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Mike Sampson

Linux Systems Administrator

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08 Jul 2009

Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome OS, Open Solaris

It's been a busy week in the open source world.

Currently running the new Firefox 3.5. It is hard to be objective but it does seem to be faster than the 3.0.x versions. Unfortunately my current theme, Full Flat 3.0, is not compatible with Firefox 3.5 so I have had to find another theme. At the moment I am using Chromifox Basic and am pretty happy with it. I have also been using the Hide Menubar add-on. It is a great way to gain a little bit more screen real estate and works well with a minimal tiling window manager.

Google has finally taken the beta status from gmail and announced their own operating system called Google Chrome OS.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

From the brief information available at this stage it doesn't sound like something I would run however it will be interesting to follow its progress. I'm sure that the folks from Redmond will be doing exactly that.

At the moment I am waiting for 100+ GB of data to copy off my file server so that I can reformat it with Open Solaris and start playing around with ZFS. This is the second time I have tried to copy my data off as the first time I tried, rsync gave an error message on completion that turned out to be caused by missing execute permissions on a couple of directories. Hopefully it will complete without errors this time.

My new Debian 5.0 router is performing well. I'm currently in the middle of configuring Postfix and then want to setup traffic shaping using tc and htb. Apart from that it is just about complete.

As I have a short break from study at the moment I am catching up on some reading. I have just finished:

  • Rapscallion - The third novel in the Hawkwood series by James McGee. Fantastic read just like the previous novels.
  • Terminator Dreams - The first Terminator 3 spin off novel by Aaron Allston. I'm a fan of all things Terminator related and enjoyed this book though not as much as his later novel, Terminator Hunt.
  • Digital Apollo - An examination of the man - machine relationship present in the Apollo space program to land man on the moon. Lots of information on the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) and a fascinating read.

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