TuxRunner

I kicked back for a short moment at work today and thought about what make some of these newer cell phones and mobile computing devices so interesting.  Why do we want to have all this power in such a small device?  What makes carrying around a netbook better than lugging around a 15″ laptop?  Why buy an Internet tablet or a mobile phone that can browse the web just as well as a full desktop computer could?

Simple.  Freedom!  The ability to go anywhere and do anything.  It’s all about being able to do things that you used to only be able to do on a computer on your desk at home.  It’s all about taking your music with you, watching your movies and shows on the go, chatting with your friends on social network websites, sharing photos and videos of the places and people you’re visiting. (continue reading…)

My evil plan is coming together nicely!  Muwahahah.  Linux everywhere!  I went to Best Buy and preordered a Motorola Droid for the wife today.  She should be able to get it by November 6th on their launch date.  I couldn’t help but get caught by all the great reviews I was reading on it, and the fact that it’s very similar in features to the Nokia n900 I’m awaiting shipment of.

So that’ll make two new cell phones (or, er…pocket computer in my case) that are on their way both running Linux under the hood.  I love how this OS is permeating the market and no one even really knows it.  Tivo’s, Archos, Android handsets, Palm Pre, n900…it’s really all over and no one even knows it.  Dare I say that eventually the Microsoft Mobile OS’s, iPhone’s, and Symbian’s of the world will become the minority in the mobile handset world.  Linux will in one form or another dominate.  It’s inevitable.

This company rocks!  That’s all there is to it.  I can’t believe the netbook they’re selling right now.  It’s everything you could want on a small, low-cost computer….including a factory-installed copy of Linux.  It seems like most manufacturers are now pushing their netbooks with copies of Windows XP (bleh!!!), but companies like ZaReason and System76 aim to please the Linux community with cool hardware sporting the latest editions of one of the most popular Linux distros available..Ubuntu.

I’ve bought computers from ZaReason before.  They offered one of the earliest netbooks on the market back in late 2007, and since I couldn’t get my hands on an Asus Eee PC (supplies were VERY limited for the 8g model) I quickly put an order in for an Everex Cloudbook.  ZaReason was one of the only retailers other than Walmart to sell the Cloudbook early on.  It ran gOS 2.0, a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu.  While the hardware was pretty good, the operating system left a lot to be desired.  It wasn’t optimized or properly configured for the Cloudbook.  Pair that with poor support from Everex and newer netbooks that came out sporting Intel’s new Atom processor…the Cloudbook was doomed from the start. (continue reading…)