In the tutorials to install Kubuntu on a Macbook Air we created what are known as chroot environments. As you will soon discover chroot environments can be used for more than fixing the grub. What is a chroot environment? The root directory of your system is the top directory. On Linux the directory is self-explanatorily set to / creating a chroot environment is merely the act of changing the apparent root directory of a process, hence Change root. This creates a sandboxed environment, your chroot session can’t access your regular root directory and therefore it can’t access your home folder either. To… Continue Reading

You’re walking down a street, with one of your significant others at your side. You pass by a restaurant, and it looks like a nice place to continue pursuing your infidelity. Then, you glimpse at the menu, and you decide whether you want to stay or not. Just like restaurants and bistros, operating systems have their menus. For a lot of people, they are the gateway into the operating system. You use them to explore the options, to peruse the variety, to make the right choice of software and usability before you take a proverbial bite. Indeed, let us explore… Continue Reading

Do you know what this article has in common with the fairly popular book and film called The Hunt for the Red October? Well, nothing really. Except the word hunt. Now, let’s clarify a few things up front. First, there is such a thing as a perfect distro. You’ve seen me declare one or two before. However, that’s given our reality as it is, with limitations and whatnot. But what if there were none? Second, as we explore this pseudo-virtual reality where anything is possible, I’d like to give you my take on what the perfect distro truly is. Not… Continue Reading

Let me start the same way I started the last article, by stating I support many of Google’s efforts, it has pushed open source into the consumer space in many ways. Maybe you don’t think competition to Android from close source alternatives such as Windows Phone or iOS is healthy. But be careful: anti-competitive behaviour also keeps other open source projects out. Also make no mistake about Android: The base system is open source, the ecosystem is completely closed. If the choice is between an Android monopoly, an Apple monopoly or a Microsoft monopoly, probably all of us reading this would… Continue Reading

Let me start by saying I support many of Google’s efforts, it has pushed open source into the consumer space in many ways. But that shouldn’t fool you, we need market competition even in markets now dominated by open source software. Maybe you don’t think competition from Microsoft or Apple or Amazon is healthy if it reduces the share of open source products in a given market, but what about the inability of other open source projects to enter the picture? Anti-competitive behaviour not only keeps closed sourced alternatives out, it keeps open source alternatives out of the equation just… Continue Reading

A few weeks back, we talked about a bunch of things that Linux could do better. A total of eight sore points. Does not sound like a lot, really, and surely, it does not cover everything that might need fixing in Linux. Some of you also remarked that most of the items also apply to other operating systems. Sure thing, but it’s our favorite bunny we’re discussing here. Anyhow, since there’s still more wrong to be fixed and good to be bettered, let’s follow up with a sequel. To wit, this article, and we’ll have a go at a few… Continue Reading

A bit of bakground Let’s turn back the clock to simpler times, when there were laptops and BlackBerries, most PC OEMs were making a ton of money from their Netbook division and many rumours of an impeding Netbook from Apple were at the order of the day. Apple shut down every rumor at the time, as Steve Jobs once said that he didn’t know how to build a computer for less than $1,000 that didn’t suck. The first Macbook Air was released on January 2008: Instead of introducing its own Netbook Apple look the other way and made an incredibly expensive… Continue Reading

At the end of our last tutorial I recommended readers to use rEFIt and avoid more complex solutions, but I offered to write another how to if any reader was interested on using Kubuntu without rEFIt. Reader “Kashi” asked for a way to do so, the drawback of having to press Alt every time he wants to boot into Linux was not a problem: He’s installing Linux to an external hard drive (It’s worth noting that this guide should work equally well if you want to install Kubuntu into an internal partition.). So let’s get to it. Setting up the partitions Last… Continue Reading