Remix OS

I'll kickstart this blog again with some information about Remix OS that I was reading about today. To quote from this source:

Remix OS, the Android based operating system aimed at improving the productivity of its users, is set to be made free to everyone by its developers at Jide. Starting January 12, anyone who wants to try out the Alpha of the unique OS, will be able to do so without being charged a penny.

It can be installed on a USB stick but I'm not sure if it will run under VirtualBox. However, I can test things out when I download it. It's important that I play around with such things or else my limited computer skills will atrophy even further.

This is the site where the OS should be downloadable from when it's made available: http://www.jide.com/en/remixos

Virtual Computers

I've decided to reformat the hard drive on my Toshiba laptop after 2.5 years of use. Initially I used Microsoft's Virtual PC software to install a virtual Ubuntu machine that turned out to have some virtual hardware issues. Later, I used VMWare's software to create another, rather more successful, virtual Ubuntu machine. Finally, I installed a dual boot system so that I could boot to either Ubuntu or Windows Vista. All of these installations consumed hard disk space, of which there was still plenty, but things were obviously messy and so this is an attempt to tidy things up. I intend to run Portable Unbuntu for Windows (link) which allows you to use Ubuntu from within Windows.

POSTSCRIPT: a day later I'm still trying to download the 439 MB file. Every attempt yesterday failed because the download just hung or because it was impossibly slow. The download today seems to be going better predicting 3 to 4 hours rather than 3 to 4 days! Fingers crossed.

Ubuntu 9.04 - Jaunty Jackalope

I've taken the plunge again and begun installing Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope. I'd never heard of a Jackalope but apparently it's a portmanteau of jackrabbit and antelope, an imaginary creature that nonetheless makes regular appearances in popular culture (see Wikipedia article). Even though it's just been released, the OS is getting favourable reviews so it will be interesting to test it out.

Recently I have been experiencing some strange problems with video downloads from YouTube. The downloads would play in Ubuntu but not in Windows. This occurred using both DownloadHelper and FlashGot plugins for the latest release of 3.0.9 release of Firefox. Needless to say this is frustrating given that I often download videos on my Ubuntu PC and then play them at school on Windows-based machines. I haven't done any research into the problem but I'll see if it recurs with the new release.