If you are Graphic Designer or an Artist, here are some highly recommended programs if you are on a budget:
Gimp
Gimp is raster editing program, which is an alternative to Adobe Photoshop. You use it to edit photos or create artwork. Raster graphics are based around pixels, which means you can only add a layer on top of the image or crop it out. You can also make logos with Gimp. Check out this tutorial to help you edit photos.
Inkscape
Inkscape is a 2D vector graphics program, which is an alternative to Adobe Illustrator. Vector graphics enable you to scale artwork without distorting it. Programs like Inkscape are used to make logos and illustrations. I detailed my experiences working with Inkscape here.
Blender
Blender is a 3D modeling program, which is an alternative to CAD/CAM programs. This program is used to create 3D artwork or scenes. Here's a tutorial to help you start using it.
All of these programs can be obtained using the Software Manager for Linux Mint or the Ubuntu Software Center for Ubuntu users.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Ubuntu Phone To Be Released in 2015 But Maybe Earlier
Just when you thought the Smartphone market was essentially reduced to a duopoly dominated by Samsung and Apple, along comes Canonical to give us, consumers, more choices. What Canonical is attempting to do is differentiate itself from the other smartphones with its concept of "convergence". Convergence is the notion of using the same operating system across multiple devices such as the desktop, tablet, smartphone and even the TV. To some degree, we've seen how this occurs when we can use a Samsung Galaxy smartphone to operate a Samsung TV. Or Microsoft launching Windows 8 to work on its tablets and PC's. However, none of those products have brought "convergence" into a solution as elegant as Canonical's user interface as demonstrated in the video below.
With the development of the Ubuntu Touch operating system, the ability to use your smartphone as a PC is appealing, particularly if you are an enterprise mobile user. I used to work as an Industrial Engineer for a major Transportation company which required me to travel across the United States to work on Engineering projects at majors hubs. I can tell you how cumbersome it was for me, being petite in stature, to have to lug around my suitcase, my portable printer and heavy laptop. My arms would be screaming at my body for mercy especially having to take mile long treks within the Dallas-Fortworth airport hub to reach my outgoing flight gate. If I had had an Ubuntu Phone which turned into a desktop or a lightweight Chromebook which could VPN to a corporate network, my arms would have been thanking me during that period of my life.
In the Detroit area, the Northamerican International Auto show displays the "concept" cars of the future just as the CES show in Las Vegas displays new "concept" electronics and computers. Ubuntu came out with their "concept" product in the form of the Ubuntu Edge which they tried to bring to market through crowdfunding last July. Here is what it was supposed to look like.
Although the crowdfunding efforts failed to bring Ubuntu Edge to market, it was more of a "high end" concept of their convergence philosophy anyway. Rest assured, Ubuntu Phone will eventually be produced for consumers like me who are awaiting such a device. The Ubuntu Phone will based on the Ubuntu Touch operating system which has been in "unstable" release for developers and tech enthusiasts to play with on the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 phones since October 17, 2013, The first full release is scheduled for release April 17, 2014, which should work on both tablets and phones certified by Canonical.
The Community Manager for Ubuntu has reportedly said he doesn't expect to see an Ubuntu Phone to be shipped by major OEMs and Handset Carriers before 2015. However, there is the possibility that smaller OEM's who serve smaller markets will bring Ubuntu Phone to market sooner. One rumored OEM is Chinese Manufacturer Meizu, displaying photos of Ubuntu Touch running on their MX3 model. Here is what it looks like so far. Wish this preview showed a more in depth look of the features highlighted by Mark Shuttleworth in the previous videos above.
For those of you who are Android lovers, keep in mind that Ubuntu also has the Ubuntu for Android operating system in development. One of the future possibilities of convergence, is using your existing Android phone when you are operating in phone mode and later dual booting it into Ubuntu to use as a PC when connected to a monitor, mouse and keyboard. Just thinking of the possibilities as demonstrated by Ubuntu, gives us, consumers, a lot to look forward to in the Ubuntu world.
With the development of the Ubuntu Touch operating system, the ability to use your smartphone as a PC is appealing, particularly if you are an enterprise mobile user. I used to work as an Industrial Engineer for a major Transportation company which required me to travel across the United States to work on Engineering projects at majors hubs. I can tell you how cumbersome it was for me, being petite in stature, to have to lug around my suitcase, my portable printer and heavy laptop. My arms would be screaming at my body for mercy especially having to take mile long treks within the Dallas-Fortworth airport hub to reach my outgoing flight gate. If I had had an Ubuntu Phone which turned into a desktop or a lightweight Chromebook which could VPN to a corporate network, my arms would have been thanking me during that period of my life.
In the Detroit area, the Northamerican International Auto show displays the "concept" cars of the future just as the CES show in Las Vegas displays new "concept" electronics and computers. Ubuntu came out with their "concept" product in the form of the Ubuntu Edge which they tried to bring to market through crowdfunding last July. Here is what it was supposed to look like.
Although the crowdfunding efforts failed to bring Ubuntu Edge to market, it was more of a "high end" concept of their convergence philosophy anyway. Rest assured, Ubuntu Phone will eventually be produced for consumers like me who are awaiting such a device. The Ubuntu Phone will based on the Ubuntu Touch operating system which has been in "unstable" release for developers and tech enthusiasts to play with on the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 phones since October 17, 2013, The first full release is scheduled for release April 17, 2014, which should work on both tablets and phones certified by Canonical.
The Community Manager for Ubuntu has reportedly said he doesn't expect to see an Ubuntu Phone to be shipped by major OEMs and Handset Carriers before 2015. However, there is the possibility that smaller OEM's who serve smaller markets will bring Ubuntu Phone to market sooner. One rumored OEM is Chinese Manufacturer Meizu, displaying photos of Ubuntu Touch running on their MX3 model. Here is what it looks like so far. Wish this preview showed a more in depth look of the features highlighted by Mark Shuttleworth in the previous videos above.
For those of you who are Android lovers, keep in mind that Ubuntu also has the Ubuntu for Android operating system in development. One of the future possibilities of convergence, is using your existing Android phone when you are operating in phone mode and later dual booting it into Ubuntu to use as a PC when connected to a monitor, mouse and keyboard. Just thinking of the possibilities as demonstrated by Ubuntu, gives us, consumers, a lot to look forward to in the Ubuntu world.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Considering Buying A Chromebook?
What a lot of people don't know about a Chromebook is it appears to be the first mainstream device heavily marketed to consumers as a "thin client" to the "Cloud". Face it. Most people are used to using their PC's as a "fat client", that is, a computer storing programs run directly by the user from the computer itself. In fact, your tablets and smartphones are still considered a "fat client" because you have to download apps on your devices to use them directly. However, the one thing that all these devices have in common, whether they be PC's, tablets, smartphones or even Chromebooks, is that they all can run as a "thin client" off the Internet via your Internet browser. It's Google's Chromebook that just takes this computing philosophy one step further than everyone else.
What is a "Cloud"? Well, in computing terms, it's nothing more than a server that is not on your device which runs programs that can be connected directly to your device via the Internet. There's more detailed explanations of the technicalities of "Cloud computing" which I will leave to Wikipedia. But that's basically, what you need to know as an end user of the "Cloud". What do people use the "Cloud" for these days? Most people use it to store their personal files and to run programs like games or to consume content such as viewing Youtube videos.
I'm an Industrial Engineer by trade and one of the things I've had to do for work is do time studies. Time studies capture the time spent at various activities of a worker's shift. Well, if I had to apply time studies to how consumers use computers, this is what I would find:
I took research conducted by Gartner and GfK’s “Multimedia Mentor” study and compiled the results above. Notice which device is dominant for a particular category. For Entertainment, it's the Tablet (50%) which is dominant compared to a PC or Smartphone. For Communication, it's not surprisingly the Smartphone (47%) which is dominant compared to a PC or Tablet. For Production, it makes sense that the PC (30%) would beat out the Smartphone or Tablet for usage with the advantage of a larger screen size and processing power. As for Research, you will notice the percentage is almost the same across each type of device.
How does this relate to a Chromebook? Well, it depends on what you primarily use a computer for. If you are mostly using the computer for Entertainment, Communication (Social Networking), Research and light Production work, the Chromebook seems like a good fit for your needs.
Here are the Hardware Manufacturers who either sell or will be selling Chromebooks:
The whole idea of using a Chromebook is to run most of your daily computing tasks off the Chrome broswer, which enables you access to Google's ecosystem of apps using their web store. It looks very similar to Google Play from a Smartphone or Tablet.
Once you've chosen apps to install, they display on your Chrome browser like this.
I've been doing quite a bit of research on Chromebooks lately and have found for the average user, it can viably serve as a PC replacement. Why? Because, if most of your tasks are conducted using the Internet anyway, why do you need a beefier PC? I would say if you are heavily into Gaming, Video Editing, Graphic Design or Computer Programming, then a low end PC like the Chromebook is not suitable for the type of tasks you do. It's not that it's impossible to do them. It's just that the screen size and processing may present some problems if you want to get your work done quickly. For those kinds of tasks my Linux Mint or Ubuntu PC does just fine.
One of the concerns people have with this new mode of computing is that if they have no reliable Internet access, what are they do? Well, Google, provides users with the ability to work offline with Gmail, Calendar and other apps. Heck, I can even read my Kindle Content without Internet access. As long as I downloaded my content for offline use, I can easily access it on Chrome. The same principle holds true with Google apps. For example, there's an app called "Gmail Offline" that you can install from the Chrome Web Store to download your Gmail when you are offline. It allows you to sync your Gmail once you have Internet access again.
You also have the ability to access apps from other Cloud providers. For example, I created this tutorial using LibreOffice Calc from the website www.rollapp.com.
Finally, for more advanced users, yes, the 16GB storage is a limitation but you do have the ability to use Crouton to install a light Linux distribution (i.e. Ubuntu derivative) on the Chromebook. Crouton allows you toggle back and forth between the Chrome OS and your installed Linux distro. The advantage of doing this is using the Linux distro for the heavier processing say using Open Shot Editor for Video Editing or LibreOffice for offline document processing. I cover this in my blog.
So, if you are considering buying a Chromebook, consider what you are using your computing devices primarily for and it will enable you to determine whether it is a suitable PC replacement or an additional portable device supplement to your collection of computing devices for personal use.
What is a "Cloud"? Well, in computing terms, it's nothing more than a server that is not on your device which runs programs that can be connected directly to your device via the Internet. There's more detailed explanations of the technicalities of "Cloud computing" which I will leave to Wikipedia. But that's basically, what you need to know as an end user of the "Cloud". What do people use the "Cloud" for these days? Most people use it to store their personal files and to run programs like games or to consume content such as viewing Youtube videos.
I'm an Industrial Engineer by trade and one of the things I've had to do for work is do time studies. Time studies capture the time spent at various activities of a worker's shift. Well, if I had to apply time studies to how consumers use computers, this is what I would find:
| Activity | Smartphone | PC | Tablet |
| Entertainment | 24% | 24% | 50% |
| Communication | 47% | 36% | 26% |
| Production | 18% | 30% | 15% |
| Research | 9% | 11% | 9% |
| 98% | 101% | 100% |
I took research conducted by Gartner and GfK’s “Multimedia Mentor” study and compiled the results above. Notice which device is dominant for a particular category. For Entertainment, it's the Tablet (50%) which is dominant compared to a PC or Smartphone. For Communication, it's not surprisingly the Smartphone (47%) which is dominant compared to a PC or Tablet. For Production, it makes sense that the PC (30%) would beat out the Smartphone or Tablet for usage with the advantage of a larger screen size and processing power. As for Research, you will notice the percentage is almost the same across each type of device.
How does this relate to a Chromebook? Well, it depends on what you primarily use a computer for. If you are mostly using the computer for Entertainment, Communication (Social Networking), Research and light Production work, the Chromebook seems like a good fit for your needs.
Here are the Hardware Manufacturers who either sell or will be selling Chromebooks:
| Mfgr | Retailers | Model | Price | Weight (lbs) | Screen Size (in) | Res | Battery | Proc (GHz) | RAM (GB) | Stor(GB) |
| Acer | site lists online and offline retailers | C720-2103 | 249.99 | 2.76 | 11 | 1366 x 768 | 8.5 | 1.4 | 2 | 16 |
| Asus | To be released Q1 2014 | 249.99 | ||||||||
| Dell | To be released Jan 2014 | Chromebook 11 | 2.9 | 11.6 | 1366 x 768 | 10 | 1.4 | 2-4 | 16 or more | |
| HP | site lists online and offline retailers | 11-1101 | 279 | 2.26 | 11.6 | 1366 x 768 | 6 | 1.7 | 2-4 | 16 |
| Lenovo | site lists online and offline retailers | ThinkPad X131e | 429 | 3.9 | 11.6 | 1366 x 768 | 7.5 | 16 | ||
| Samsung | site lists online and offline retailers | XE303C12-H01US | 329.99 | 2.43 | 11.6 | 1366 x 768 | 6.3 | 1.7 | 2 | 16 |
| Toshiba | To be released Feb 2014 | 280 | 3.3 | 13 | 1366 x 768 | 9 | 2 | 16 |
The whole idea of using a Chromebook is to run most of your daily computing tasks off the Chrome broswer, which enables you access to Google's ecosystem of apps using their web store. It looks very similar to Google Play from a Smartphone or Tablet.
Once you've chosen apps to install, they display on your Chrome browser like this.
I've been doing quite a bit of research on Chromebooks lately and have found for the average user, it can viably serve as a PC replacement. Why? Because, if most of your tasks are conducted using the Internet anyway, why do you need a beefier PC? I would say if you are heavily into Gaming, Video Editing, Graphic Design or Computer Programming, then a low end PC like the Chromebook is not suitable for the type of tasks you do. It's not that it's impossible to do them. It's just that the screen size and processing may present some problems if you want to get your work done quickly. For those kinds of tasks my Linux Mint or Ubuntu PC does just fine.
One of the concerns people have with this new mode of computing is that if they have no reliable Internet access, what are they do? Well, Google, provides users with the ability to work offline with Gmail, Calendar and other apps. Heck, I can even read my Kindle Content without Internet access. As long as I downloaded my content for offline use, I can easily access it on Chrome. The same principle holds true with Google apps. For example, there's an app called "Gmail Offline" that you can install from the Chrome Web Store to download your Gmail when you are offline. It allows you to sync your Gmail once you have Internet access again.
You also have the ability to access apps from other Cloud providers. For example, I created this tutorial using LibreOffice Calc from the website www.rollapp.com.
Finally, for more advanced users, yes, the 16GB storage is a limitation but you do have the ability to use Crouton to install a light Linux distribution (i.e. Ubuntu derivative) on the Chromebook. Crouton allows you toggle back and forth between the Chrome OS and your installed Linux distro. The advantage of doing this is using the Linux distro for the heavier processing say using Open Shot Editor for Video Editing or LibreOffice for offline document processing. I cover this in my blog.
So, if you are considering buying a Chromebook, consider what you are using your computing devices primarily for and it will enable you to determine whether it is a suitable PC replacement or an additional portable device supplement to your collection of computing devices for personal use.
Friday, January 3, 2014
Use Playonlinux to Run Windows Programs
A few days ago, I received a request to fill out an on-line survey which required me to possess either a PC or MAC. As some of you may be able to tell from past posts, I currently use Linux Mint 14 and Ubuntu 12.04 in a dual boot situation on my 2008 Toshiba Satellite laptop. I used to have Windows 7 on my 2009 HP Pavillion netbook but I wiped it out completely with a Linux distro and was unable to re-install Windows 7 with my startup disks.
To resolve my survey dilemma, I installed Playonlinux on Ubuntu 12.04. What that enabled me to do was create a Windows virtual directory on my Ubuntu partition, which then enabled me to install a browser *.EXE file to run on that partition emulating Windows XP. I chose the latest Firefox browser version 26.0. Firefox was compatible with the requirements for the on-line survey so I was able to complete the survey successfully. Please don't get confused between the words Playonlinux and WINE. Understand that Playonlinux is the front-end user interface which sits on top of the WINE software, which actually emulates Windows. Here's a tutorial I created which explains how to install Playonlinux and Firefox on the new Windows virtual directory.
To resolve my survey dilemma, I installed Playonlinux on Ubuntu 12.04. What that enabled me to do was create a Windows virtual directory on my Ubuntu partition, which then enabled me to install a browser *.EXE file to run on that partition emulating Windows XP. I chose the latest Firefox browser version 26.0. Firefox was compatible with the requirements for the on-line survey so I was able to complete the survey successfully. Please don't get confused between the words Playonlinux and WINE. Understand that Playonlinux is the front-end user interface which sits on top of the WINE software, which actually emulates Windows. Here's a tutorial I created which explains how to install Playonlinux and Firefox on the new Windows virtual directory.
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