number of goals completed, a number still to go, and a few that I never even anticipated. In the case of our redesign we started in April, the main site is still to be done. This is due primarily to the uncertain outcome of our university’s web standards committee. We don’t want to over-invest in a product that will not meet whatever standards they decide to come up with. While waiting however I’ve had time to really refocus and expand our web presence while [hopefully] being able to provide a far more useful product to all of our customers. We’ve installed and launched Wordpress MU for individual, group, and class sites. We’re nearing the launch of a MediaWiki installation to be used as our local intranet. Finally, we’ve greatly expanded our social media presence and finally convinced the powers that be that our marketing dollars are better spent on the web than limited magazines and other media.

Stepping away from the web I’ve made a lot of headway in a number of projects. We launched (and then decommissioned) a Squid proxy to restrict internet access during the day due to very limited bandwidth. It worked almost too well and was quickly removed for mostly political considerations. We’ve also begun the rollout of non Microsoft desktops to our faculty and staff in the form of Ubuntu as the primary OS. Only 3 desktops and our webserver have been migrated so far but considering that we had never looked away from MS before that it is definitely a good start. Finally, we added a windows update server to provide more control and better use of our bandwidth while still maintaining the ability to make sure all systems are completely patched.

Now on to the future. My first priority is, as always, our web presence. Pending the outcome of the campus web standards committee I hope to get a new main site in place very quickly. In addition, depending on current content contributions, I would like to see our new Wiki launch at the beginning of the Spring semester. It has been in the making for a little while now and promises to provide a much more complete and, more importantly, standardized method of intra-department communication. Beyond that I would like to see our file services migrated to Samba and Linux away from MS Active Directory as well as continue the gradual migration of departmental desktops to the Linux platform.

With all that I’m sure it will be another busy semester. However as with every semester I look forward to the challenges and can’t wait to see the outcomes!

So a couple of weeks ago I posted some of the reasons I found Windows 7 so bad. However as Ubuntu 9.10 hasn’t been released yet I’ve continued to plug along with it. Next week however will be the end of it. I’m tired of the random application crashes. I’m tired of 60+ second boot times. I’m tired of loosing 2 hours a week cleaning and defraging the system to maintain sub-par performance, and most of all, I’m just tired of Windows.

Yeah, originally I wasn’t even going to try 7, but I believe in forgiveness and decided I would install it at work when it was released to corporate customers in August. In the two months since I have spent far more time installing updates and optimizing the system than I have in actually using it to be productive.

Before I dropped it however I’ve made it my mission to find one think I liked about it. After all, it can’t be all bad, right? Well, there are actually a couple of things I found that I could live with in my little experiment. First is Notepad++. This excellent little text editor is one of the best I have found for any system, however as good as it is it isn’t enough reason to stay with Windows (after all every system has some good text editors).

Second, Windows 7 will save my department a lot of money and time over the next few years. This is due to the fact that it has finally demonstrated both to me and the people I work with that Microsoft software is no longer worth the investment. Instead we have started the process of migrating our remaining servers to Linux and will soon start migrating our desktop and server software to either Linux, or in a few cases, Mac OS (we have about 3 or 4 users for whom Mac would still be a better choice). Already we’ve had a couple of users switch from Win 7 to Ubuntu and their feedback has been nothing but positive. They report it to be faster, far more stable, and in all the cases so far they find Ubuntu to be much more user friendly. Of course at some point there will be a few roadblocks in our way, however the end result will be a faster, more efficient system capable of maintaining, and in some cases even increasing productivity for less money than we are spending on our current setup.

Well, I know I said I wouldn’t even bother trying it, however the allure of “new” was just too much to pass up and as a result I’ve been running 7 in my office since it came out to Enterprise customers in August. As of this point (about 7 weeks in) all I can say is I’m just waiting for Ubuntu 9.10 to be released in a couple of weeks so that I may switch back.

Here are the highlights of my experience so far:

Boot time is about the same as Vista, when attached to the company domain we are still often seeing boot times of 5 minutes or longer (from power on to being able to launch an application).

Disk IO is still horrible. In fact, many simple file operations (copy,delete,move,etc) often take longer than they did under Vista. This is a problem I’ve have a number of users report regardless of hard drive, etc. In addition, the reliance on a formal defragment procedure on a modern file system is archaic compared to other systems such as EXT3/4, HFS, etc.

Software maintenance is still a nightmare as upgrades of many 3rd party apps continue to expose the weaknesses in the Windows registry.

While hardware support seems to have finally caught up to the newer kernel (the 7 kernel is virtually unchanged from Vista) it still cannot produce consistent performance on even multiple uses of the same device.

Applications, especially Java, are still painful compared to any other system I’ve used in the last couple of years. The launch time of application such as Netbeans and Eclipse can be measured in minutes rather than seconds.

The list can go on, but in a nutshell 7 is still a sub-par OS who’s only redeeming quality is the widespread adoption which allows for the most comprehensive library of available software. Even that quality is fading however as both open-source applications and the growth of Linux and Mac are making development for systems other than Windows much more compelling (I haven’t even installed a Windows VM on my Mac since Snow Leopard as I just do not need it anymore).