Despite Dell's own statements about the quality and security of Linux (Ubuntu in particular), it seems that they have now dropped Ubuntu support from their website. As of now, Dell is no longer selling Ubuntu based machines from their website.

I'm continually astounded by the fact that more people don't use Linux. Economics should dictate that when people want Ubuntu, and it sells well, they increase their offering. The problem with Operating System economics is that there is a huge fear of changing operating systems, making lock-in much worse than with normal market economics. The other piece is that Microsoft has an established monopoly. In order to use the software someone wants, that software has to be built for one or more operating systems. Most people can't switch to a better, higher quality, lower cost solution because their software is built for a specific list of operating systems (GoToMeeting, Adobe Products). This lock-in hurts consumers, and prevents better options from being a choice.

This problem has been alleviated somewhat by web-based software, but the problem continues to this day. This is why it's so saddening that Ubuntu is giving up their Ubuntu offering.

It seems that Dell's investment to Ubuntu went further than they ever let anyone know. They actually made a pretty decent commercial for Ubuntu on Dell laptops. Check out the video below. The strangest part is that I've never seen it, and no one I know has seen it. It's almost as if they made a commercial, but then decided not to market Ubuntu on Dell. The simplest explanation is that Microsoft blocked them from marketing Ubuntu, as Microsoft has done time and time again with Dell, as well as all of the major manufacturers.

My first experience with the phone has been awesome. The phone is much lighter than my G1 (and is even favorable to even my car key), it's faster, it's stable (although I haven't been able to root or replace the ROM on it yet, hee hee), and the screen is much better. I was definitely afraid of giving up a hardware keyboard, but with Swype, it's very easy to use. I'll post a full video review at some point, but for now I need to get back to playing with my phone.

While you wait, here's a picture I took from the phone on the 5MP camera:

The title of this article is correct, I believe I just upgraded my G1 from Android 2.2 to Android 2.1. Over a week ago now, I had upgraded to CyanogenMod 6.0 RC1, and every day it seemed to slow down a little, and get a little less reliable. Sending messages, launching the phone, or checking settings would sometimes lock the device up for 10-20 minutes, and other times it would reboot the entire phone.

I flashed the CM 5.0.8 image, wiped, and flashed the image again and my phone came back with all of my settings, applications (I was previously using Apps2SD, which doesn't yet work in CM6), and my phone responds about 30 times faster than the G1 on Froyo.

Although I love the idea of CM6 and Froyo on the G1, for me the device was much too slow and lacked stability to continue using it. I'll switch back when the following criteria have been met:

1. Android Marketplace background threads don't crash
2. Settings/Phone/Messaging/Home Screen don't take 20-360 seconds to load
3. Flash is available for the browser
4. Apps2SD works again as an option for storing applications on the SD card

Until then, I'm back on CM 5.0.8 and happier than I could have imagined.

There are a lot of ways to connect various Linux or Windows machines. Linux has great support for the windows remote desktop protocol (RDP) with rdesktop, but if you have second (or third) screen that can be seen at the same time as your main screen, you should try out x2vnc.

What is X2VNC

X2VNC is a software tool readily available for linux that creates a mapping between a VNC server (on any system type) and an X screen in linux.

Example X2VNC Setup

I have a two screen setup on Kubuntu. I also have a TV screen above and to the left of my two monitors. x2vnc allows me to map the VNC server running on the TV as a third screen on my main system. The first step was to install a vnc server on the computer connected to my TV. The second step was to run x2vnc -west yt:5900, which creates the screen mapping.