“WOA (Windows on ARM) includes desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. These new Office applications, codenamed ‘Office 15,’ have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption, while also being fully-featured for consumers and providing complete document compatibility. WOA supports the Windows desktop experience including File Explorer, Internet Explorer 10 for the desktop, and most other intrinsic Windows desktop features—which have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption.”

Now before I begin I want to talk about some of the things that happened in the last century, namely the birth of the consumer versions of Windows.  This began with Windows 95 which was bold in much the same way as Windows 8 is now because it broke the clearly defined user interface paradigm and went with a new way of working with our desktops.  It turned out that this new way was hugely successful, but this freedom to innovate with Windows came at a cost.  The consumer and business editions of Windows had begun and they stayed on this track until the launch of Windows XP in 2001.

By the end of the 20th century things were not going well for consumer editions of Windows.  The operating system had become a stability nightmare while its business counterpart was doing fine, and clearly the Windows NT kernel, the core of the operating system, was much more stable and secure than anything the consumer team could come up with.  Thus at this point the teams were merged and Windows became a single product for both consumers and businesses alike.  Even this had its problems however with Windows XP, the first outing, being criticised as being too “consumer friendly” and not business-like at all.  The arguments passed however and XP became, and still is, hugely popular on the workplace desktop.

Now the kernel discussion has moved to other platforms with Windows Server and Windows 7 already sharing the same core and rumours abounding that the next major update of the Windows Phone operating system will follow suit and adopt what’s been called MinWin.  This makes complete sense.  If Microsoft have only one kernel across all their products it makes it easier to update, makes cross-device compatibility simpler and much more besides.  This is what Apple has been doing for several years already when they based the first version of iOS on their desktop OS X operating system.

Now however Windows 8 is changing the game, and the problem is tablet computing.  Microsoft are so far behind in the tablet market that if they don’t do something radical, right now, they’ll lose it forever and at that point their market share will inevitably dwindle to the point where they become the next IBM and have to find something else to do.

Windows 8 is giving everybody the new Metro tablet interface as the default Windows 8 UI.  Sure, business users will be able to switch it off and revert to the desktop but that’s not the point.  The point is yesterday’s announcement about Windows 8 running on ARM-powered processors.  Here Microsoft have now stated that the desktop will exist on ARM and that the platform will come pre-loaded with versions of the next editions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  Surely this is great news?  Anybody who wants a Windows tablet that they can use for serious work will now be able to.  The desktop is being modified to work much more effectively with touch and all is going to go brilliantly.

If you detected a hint of sarcasm running through that last paragraph then you’d be right.  I am deeply concerned about the inclusion of the Windows desktop in the ARM version of the operating system.  While its easy to argue that this paves the way for hardware manufacturers to create low-power ARM-based laptops and ultrabooks, the simple fact remains, and Microsoft have confirmed this, that no existing x86 or x64 apps will run on the ARM version of Windows.  The existence of desktop versions of these Office programs won’t even give hardware makers the option to hide the desktop on their devices.

This means, for starters that the most common question asked by people with ARM-powered Windows 8 devices will be “Why won’t my software install on this computer?”  But the ramifications run much deeper than this.  It means, for instance, that Microsoft have pretty much given up, in the short term anyway, of creating any meaningful versions of their Office apps for Metro.  Adobe has shown with Photoshop Touch how powerful touch apps can be, and a Metro implementation of the Ribbon UI, which is already very finger-friendly, could be extremely effective.

But no.  Microsoft have stated “desktop versions” instead, despite the fact that past Windows explorer these people will have nothing else that ever will, or ever can run on their desktop.  The term, ‘frustrating’ will probably come up a lot from these people.

Meanwhile, business users and IT Pros are bemoaning having Metro foisted on them when they’d much rather get used to that at home but still keep the traditional desktop at work.  This doesn’t sound unreasonable on the face of it.  What Microsoft are doing here though is taking Windows 95 too far.  They’re forcing an unwanted consumer interface onto business users, while now at the same time plugging a pointless and useless business interface into consumer devices!

I could have coped with the former but the latter just makes no sense to me.  Thus I believe the time has come to split Windows once again into consumer and business versions, managed by different teams.  It’s a good time to do it too.  The Windows kernel is very well managed and there’s no reason in the world why both versions couldn’t just be features and skins on top of MinWin, much in the way Windows 7 and Windows 8 are already.  We need a clear separation and demarkation between what is a consumer product and what is a business product.

I can understand installing Metro onto some business machines because there are a great many times when a Metro app will work great in the workplace, I’ve seen them demonstrated personally, and for everything else there’s the desktop.  Putting a desktop that won’t run existing Windows programs though, and for which the major software companies are unlikely to ever recode their applications due to the small size of the market they’d be selling into just doesn’t make any sense.  So now Windows has to be split.  There has never, in my view, been a better case for doing it and frankly there’s never been a more appropriate time.

I don’t want you to think though that I will be spouting Microsoft’s official PR line, the company is perfectly capable of doing that on their own and they don’t need me to help them.  What I want to bring to the discussion though are the thoughts from someone who has spent some time with the OS, knows perhaps a bit more about what’s coming than I generally let on  ;)  and understands the different aspects of the OS in some depth.

Many of Martin’s concerns centre around the new dual-interface between the desktop and the Metro UI.  This is a legitimate question about why we either need or should have a dual-interface in an operating system.  I feel that Windows 8 is a transitional OS between the way we’ve been doing things now for around 30 years and the way we’ll be doing them in the future.  Anybody who has spent any time working with a tablet will intuitively use Metro and won’t even think about the fact that they’ve only got one (or two) apps open at a time.  We’ve just gotten used to it.

Martin is quite right though that people often have other things running in the background such as messenger apps, multiple browser tabs and so on.  If you look at the way some tablet operating systems handle these you can get some idea of the direction that we’re going in with Windows 8.  Don’t assume for a moment though that Metro in Windows 8, as seen in the Developer Preview or as expanded in the Consumer Preview (beta) will be anything like Metro when Windows 9 arrives, or even Metro when Windows 8 Service Pack 1 is delivered.  As a UI it’s still a concept, even though it’s roots can be traced back almost a decade ot Windows Media Centre, and as such much is set to change and evolve in the next three years.

So how this multi-application space works in Metro with Windows 8 will be determined by how people and companies write their apps.  We will see a great many different ways of doing things as many imaginative people bring their own ideas and concepts to the Metro UI, and it will be interesting to see where these take us and what Microsoft officially adopt.

Ultimately then we will lose the desktop.  The fact that we’ve been using it for the last thirty years doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way of working.  Metro may not be it, but we have to start somewhere.  I’m not sure how much I’ll use Metro myself but despite having a very uncluttered desktop, the prospect of having an interactive one that is telling me, all in one place, what my latest email is, who’s mentioning me on Twitter, what the forecast is for tomorrow, what my next appointment is, the current currency rate between the £ and the US$ and more is very appealing.

Regards using the desktop, Microsoft have said that, even if it’s just in group policy, you will be able to set the desktop as your default UI.  This will be important for people for whom all their software requires it.  While we’ve seen some very imaginative tablet apps appear such as Adobe Photoshop Touch, it will be several years before top quality professional-grade apps appear for Metro.

Martin also raised concerns about using Metro and the new Windows-orb’less desktop with a mouse and keyboard.  While Microsoft have not announced anything yet, they have said that everything you can do with touch you will be able to do with the mouse and keyboard.  Personally I’m looking forward to seeing what new mouse gestures they offer.  Also don’t forget that very soon we will have monitors and laptops with Kinect sensors in them as well.

Martin is quite right though that as things stand the dual-interface, and how you switch between them and control them, can be confusing.  It’s partly for this reason that one of my new books “Windows 8: Out of the Box” has been commissioned where it probably wouldn’t have been for Windows 7.  On this we’ll just have to see what Microsoft offer us to increase usability and to minimise the learning curve.

So what about the Start Menu?  Microsoft wrote a very long blog post detailing why they were making the changes they were back in October.  I am of the opinion however that the Start Menu should have been dropped when the Windows 7 taskbar was introduced.  These essentially offered us two completely different ways to find and launch programs.  All Microsoft need to do is find a way to control (or bucket) all the extra programs (uninstallers / utilities etc.) that appear in the Start Menu and all new programs should be pinned to the taskbar by default.  For my part, I won’t be sad to see the Start Menu go.

To reassure you Martin there is a great deal more coming for desktop users and IT Pros, but that none of it was finished in time for the Developer Preview.  When the Consumer Preview is released in a couple of weeks we will all see what these features are but Microsoft have promised several hundred small and large features in total still to come.

Let’s be honest that Windows 8, as I said earlier is a transitional OS, much in the way early builds of Apple’s OS X were when the company was moving people off old PowerPC software.  It is probably going to be painful for some, but if there really is a new way of working ahead of us that can genuinely help productivity, usability and most importantly accessibility with computers, then I believe we should embrace it.  For a while though it will have to co-exist with the traditional desktop and there can never be a truly integrated way to do that.

But the technology market is different, and in the last three years we’ve seen it take on a whole new dimension where Windows is no longer the obvious operating system choice, and where comparisons are increasingly being made with IBM.  On tablets, a market that Microsoft invented back around 2003 they’re going to have a real fight on their hands, and in computing generally it’s no longer clear what devices and form factors we’ll be using in even five or ten years time.  What is obvious however is that the traditional desktop PC is well and truly on its way out.  Lastly new operating systems such as iOS, Android and WebOS have blown away the notion that people will resist a learning curve on new devices.  So what would the world be like if Microsoft stopped making Windows desktop and server products?

First of all it’s not very likely, Microsoft would probably drop Windows products last of all with their expensive research and development centres and other products such as Xbox falling by the wayside first, so there’s no need to worry in the short term.  Windows 8 is a big gamble though and if it fails then Microsoft will either have to backtrack with Windows 9, pull an immensely impressive rabbit out of their hat or face the consequences of poor decision-making.

There has already been talk that Google would like to bring Android to the desktop.  HP said the same of WebOS, which they are still developing or at least maintaining, and could put extra resources back into quickly.  Ubuntu Linux is now at least as friendly as Windows XP was, only the lack of big name software for the platform is holding it back now and Apple’s OS X is becoming more like iOS with every release.  So it’s already clear that there’s plenty of choice.

We might also expect an open-source upstart operating system to appear too and it might even be a reinvigorated WebOS.  Companies such as the Mozilla Foundation might see an opportunity as their Firefox browser begins to fade in popularity, and this is just one of several places where a new operating system might emerge.

In the business space, some of the GNU/Linux companies including Red Hat, might jump in with versions that will run Windows programs on the desktop.  This isn’t new and has already been done with operating systems such as Lindows (later renamed Linspire).  This product still exists today and could prove popular with businesses if Windows 8 and Windows 9 fail to deliver the working experience that they need.

Again it’s very unlikely that Microsoft will cease development of Windows in the next twenty years at least.  If they’d have done it even five years ago there would have been almost no alternatives to choose from.  Should they do it now though businesses and consumers would probably just shrug their shoulders and quietly move on to the next big thing.

Now however we have more types of computing devices than it’s possible to shake a stick at, and one thing is becoming clear, the good old desktop PC is becoming sidelined.  I wanted to ask you all, which is quite ironic given Martin’s post of earlier today, what your opinion is of these devices and what you think of them generally.

The main computing devices we now have include desktops, all-in-ones, desktop replacement laptops, everyday laptops, ultraportables, convertible tablets and traditional tablets.  In fact it’s possible within all these types not just to get what is probably the perfect form-factor for you, but also something that fits perfectly with the aesthetics of where it will go.

To kick off the discussion I’ll start with my own thoughts on my home and home office.  I have a desk in my living room with a desktop PC on it, as many of you will have too.  It is my aim to replace this with an all-in-one PC before too long.  The barrier here for me is that my desktop has a graphics card with the grunt to properly run modern games like Battlefield 3 and all-in-ones often compromise on gaming ability.  I also have a laptop, a desktop replacement Dell which I use for work in my home office upstairs.  This is a big, heavy machine and hardly portable.  It does offer me the storage and power to be a true desktop replacement however in every sense of the word, rather than some of the weedier desktop replacement machines that really don’t offer a viable alternative for you.

I also own two tablets, a Windows 7 ExoPC and an HP TouchPad.  The ExoPC is now used only for work and presentations and the TouchPad is for lounging about on the sofa occasionally when I’m tired.

I have had a couple of Samsung ultraportables on test though, and I’m very happy with the form factor.  These new breed of ultraportables, pioneered by the Macbook Air, are sexy enough to suit the modern living room while small and light enough not to get in the way.  This is important for a laptop as I doubt many people really want a big grey block in front of them when they’re watching the evening news.

If I had to pick one though it still comes back to the traditional desktop for me as this is the only form factor that really offers me the flexibility I need in terms of hardware and storage.  Much as I want to banish the desktop from my living room forever, I just don’t feel that all-in-ones are there yet in terms of true power and flexibility.

So what’s your preference?  Are you a desktop person or a laptop guy?  Do you prefer all-in-ones and why?  Do you have an ultraportable, or do you want one to replace what you have?  Have you indeed banished your computer upstairs forever and it’s tablet all the way in your main living space?

In short, what is your perfect computing device and why is that?

If you add the default Desktop toolbar, you get a seemingly random list of all shortcuts and files that are currently on the desktop. There is furthermore no sorting option available, which can be a problem if you have many items on the desktop as you need to look through all of the listing to find the file or shortcut you are looking for.

There is however an option to sort the desktop toolbar listing by name. This is done the following way:

Right-click on a blank spot on the taskbar and select Toolbars > New Toolbar from the menu. You now need to select the desktop folder in your user profile folder, and not the special folder desktop. You find that folder under C:\Users\username\Desktop. Pick that folder and it should appear on the Windows taskbar.

All that is left to do now is to left-click on the arrow next to the desktop listing to bring up the file listing. You will notice that it appears unsorted.

Right-click any file listed there and select Sort by name from the context menu to sort the file listing alphabetically. Alphabetical access should speed up the recognition and execution of particular shortcuts and files stored on the Windows desktop.

I have tested this method under Windows 7 where it worked fine. It is likely that it will work under Windows Vista and maybe even Windows XP. Please let me know if you have tested it under those operating systems so that I can update the guide accordingly.

Have you activated the desktop toolbar, or any other toolbar for that matter, on your Microsoft Windows system?

If you couple this with the recent launch of Apple’s OS X Lion desktop operating system, which includes an iPad-style application launcher and full screen apps, much in the way both the iPad and Windows 8 have it’s reasonable to now ask the question, is the desktop operating system dying out?

Clearly there is a push by the two main operating system companies towards mobile computing in a big way.  The focus is on tablets and other touch devices.  In itself this isn’t such a bad thing as keyboards and mice had their death predicted many years ago, but the fact remains they are still the most effective way to get things done on a computer.  So what does Microsoft’s move mean for the desktop and is the traditional computer now a dying breed?

Well let’s look at the bigger picture for a minute.  It can safely be said that worldwide sales of desktop PCs have been sluggish in recent years as low-power devices such as smartphones and tablets have gained more power and flexibility.  However PCs and Macs are also used everywhere in business.  In fact you will find very few tablets in use in the workplace unless they are employed for very specific industrial roles.  There’s also the simple fact that on Windows 8′s dumbed down Metro interface there’s no scope for controls along the lines of those found in Adobe Photoshop or Sony Vegas Pro.

Clearly then there’s still going to be a need for a desktop operating environment for many years to come.  That is unless Microsoft, Apple and Google find new ways to build more intuitive and functional interfaces, containing more commands, into tablet-focused apps.

In itself this wouldn’t be a bad thing, as innovation in the world of software interfaces has been needed for nearly twenty years now.  For too long we’ve been stuck with a way of doing things that Xerox created in a lab in the 1970′s, it’s way past time things changed.

So is Windows 8′s Metro interface the way forward.  Probably not as it stands right now in fairness, but it will help to act as an catalyst, and so will Apple’s iOS operating system and Google’s stripped-down Chrome OS.  All three are pushing the boundaries of modern interface design and now its up to the software houses to come up with new interface designs that take advantage of these new UIs.  For now it’s just been Apple and Microsoft doing the innovating, with the major software houses including Adobe, content to carry on with the way they’ve been doing things for years.

The ribbon that Microsoft introduced with Office 2007, and that can now be found throughout Windows 8 when you drop down to the traditional desktop, is a good stab at creating an interface that’s both mouse and finger-friendly.  Whether this was by design or purely by chance we may never know, but it’s clear to see how the ribbon would translate to a Metro interface if scaled up a bit.  It would still be recognisable as the ribbon, woulds still work in the same way, and would offer a way forward for software developers to move to a new UI paradigm.

How all of this will sit with the world’s accountants, engineers, publishers, videographers and administrators remains to be seen, they probably won’t like it.  The simple fact remains though that we’ve had the WIMP (Windows, Mice and Pull-down Menus) UIs for thirty years now and the time has come to move on, whether we might like to do so or not.

The free program DeskDuster has been created for them. The program hides all desktop icons automatically when the computer is idle. Idle in this regard means no user input for five minutes.

The icons are displayed automatically again when the mouse or keyboard is used by the user. This essentially ends the idle state.

The idea behind DeskDuster is to hide all icons on the desktop on idle so that the wallpaper of the system is shown in full. It may also be helpful for privacy minded users, even though there are better options than hiding the icons for this.

The software comes with a set of options. It is for instance possible to change the idle time from five minutes to another value between 1 and 20, and to minimize all open desktop windows whenever the computer is idle.

A right-click on the program’s system tray icon opens a context menu with options to hide the icons manually as well, which may be handy if you want to hide everything at once. You need to make sure not to move the mouse or to use the keyboard afterwards as it would reveal the icons again on the desktop.

A more versatile program is the previously reviewed Auto Hide Icons software for Windows which offers more functionality. The program will reveal the desktop icons on mouse click only, and auto hide them once they have been used. Another alternative is Fences which comes with advanced features like automatic grouping of desktop icons, and selective hiding.

DeskDuster is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the developer website. (via)

The software basically opens the horizontal borders so that it is possible to place windows or desktop icons on that space.

The free edition, which I review here, is limited to expanding the desktop horizontally. There are paid versions of the program that add more options, like allowing vertical movements as well.

Back to the free version. The program needs to be installed. Installation should not pose a problem though. Once you start the program, you activate the program’s functionality automatically.

When you move the mouse to the right or left screen border, you will notice that you scroll to the left or right of the desktop beyond the usually visible desktop space.

You can place windows there which are only visible when you move the mouse into that area, just like a virtual desktop but without the necessary clicks or keyboard shortcuts to switch.

Some maximized windows do not scroll, which means that they stay at the exact same location when you scroll the desktop space to the left or right. You can change their size to move them. There might be windows however that won’t move regardless of that. I have tested the feature with popular software such as Firefox, VLC, Thunderbird, Steam and Google Chrome, and they all supported the program’s functionality.

The scroll lock key on the keyboard locks the current screen position, so that it is no longer possible to scroll left or right. This is handy if you do not need the functionality right now or want to work with a fullscreen application.

You can exit the program at any time from the system tray. Just right-click the icon there and select Exit. The context menu has a second option, to collect all windows. This is helpful if you have lost the overview and want all windows to show up on the current desktop position.

Here is a video demonstrating the functionality.

You can download the free version of the program from the developer website. I have tested it under a 64-bit edition of Windows 7. It is compatible with other versions of Windows as well. (via)

Many people are fond of that last one, but it isn’t really all that easy to do. Most people employ the help of little programs for things like that, but the software used to embed the terminal is rarely updated to new versions of various distros.

One, however, has stayed intact, and this tutorial will help you through the process of putting the terminal right where we all need it – on the desktop.

First of all, you need to create a new Terminal profile that will run under the parameters you will set later. Open up your Terminal, then go to File, New Profile, type “Transparency” (without the quotes) as the title, and then click Create.

This creates the profile necessary to continue. You now need to fix a few settings. Under Title and Command, change the initial title to Transparency and select Keep Initial Title in the drop down menu. Select transparent under the Background tab, and set it to be as (you guessed it) transparent as you like. Some people prefer completely clear, but make sure the font color will stand out against your existing desktop background.

Next you want to download the program that will make all this possible. In your terminal, type:

sudo apt-get install devilspie

Next, you need to create a configuration file for your profile:

mkdir ~/.devilspie
gedit ~/.devilspie/Transparency.ds

Then take the following piece of code and pasted it in Transparency.ds:

( if
( matches ( window_name ) "Transparency" )
( begin
( set_workspace 4 )
( undecorate )
( skip_pager )
( skip_tasklist )
( geometry "890x694+178+58" )
( below )
( pin )
( println "match" )
)
)


Almost there! Now all you need to do is make sure that your computer opens a Terminal window in this manner each time it boots. Under System Settings open Startup Applications. First, click add, and under command, type:

devilspie -a

Then click enter. Click add again, and under command type:

gnome-terminal –window-with-profile=Transparency

That’s all there is to it. Reboot your system, and when it comes back up you should find a handy terminal window built right into your desktop, ready to work at whatever you desire.

If the configuration listed here does not quite work for you, experiment with the code you pasted in Transparency.ds under “geometry”. Those are the parameters the system uses to place the box. Of course, you can always fiddle with the color and transparency settings assigned to the profile by going to the Terminal and clicking on Edit, then Profile Preferences.

This neat, quick little quick little fix will be of interest to your Linux inclined friends and make Windows users wonder why they can’t do the same thing.

So what is this change I hear you cry. This will be the move to the computer in your pocket and, surprisingly, Microsoft seem to be ahead of the game this time. I say surprisingly because in recent years Microsoft have long been playing catch-up to their competitors and, frankly, making a bit of a mess of it. Windows Phone is the best example of how the company completely failed to bring the right product to market at the right time. Currently this smartphone sits with little over 3% market share and the company has huge volumes of work to do to catch up with the big boys.

When it comes to computing in your pocket though Microsoft could yet come up with a few surprises, and I fully expect that they will. The first indication of the computing in your pocket future took the form of the Motorola Atrix. This is a smartphone that can sit in a dock at the back of a netbook-style keyboard and screen assembly and be used as a desktop computer.

This Android powered phone has received great reviews as a phone but hasn’t been so well received as a netbook. That said it’s the first device of its kind and a very exciting prospect. We never expect version 1 products to tick all the right boxes anyway.

Google don’t seem to be too concentrated on the prospect of dual devices at the moment. They’re OS product line-up has even become a little fragmented with Chrome OS now gearing up for release and Android being steered towards touch-only desktop devices.

Of Microsoft’s other competitors Apple seems best-placed to compete in this arena. Their iOS smartphone operating system is already based on their successful OS X desktop operating system and the news that the company is planning to port an iOS-style user interface to their desktop computers could show a hint of the way forward for all of us.

It’s with Windows 8 and Microsoft’s move to ARM processors though where the most interesting developments lie. In research most people have answered that they’d most like to be using Windows on mobile devices. This is despite Microsoft’s disasterous history with phones and tablets.

With an ARM-powered Windows we have the glint that we might just see a proper desktop OS available as a secondary interface on a smartphone when you plug your phone into an appropriate dock, be that on a dumb screen and keyboard affair or on your own desktop instead of a PC case.

Either way we can fully expect not be carrying around slimmed down computing devices in a year or two and instead be expecting to be carrying full computing devices with quad-core processors, large volumes of storage and full desktop apps. This is a hugely exciting prospect and one that futurologists were getting excited about twenty years ago.

This future is now just outside our doors, the question remains will people embrace it?

So if you’re thinking of buying a new PC, the question to ask yourself now is should you really bother?

Windows Vista caused no end of problems when it was launched back in 2006 and forced many people who were using it to upgrade to better and faster hardware just to get it to work.  With Windows 7 Microsoft fixed all the problems and gave us an operating system that would work happily, though a little slowly on a 1.6GHz Atom processor.

We can see now that with Windows 8 not only is the bar being lowered ever further when it comes to performance, but that the OS will be giving us more.

Traditionally if you wanted an operating system that would run efficiently on older hardware you had only one choice, GNU/Linux, but it’s now clear that this is a market that Microsoft are going after, and going after agressively.

It’s not that Microsoft want to attack Linux, that’s probably the last thing on their minds.  It’s clear that low-power processing is where the computing market is going and for most every day computing tasks these devices are usually perfectly adequate.  Microsoft have simply seen which way the wind is blowing and, in an uncharacteristic display of flexibility and innovation, have decided to jump aboard the bandwagon.

So where does this leave everyone with a PC at home?  Should you indeed think about buying a new PC at all when the times comes to replace yours?

There are different options for this.  The first is that if you are a PC gamer the answer remains a resolute yes as the latest games will still demand Core i5 overclocked power to run effectively.  If you’re not a gamer though then you could easily find that Windows 8 is even faster and more responsive on your existing computer hardware than Windows 7 (though we have yet to see any actual performance benchmarks).

The third and most compelling reason is that the whole tablet market is evolving still and by the time Windows 8 launches in all its tablet glory we’ll be looking at a whole broad range of innovative devices, some with one screen, some with two, some like a book, laptop, netbook or tablet, some with keyboards, flip down, fold out, and some without, that there will undoubtedly be a new way to interact with our computers that suits us!  Frankly, this one has been a long time coming and it’s about damn time.

When Windows 8 launches the world will be more than used to tapping away at a keyboard that’s connected to a large box in a corner of the room, or even in it’s own room, that requires it’s own piece of furniture and that, frankly, is becoming more and more loathed for this very reason year on year.

If you’re planning on buying yourself a new PC, or even a new laptop in the coming year my advice would be to hold fire and wait.  Before the end of this year we’ll see what Microsoft will really have to offer us with the next version of Windows and they’re certain to demonstrate the OS running on a wide variety of form factors.  There are exciting times ahead and it’s now just not the right year to buy a new PC.

What is Fortune?

If you are new to Ubuntu and Linux you probably have not heard of “Fortune”. If not, the Fortune application (It’s usually referred to as a game for some odd reason) uses flat text files to issue random sayings to various subsystems or applications. It is commonly used to append signatures in email clients (See my article “Add uptime and/or a daily fortune to your email signature“).

Installation

In order to install the Ubuntu Tips Applet, you will first have to install the application fortunes-ubuntu-server. Since the Ubuntu Tip Applet is not found in the repositories (it’s an installable .deb file you download), you will first need to install fortunes-ubuntu-server. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install fortunes-ubuntu-server.
3. Type your sudo password and hit Enter.
4. Accept any dependencies.
5. Allow the installation to complete.

With this dependency installed, you can move onto the installation of the tips applet. First download the .deb file from the GTK-Apps web site. Save that file in the ~/Downloads directory. Now, follow these steps to install:

Open up a terminal window.

1. Change to the ~/Downloads directory with the command cd ~/Downloads.
2. Issue the command sudo dpkg -i ubuntu-tips-applet_XXX.deb Where XXX is the release number.
3. Type your sudo password and hit Enter.
4. Allow the installation to complete.

Usage

Figure 1

After the install, you will not see any tips start up. That is because you actually  must start the app before it can serve up those handy tips. To start it click Applications > Accessories > Ubuntu Tips Applet. What you will notice immediately is a small icon in your notification area (see Figure 1).  The icon is the swirling line between the network applet and the sound applet. If you left-click that icon you can do the following:

• Set the interval for tips (by default the interval is one minute).
• Show a single tip.
• Disable auto refresh.
• Find out information about the applet.
• Quit the applet.

Really the only configuration option you have is the interval. As I said, the default is one minute. This can get a bit annoying, so I wold suggest setting it to something more like five or ten minutes.

Figure 2

When a tip appears it looks just like a standard Ubuntu notification (See Figure 2).

The tips you are shown range in level of difficulty. You will see some fairly easy tips all the way up to some significantly challenging tips. You might well be surprised at how helpful this tool will be to your Ubuntu education.

Final thoughts

Having a handy tip system at your fingertips will go a long way to aiding you in your quest to learn more about Ubuntu Linux. It’s non-intrusive, can be stopped, and offers up some fairly handy advice. What more do you want in a tip system?

You will find many distributions dedicated to Enlightenment. One of those is the new Bodhi Linux. This distribution offers the E17 desktop on top of Ubuntu 10.04, so it melds a lightweight desktop on top of an efficient operating system. As you can expect, this distro is lean and mean.

System requirements

Certainly this distribution would have some fairly low requirements. That assumption is exactly correct. The requirements are:

• 300mhz i386 Processor
• 128megs of RAM
• 1.5g HD space

Think that out of date machine you have sitting around can handle that?

Why yet another distribution?

This question is not always the easiest to answer. As there are already distributions dedicated to the Enlightenment desktop, one wonders why bother create another? The reasons the Bohdi developers set out to create yet another distribution are twofold:

• Enlightenment
• User choice

As you well know, Ubuntu will soon be making the switch to the Unity desktop. When this happens users will be happy to know they have a choice – they can go with what Canonical offers or they can opt to go a different route. For those that want to stick with Ubuntu, but aren’t happy with Unity…there is a choice and that choice is Bohdi and Ubuntu.

Features

• Ubuntu 10.04 core.
• Enlightenment E17 desktop.
• Dark and light themes.
• Kernel 2.6.35-22.
• Firefox 4 beta 10

And much more.

Why you should try Bodhi

If you have been looking for a distribution that focuses on a lightweight, feature-rich desktop that strays from the normal desktop metaphor, you need to give Bohdi a try. If you’re a fervent Ubuntu user but are unhappy with the options that will be available to you when 11.04 is released, you should give Bodhi a try. If you just want to experience something different – yes, you should give Bohdi a try.

It’s new, is it stable?

If you are concerned about stability, you should know that the melding of two very stable pieces of software (Ubuntu 10.04 and E17) should certainly result in a stable environment. I have to say, of the various Enlightenment-based distros I have tried over the years, Bohdi Linux is, by far, the most stable and usable. Even when Compositing is turned on, Bohdi still runs like a seasoned veteran distribution.

What does it look like?

Figure 1

Figure 1 shows a sample of the Bohdi Linux desktop (using the Light theme). As you can see it’s a very clean desktop with plenty of features (including the Linux pager, a handy clock and calendar widget, an included shelf and “notification area” (created by using a second shelf).

Final thoughts

If you are looking for a distribution to showcase the Enlightenment desktop environment, you can not go wrong with Bohdi Linux. With the foundation of Ubuntu 10.04 and E17, it’s made for speed, stability, and user-friendliness.

Desktop is a Firefox add-on that takes the concept a step further by offering to create a fully customized new tab page. Firefox users can add three elements to the page, they are:

• Thumbnails that point to websites or files
• Folders that can contain thumbnails and search
• A Google Search form

Thumbnails are the main elements that are added to the new tab page, either directly or in subfolders to save space. It is possible to enter a website url aided by bookmark suggestions or a file from the local computer system. Thumbnails are automatically generated and displayed on the screen.

It is then possible to move the thumbnails freely around on the screen. They will stick to the grid easily and can be resized to fit the overall design.

Folders basically add another layer to the new tab page. A double-click on a folder leads to its own grid with options to add, align and resize thumbnails there.

A double-click on a thumbnail loads the website or file in the active tab, a middle-click in a new tab.

Users can add a background image from their local PC to the new tab page if they want. Desktop is a promising add-on. It lacks a few features like the ability to browse the bookmarks directly or add a bookmark folder to the new tab page directly. It would also be nice if additional search providers would be added to the add-on.

Lastly the addition of dynamic contents like RSS feeds or news would be welcome.

Firefox users who want to try out Desktop can install the add-on directly from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

Update: The add-on has been removed from Mozilla.

To that end, I offer up five tips that will ensure that Ubuntu Linux desktop is safe and secure. These tips are all such that any level of end user can undertake them without having to take classes in PCs or Linux administration.

Use solid passwords

As of 2010, the most common passwords used are:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123

It should be obvious that anyone and everyone must avoid using the above passwords. What is not so obvious is how most users ignore the pleas of software manufacturers, administrators, and everyone in between to use secure, unique passwords. Even though the Linux operating system is a solid environment, you are not exempt from this. Because Linux is a multi-user OS every user should have a very unique password. These passwords should follow the standard requirements:

• Upper and lowercase letters.
• Include a number.
• Include special characters such as #,!,$.

Use more than one username

Linux is a mult-user OS. If you have more than one user on your system, make sure that each and every user has a log in. Unless dictated by need, do not have a general user account that everyone uses. If you use a single account, everyone will have access to each users’ data. To set up new user accounts click on System > Adminster > Users And Groups to take advantage of the user-friendly GUI tool.

Update your software

There is a reason updates occur. In many instances, those updates are often security driven. Because of this, you will not want to make a habit of ignoring updates. You will know, right away, when an update is available as it will appear in your notification area. When this happens, click on the icon, enter your sudo password, and allow the updates to complete.

Install a firewall

Just because you are using the Linux operating system, doesn’t mean you are immune to hacks and attacks. It’s always better to err on the side of safety by adding a firewall on top of your system. To do this, open the Ubuntu Software Center, search for “firewall” (no quotes), and install the firewall tool that best suits your needs (GUFW is a good choice).

Lock your screen/no auto login

This is something I always set. When your screensaver starts up, by default the behavior is to lock the screen. Do not disable this behavior as it opens up your desktop to nefarious behavior when you are away from your desktop. In the same vein, you should also not enable the auto login feature. Yes, it is quicker when starting up your machine and less of a hassle than having to enter a password – but auto-login is nothing more than inviting users other than you to get into your files and view files they shouldn’t view.

Add ‘em up

If you follow those simple tips your Ubuntu (or any Linux desktop) will be much safer than it would be if you ignored them. These tips can also, for the most part, apply to just about any operating system. The key is to use your computer intelligently to help avoid attacks of various types.

Desktop Tray Launcher offers a in many cases better solution. The program basically scans the computer desktop on start and adds all shortcuts and files to a list. This list is then made available by clicking on its icon in the Windows system tray.

A very ingenious and comfortable way of loading files and opening programs on the desktop.

Simply right-click the program icon in the system tray to display a list of all shortcuts and files on the desktop. A left-click on any item in the list will open it right away.

What makes this even more interesting is the fact that it is possible to hide the desktop items without interfering with the program’s functionality. Users basically get a clean desktop and still the option to launch the desktop shortcuts easily.

Desktop Tray Launcher will work with all recent versions of the Microsoft operating system, including 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. The program requires the Microsoft .net Framework 4.0, which needs to be installed on the system.

Pay a visit to the developer’s website if you want to download Desktop Tray Launcher.

The program may need to be started with elevated privileges, which was the case on my 64-bit Windows 7 Professional test system. Once started it takes little effort to create a new program link in the desktop context menu.

Just browse for an executable file in the path field, add a title for the new entry and select its position in the context menu. A click on add/modify adds or modifies the entry in the context menu.

New entries become immediately available. It has to be noted though that they are only available on a desktop right-click, not in Windows Explorer.

desk integrator

Position wise, only a top, middle or bottom position can be selected. There is no option to customize the listing further, or add all program links to a special folder to save space in the menu.

All custom entries are added to the Remove Menu tab, from where they can be removed again from the context menu.

DeskIntegrator is not as flexible as our favorite program Your Menu, which offers cascading menus and the ability to access the custom entries in all Explorer windows, not just the desktop.

There is room for improvement obviously. Users who want to download the program can do so at AskVG. Everyone else is probably better off with YourMenu at this time in development.

For many of you this walk around might be pointless. But for those of you who need a basic introduction to a different desktop environment, this could be your first step in migrating to the Linux desktop. Read on!

What is GNOME?

Figure 1

First off, GNOME is a desktop environment. What this means is that all of the GNOME applications are aware of one another. Everything is integrated. That means you can open your file manager and drag and drop files into, say, Rhythmbox (a music player similar to iTunes).

GNOME has been around for quite some time and you will it to be the default desktop environment for many of the different Linux distributions.

Figure 1 shows the GNOME desktop in action. You will notice it has all of the typical elements of just about any desktop you have used. Let’s take a look at the more important, basic, elements one at a time.

Panel

A panel is a taskbar is a tray is a shelf. In GNOME you have two basic panels. The upper panel (at the top edge of the desktop) holds the Main Menus, Notification Area (aka System Tray),  Application Launchers, Clock, and User menu. The lower panel (at the lower edge of the desktop) holds the Winlist (where applications are minimized), the Pager (the tool that allows you to switch workspaces), and the Recycle Bin.

You can add various types of items to the panels by right-clicking a panel and selecting “Add to panel…”.

Menus

What is different about GNOME, versus WIndows, is that you do not have a single “Start” menu. Instead you have three main menus. These menus are:

• Applications: This is where you can launch all of your applications.
• Places: This is a menu that holds shortcuts for the various important folder locations (such as Home, Pictures, Music, Downloads, etc). When you click on one of these entries Nautilus (the file manager) will open to that particular directory.
• System: This menu is where you configure your system. The System menu has two very important sub-menus: Preferences (where you set all of your user preferences) and Administration (where you can open up tools for administrative purposes – such as Printers).

When you install a new application that new application will add its menu entry to the Applications menu.

Mouse menu

There is another menu that you should know about. If you right-click on the desktop you will see a menu that allows you to create Folders, Launchers, and Documents (you have to create new templates for this – a more advanced feature). From this menu you can also select to Change Desktop Background. This action is exactly what it sounds like.

Windows

I’m not talking Microsoft here. The windows I am speaking of are the actual windows that contain the applications you use. These windows interact in the same manner you have grown accustomed to. In the upper right hand corner (or upper left if you are using Ubuntu >= 10.04) are three buttons that allow you to minimize a window, maximize a window, or close a window. Sound familiar?

Now, if you right click the titlebar (that is the bar that runs across the top of your application window) you will notice a new menu. From this menu you can also send the window to a different workspace, set the window to always be on top, and more.

Run dialog

Let’s say you want to start an application but don’t know where it is in the menu hierarchy. You do, however, know the command to start the application. For this you can use the Run Dialog. Open the run dialog by clicking Alt-F2 together. This will open up a small window where you can enter your command.

GNOME Control Center

This tool is the heart of the GNOME configuration. You can open it up by opening up the Run Dialog and entering gnome-control-center in this window (see Figure 2) you will find every configuration option you can imagine for the GNOME desktop.

NOTE: You may not see every item in your control center that you see in Figure 2. This particular control center is from a Fedora 13 installation that has a number of applications installed.

Final thoughts

Although a very cursory glance at the GNOME desktop, I hope this has helped those of you who feel lost when trying to use the Linux desktop to become more familiar. My ultimate goal, of course, is to get those of you who are unsure to migrate from your current OS to Linux.

Why RGBA? If you are a fan of good old Transparency (like me) then you understand this is something Linux has needed for a long time. Yes it can sort of be done through Compiz with some tweaking…but not GTK+-wide. That’s what RGBA support is all about, allowing a themable transparency throughout the GTK+ widget set. The only problem I have found (outside of non-GTK+ apps not playing well with RGBA) is that certain features don’t want to accept the transparency as well as others. That and a need to give the desktop some finishing touches. And that is just what we are going to do here.

First things first

One of the things you are going to want to do, upon completion of adding RGBA support, is to install the Emerald decorator. Why would you want to do this? Because Emerald will give you the feeling of continuing that RGBA support into the window decorations, whereas the default decorator will not. I’ve covered Emerald before (see my article “Add Emerald for slick window decorations“) so installation shouldn’t be a problem. Once installed you want to use the right theme. For the Murrine themes I have found the Glassified Mac theme to work best. You can browse through the entire Emerald Themes page to find the one that matches your desktop perfectly.

One of the issues you might find is that you have to replace your window decorator every time you log out and log in. This can be a hassel. Instead open up the CompizConfig Settings Manager (click System > Preferences > Compiz Config Settings Manager), do a search for “decorations” (no quotes), select Window Decoration, and replace the command with /usr/bin/emerald. Now your default window decorator is Emerald.

The panel

Probably one of the biggest glitches is portions of the GNOME panel just don’t seem to want to work with RGBA. It took me a while but I figured out a “way” around it.

Figure 1

The biggest issue are the three main menus. No matter what you try you can not get them to work with the transparency. So what I found is to get rid of that applet (it’s actually one applet called Menu Bar) and replace it with the Main Menu Applet. Once you have done that you can then set the panel to transparent. You can’t set it to complete transparency, however, or you will have a bit of a disconnect with the notification area. There are still issues with some of the applets in the notification area…but they don’t stand out as much as the Menu Bar. Figure 1 shows the changes I have made. It’s not perfect, but it fits much better with the new desktop.

Figure 2

What does that new Main Menu applet look like when used with RGBA support? Take a look at Figure 2 for a sample.

Final thoughts

The addiction to eye candy is a rough one. You find yourself tweaking and tweaking until you think you can tweak nor more…until you find yet another tiny customization that looks better. The RGBA-enabled desktop is a fairly slick one. I hope you find it to be as eye-candy-tastic as I have.

anyPaper is a front end for the wallpapersetter command. And in this article I will show you how to install and use the handy desktop wallpaper tool anyPaper.

Features

anyPaper doesn’t boast a huge set of features. But what it does do is handy. Here is the feature set:

• Preview of selected image
• Six wallpaper modes (fullscreen, normal, tiled, adjusted, scaled and custom scale)
• Customize background color, image position, wallpapersetter and screen size
• Preview of background before setting
• no-set option for only handling images (command line)

Installation

Installation of anyPaper is quite simple. You will find this application in your distribution’s standard repositories. Because of that, all you need to do for installation is follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility.
2. Search for “anypaper” (no quotes).
3. Select anypaper for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. If you do not already have the wallpapersetter command installed, anypaper should pick this up as a dependency. You are now ready to go.

Usage

Figure 1

When you fire up anyPaper you will be surprised at how small the tool is. Remember, this is a front end for a fairly basic command, so it doesn’t require much. The main (and only) window has two tabs (see Figure 1). The first tab is where you configure your wallpaper. In this tab you can set the following:

File: The image you want to use as your wallpaper.

Style: Adjusted, Fullscreen, Tiled, Normal, Scaled, Custom Scaled. If you want to move an image to a specific spot on your desktop you must use Adjusted (and the image must be smaller than your actual desktop).

Background: Color to fill empty spaces.

Position x: The horizontal placement of your image.

Position y: The vertical placement of your image.

Width: Custom width.

Height: Custom height.Finally, on this tab, you can preview what your wallpaper will look like by hitting the Preview button. This only opens your wallpaper in a viewer window.

The second tab, Configuration, allows you to customize the wallpapersetter command line options. Here you can customize:

Default output file: This will be the file wallpapersetter uses as the actual wallpaper.

Command: Any command line options you want to use (see man wallpapersetter for a list of options).

Style: This is a list of four possible scaling options used in GTK from the gdk_pixbuf library.

Once you have made all the necessary adjustments click the Save As button (to save your options) and then click Apply. The Apply button will actually apply the wallpaper to your desktop.

Final thoughts

It’s not filled with tons of tools and it won’t rotate a directory full of wallpapers on your desktop. What anyPaper does, however, is place your wallpaper exactly where you want it on your desktop.  If you’re very picky about how your desktop looks, you might give anyPaper a try.