Firefox 33 Hung for me on Yosemite

The other day, while I was previewing a post of mine on Linked-In, my trusty Firefox (I've been using it since waaay back from version 1 onwards) suddenly hung up on me!

I wasn't worried too much because I knew that this was the first day of use after I'd migrated to Yosemite, and thus I'd been expecting teething troubles.

After waiting for about two minutes with Firefox open and still trying to solve its own problem, I got the "Unresponsive script" warning you see in the screenshot. As this wasn't the first time I'd encountered such a warning from a browser, I took the normal steps to find out what was causing it on Firefox.

I first cleared my cache (Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Cached Web Content: "Clear Now"), which wasn't much anyway, as I always run any browser in Private mode, thus minimizing any security risk. I then went to Tools > Options > Privacy > Cookies: "Show Cookies" to see if there were any culprits lurking there. Nothing. I next started Firefox in "Safe Mode" to see if one of my (few) extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) were contributing to the "hang." Again, nothing.

I finally gave up and decided to go in for the "Reset Firefox" feature, which does fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its default state. It doesn't affect essential information, although it does "...cause you to lose any Extensions, Open websites, and some Preferences.", to quote the Mozilla Support page, where detailed steps are given to reset Firefox. More information can also be viewed here.

After Firefox had finished doing its stuff, it popped up a window, giving me brief information about what it imported. I clicked "Finish" and headed on to my Yosemite Desktop to see what was what.

It had imported stuff into an "Old Firefox Data" folder (just on 40MB; I mentioned I had nothing much any way!) which, on inspection showed me the scripts, extensions, etc., that I had been using -- all neatly categorized.

From there it was a simple one-by-one enabling/disabling process for me to finally discover it was a script named "NoScript" which was causing the 'hang.' Anyway, three add-ons (including the offending NoScript) allowed me to work the way I wanted, so I let these be.

I still encounter the occasional 'hang' while previewing my Linked-In posts, so I do not do this now. I read through them as carefully as I can in the edit screen (which, for some reason, doesn't generate the offending script) and publish them directly from there. Compromises, compromises!

Meanwhile, Firefox have also since released a further minor update (33.0.2), which hasn't yet helped to solve the issue.

While I use Firefox extensively (old habits die hard!), I still use Safari as my main browser, until either Mozilla or Linked-In or, indeed, Apple and Yosemite (the hang never happened on earlier OSes) rectify this 'hanging' issue. Also, it is interesting to see how the browsers compare. More on this, perhaps, in another post...

Ubuntu 14.10 Happened for me!

As I wrote earlier, I continued to do some online research on the latest offering of Ubuntu -- 14.10, to see if any good/adverse comments were made by early updaters, more cautious than myself. I was pleased to note that, at the time of writing, nobody had anything much different to write about the OS, other than what I'd indicated in the linked post. I continued to toy with the idea of installing the update, while tweaking my existing Desktop (Ubuntu 14.04) when the software updater flashed, letting me know that an update was available -- a Library update, which I promptly authorized. After it had downloaded and installed itself, (serendipity!) it confirmed this in a notification and, in small print below, reminded me that an updated version of my OS (14.10) was available if I wanted. I decided to go ahead and install it!

One of the leading websites on Ubuntu -- Ubuntu Insights -- had this to say on 14.10, thus strengthening my resolve to complete the process: "This release focuses on the developer experience, overall quality, and brings a number of important features and security enhancements. The Ubuntu desktop continues to be intuitive, easy to use and reliable for users all over the world."

Installation itself was as easy as the previous version, with me having to do very little but read, click and wait. Oh, yes ... I was warned about the waiting time by the software itself! It told me approximately two hours, but the whole thing was over in just under an hour -- possibly because I don't have that much software installed on it anyway and the packages to be downloaded were a mere 1500 or thereabouts.

Once the preparation stage was over, I did encounter an error but, as this had something to do with my existing hardware (remember, I'd written about this earlier as well?), I didn't worry too much about it and continued getting new packages, installing upgrades, and ... waiting.

The wait was worth it for me because, once the system had rebooted itself, there were about a further 20 seconds to restart and a further 20 seconds to bring up the login screen ... not much at all, and I was extremely happy to see my desktop and all my software, tweaks, personalizations, untouched (or restored) without a blemish.

And indeed, my default applications including LibreOffice, Firefox and Rhythmbox, were also updated to the latest versions and features. On the internals, write Ubuntu Insights, "Ubuntu 14.10 runs the 3.16 kernel which offers better support for Power8 and ARM 64 architectures and graphics support for NVIDIA and AMD graphics as well as Intel’s Haswell, Broadwell, Merrifield and upcoming Cherryview chips. The kernel gives an improved audio experience with support for the Radeon H.264 video encoder." Not that I had any such advanced stuff on my older laptop, but it was nice to know. Also, I understand, there were improvements in suspend and resume times.

Incidentally, I was also glad to note that Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, are doing a great deal "to make open source software available to people everywhere." Jane Silber, the CEO comments,"As Ubuntu becomes the open-source standard in so many markets, our portfolio continues to flourish. I can’t imagine a better place to work."

As I mentioned earlier, I am impressed with the strides Ubuntu has made between my first dabbling inn 2007/2008 and today. Good work, Ubuntu Team!

Office for Mac -- a New Version?

A couple of days ago, Macworld wrote here that the next Microsoft Office for Mac was due out in the near future. This appears to confirm what I recall reading somewhere -- that the next Office for Mac would appear by the end of 2014.

I was naturally quite excited about it, because I've been waiting for the next release ever since the 2011 version (released in 2010 and updated periodically.)

On their post, Macworld included a link to cnbeta.com which recently published "what it claimed were screenshots of Microsoft's next edition of Office for the Mac." I took a look and I must say, they look quite real, showing Outlook's user interface is designed quite near to the current Mac's OS -- Yosemite.

Macworld reports that "cnBeta.com also cited “Outlook 16” as the application’s formal name, implying Microsoft has skipped a version..." This is probably speculation, and based on Microsoft's "skipping" a version of its upcoming OS release from 8 to 10.

Whenever it comes, and whatever its implications in terms of costing, I for one -- as I mentioned earlier -- am looking forward to this new release; just to see how it works with Yosemite and OneDrive.

Incidentally, I had briefly written here, Microsoft have announced on the OneDrive Blog that "OneDrive delivers unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 subscribers." What will this mean to Office for Mac?

Only time will tell...

Trackpad Gestures

How many times, when switching between our Macs and our Windows PCs, have we absent-mindedly tried our two or four-finger swipe on the trackpad; and then, for a second, we wonder why it didn't work? I know I have, and many's the day I've smiled resignedly to myself thinking, "Oh dear, this is Windows -- not my Mac!

Well, this situation could well end, according to Microsoft's Joe Belfiore who, according to Verge, mentioned in a keynote address at TechEd Europe, "In the past touch pads on Windows have really been done very differently because OEMs do them. With Windows 10 we're adding support for power users in a touch pad, where multiple finger gestures — which all of you power users learn — can make you really efficient." This has been recorded elsewhere as well -- by Endgadget and Gizmodo, so there is definitely something to look forward to in the future.

Apple Mac's have, of course, had this facility since way back when. Currently the gestures which do work on my MPB are:

Swipe

• between pages (right or left - two fingers)
• between full-screen apps (left or right - four fingers)
• right to left for Notification Center (two fingers)
• up for Mission Control (four fingers) ...

... and so on.

As I said, Microsoft is catching up with finger-gestures -- at least for those of us who have newish Windows laptops (maybe -- on which models finger-gestures will work hasn't been clearly stated yet) running Windows 10 and later.

I'm not very hopeful of it working on my old Windows laptop, though ... but let's see ...

iCloud Drive

I have been quite happy with iCloud's handling of my stuff, although up till now, I could only, for example, access Pages files on my iCloud -- or on my Mac -- either from the Pages app on my Mac or from within iCloud on the web. Thus I thought I'd take a look at iCloud Drive, which offered me more file-storing (and, one hoped file-sharing) options.

In my Finder, I'd earlier noticed a new "iCloud Drive" entry, but had left it alone till now, not being quite sure whether I'd need to use it or not. That's why you'll see no entries yet in the screenshot alongside.

Composite Screenshot

From the composite screenshot here, you will also see that quite a number of apps can now store documents and data in iCloud Drive. (I've only selected a few to try out.)

In an excellent post by Macworld, I found quite a bit of information, including the assurance that "... where apps have been updated with iCloud Drive in mind the app’s name will appear under the iCloud heading in Open and Save dialog boxes. (If you’re using an app that hasn’t been updated for iCloud Drive its files will be stored, by default, at the top level of iCloud Drive, though you can create your own folders for them.)"

According to Macworld, "iCloud Drive lets you move files between your Mac and the cloud." The first method they suggest is to move the file in the Finder, where you'll get a warning (if you move it from your iCloud Drive to your Mac) that it will be deleted from your iCloud Drive. The second method suggested (to move it between your Mac and iCloud Drive) is to "...choose File > Move To, and then select a location." You won't get a warning in this case.

Following Macworld's instructions, I can confirm that I was able to access a file I had earlier created in TextEdit using Pages on both my Mac and iCloud Drive where I'd moved it by choosing "Move" from the Pages File Menu.

You can also treat iCloud Drive as any other folder -- copying, pasting files and creating folders using standard keystrokes or with your mouse.

Having saved (or moved, in my case) your file to your iCloud Drive, you can now share it with others. On your Mac, click on iCloud Drive, select the file, and then click on Share.

I haven't yet been able to use iCloud Drive on my iOS devices, as I haven't set it up yet on them. I should hopefully explore the pros and cons of doing this before I actually take the final step. My only concern is that of storage space. Right now I get enough free storage space from Microsoft's OneDrive, which already works reasonably well across quite a few platforms.

Also, Microsoft have announced on the OneDrive Blog that "OneDrive delivers unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 subscribers." This is really something warranting a closer look.

No Altruistic Marketing Strategy, This

I had earlier written about Handoff and iOS 8.1 and my disappointment at not being able to get either Handoff or Continuity to work between my Mac and my devices. Apparently quite a number of people with similar expectations seem to be in agreement with me. In fact, one of my Linked-In professors -- a person with whom I've had quite a close and cordial reporting relationship -- commented that he, too, was unable to get things working, but he couldn't spare the time to go deeper into why they didn't.

The thing is, quite a few of us -- me included -- probably don't listen -- for example -- to a Keynote presentation where, I'm sure, the presenters would have mentioned the requirements of new features, new OSes, new devices in order for them to work with our older devices, OSes, features. We just couldn't wait to update/upgrade/buy a single new product -- probably, as I said -- hearing what we wanted to hear and not reading enough beforehand.

I remember doing a follow-up post on Linked-In but now feel that it was, perhaps, not detailed enough, so I thought I'd explain a bit more for the sake of clarity.

Paraphrased in the box is the Apple support page for Handoff and other features, which I had also linked in my earlier follow-up post.

As an example, and to amplify my paraphrasing, if you -- like me -- possess an older iPhone (4S or earlier) and a Mac other than (read, "older than") those stipulated in the box, you -- like me -- are out of luck with regard to Handoff, Instant Hotspot, AirDrop between OS X and iOS and AirDrop between two Macs outside the stated requirements. Phone calling and SMS should work, though. What is now clear is that tomorrow's gadgets may not work with today's systems. Today's features may not work with tomorrow's gadgets. Tomorrow's systems may not work with today's features ... and so on.

One thing in the future is clear for me. I am definitely going to read all the small print -- and make sure I properly understand it -- before and after any new free offering from any large corporation. I will wait before taking them up on any free offering until I'm sure I won't need to buy the next updated offering at a higher cost in another product line in order to make something work for me the way I understood. Never mind peer pressure -- ("Oh, but it works for me on my XX.xx!"). Never mind the "want" factor.

While one cannot help being disappointed that things don't "just work" the way we understood it at first hearing, one shouldn't find fault with the marketing strategy which allegedly gives something away for free in order to sell advanced (costlier) machines and devices in another product category. Large corporation are, after all, in the business to make money.

Their business goal is, after all, the bottom line; it certainly isn't altruism.

Ubuntu 14.10

While researching something else online, I stumbled on the fact that Ubuntu 14.10 was released yesterday (23rd) and one can install it, if one wishes, from the current 14.04 flavor (about which I'd written earlier on Linked-In.) One should be aware, however, that it isn’t a Long Term Service (LTS) build, the term of service extending for just nine months.

Although I was tempted at first to install the new build in order to do some more testing, I felt it prudent to be a bit more careful about installing Ubuntu 14.10. Also, many sites are not too excited about this release, including Ubuntu Portal, which claims that "There’s nothing special on this release. The kernel has been updated to 3.16, which means some new hardware support and unity updated to version 7.3."

I therefore intended to do some extensive research online to see what others are saying about it before I upgraded.

While there were many websites with instructions to upgrade/update Ubuntu, this one -- with clear steps to install an Ubuntu upgrade -- appealed to my slower understanding. From the Ubuntu 14.04 desktop, I clicked through to the Ubuntu 14.04 Software Updater and changed the default option in the drop down menu to "For any new version," keyed in my password to authenticate the change, and that's it. Clicked back out from the Software Updater and waited for a short while.

Presto! The option to upgrade presented itself. Ubuntu sure has come a long way since all those years ago when I first dabbled with a dual-boot!

However, as I said, I'm going to be circumspect and wait for a while (especially -- as I earlier wrote -- as there isn't much of a change between 14.04 and 14.10) until I'm certain I really need to upgrade.

TestFlight App via iTunes Connect

TestFlight on the App Store

TechCrunch tells us today that Apple has enabled (via iTunes Connect) TestFlight registered developers to now invite up to 1,000 beta testers to try out their iOS apps. TestFlight, writes TechCrunch, allowed "developers to build teams to try out software before it launches, and report back bugs in order to prepare apps for a public launch." A dedicated TestFlight app, says TechCrunch, provides the central resource for testers, now facilitating feedback and getting new builds on release by developers.

The iTunes App Store page indicated above confirms that the TestFlight App "allows you to install and beta test apps on your iOS device. After a developer invites you to beta test their app, you can install new versions as they become available. TestFlight also allows you to provide valuable feedback to developers on the features you are testing ...". Apple tells us more about how to get started with TestFlight on this page.

The TestFlight App website claims that "most of the world's developers rely on the TestFlight platform for beta testing, crash reporting and analytics."

As TechCrunch says, "The new TestFlight offers a lot of convenience features that should make it easier for developers to gather feedback from actual users, instead of just tech-savvy early adopters..." This is indeed great news, because we can be now hope to be sure the Apps we see in the App Store in future would have been tried and tested by people like me, who do not always know what we're "supposed" to do when using an App.

This reminds me in a smaller way about Microsoft's Windows 10 Tech Preview OS which I wrote about earlier on LinkedIn and here as well. MS, too, have gone to the general public to rigorously test the proposed new OS, in order to, hopefully, avoid many of the glitches which may not always be evident to the more experienced techies who create the OS in the first place.

I wonder who is learning from whom...

Ubuntu and Windows File Sharing Options

I had earlier written about my renewed experiment with Ubuntu 14.04 and was eager to explore some more. Not being comfortable with Samba File Sharing between Windows and Linux (my earlier experience way back in 2007 was not too good), I thought I'd explore another option which worked between Windows and my Mac -- OneDrive. So I fired up Ubuntu and Firefox and did a search for OneDrive for Ubuntu. I was somewhat confused when I realized that no such result (at least not the results I was looking for) materialized.

I did some more digging and discovered that -- while there had earlier been a file-sharing program called Ubuntu One, this was now discontinued.

The reason, apparently, alleged by many websites -- one of which is this one -- "increased competition from" some of the "leading" cloud storage service people. I thought this extremely sad. That a service being offered to a relatively small OS user-community should be pushed out of existence by larger corporations seemed to me to be a tad unfair.

Why can't each OS allow users to read and save files where they like? I know both Ubuntu and Mac OSes can read Windows' files and copy these to wherever they like. Windows, however, firmly ignores the Ubuntu partition as though it is not there.

Hold on, though. I thought I remembered that OneDrive offered file-access anywhere. Should that not include the Linux community, I wondered? Investigating further, I logged onto the OneDrive site and, sure enough, it did mention access "from any PC, Mac or phone."

But, when I clicked on through to the Download section, guess what? There was no Linux option anywhere! Hmmm... Well I guess it is their prerogative, but I still feel it is unfair to the relatively smaller Linux community. I know Ubuntu does offer another Cloud option but I'm reluctant to add one more username/password to my already full list.

Meanwhile, OneDrive works comfortably on my MBP and I still have about 29GB of free space to play around with, should I ever need it.

Possibly My Last Post on iOS 8.1

I wrote yesterday about my slight disappointment with iOS 8.1's Handoff and Continuity features which did not completely work for me. I also opined that this was -- possibly -- because I was in another country. I further wrote that I would continue researching this online, which I did and I thought I'd share my findings for what they're worth.

I tried everything suggested by posters online elsewhere -- including turning Bluetooth off and then back on; unticking and reticking the "Handoff-related" option on my MacBook Pro -- but I just could not -- and still cannot -- find the option to enable "Handoff" on my iOS devices in the General Settings page. I finally stumbled on this page. It turns out that "Handoff and Instant Hotspot work with iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 8 and the Lightning connector." Now what I interpret this to mean is that these features won't work on my iPhone 4S and iPad 2.

What a disappointment!

Anyway, as small crumbs of comfort, things work as expected on my MacBook Pro (tried Handoff with my kids' iPhone 5S and 6.) Also, the SMS and iPhone call functions on all devices, including my iPhone 4S, iPad and my MacBook Pro.

I will live with these for now ...

Yosemite and iOS 8.1 ... Especially Handoff and Continuity

In anticipation of iOS 8.1, which I wrote about yesterday, I thought I'd download and install Yosemite. This was because, by all accounts, many of the features (exciting, new were the key phrases as I recall) of iOS 8.1 would work most effectively with Yosemite. We shall see how this worked in reality.
I set about by transferring my data and other files from my older Macbook (which couldn't run Yosemite) to a slightly newer Macbook Pro, which could.

After about an hour over wi-fi (because I'd foolishly used my ethernet cable elsewhere and my Firewire cable wasn't working) I got all my stuff across and began the slow process of upgrading and updating programs and the OS from the App Store.

This took several hours, as I had many updates and upgrades pending, but eventually everything happened quite smoothly and Apple's latest operating system -- Yosemite -- was ready to install on my Macbook Pro.

This process, too, was extremely smooth and painless and, after a wait of about 20 minutes, everything moved into place and I could begin checking, tweaking and generally setting things up to the way I wanted.

Yes, personalization is the name of the game for me and I intend to spend some time on this generally satisfying exercise.
I even went into the General System Preferences and ensured that the "Handoff" option to work between the Macbook Pro and my iCloud devices was allowed.

Now, on to iOS 8.1. As was generally expected, the update was available first thing this morning and I eagerly downloaded and installed it on both my iDevices. Everything took a reasonably short time (chiefly because the download was just over 60MB) over the air and the installation was, as usual, flawless.
Sadly, I have been unable to get the Handoff feature to work as it was promised -- mainly because, I suspect, I cannot find the option to enable "Handoff" on my iOS devices in the General Settings page there.

The info-sheet provided at the beginning of the download and installation process did include a clause right at the very end to the effect that all features may not be available in all countries.
I wonder if this is one of them.
Perhaps, some more online research may help (including the security link to the Support page (HT1222) provided.)
All else in the update/upgrade to iOS 8.1 was as I expected.

Expectations, expectations ...

Hooray! It's Monday, October 20 and we can all look forward to new announcements, updates and upgrades from Apple! Oh, wait ... it's not yet October 20 in Australia and other parts of the world. This means those of us who are not in Cupertino will have to wait a few hours shy of 24 hours more (remember, Apple has not yet officially specified what time it will give us this release) before we can actually see what's what with -- for example -- iOS 8.1, Apple Pay, Handoff, etc...

Many sites are talking about people expecting (amongst other things) the return of the well-known (and liked) "Camera Roll". Another thing users are looking forward to is "Instant Hotspot" which, of course, in order to be turned on, requires a Mac running the recently released Yosemite.

Mail "Read" Count Not Updated on my iPhone 4S

All the above may be very well and great to have, no doubt. But what I, personally, am looking forward to with the expected release of iOS 8.1 are just two things:

1. Improved battery life ... ever since iOS 8, battery performance has appeared to be not as good as before, possibly because of the new features which -- in order to be effective -- require to run themselves in the background. I don't know.
2. Mail "Read" count to work again ... this has stopped working properly for me since iOS 8. Not all the time, mind you. It just happens on and off and I can't quite figure out why, or when it happens. No set pattern to its behavior and -- although not a big deal, it bugs me to have to remember that I do NOT have unread mail.

 

Those are my expectations ... for now. While I have earlier (with one of the other iOS releases) posted my battery issues on the Apple Forums, I have not done so regarding the Mail count. A search of the Forums reveal that similar issues have been around for quite some time, as this thread will reveal.

Hopefully Apple will be addressing these issues with the release of iOS 8.1. 

 

Even More on Ubuntu 14.04

I wrote yesterday about installing Ubuntu 14.04 as a dual-boot option on my Windows 7 laptop. I also posted a copy of this blog on Linked-In. An ex-colleague of mine read the Linked-In post and commented that he tried it on his system last week, but it did not work. I advised him to check things like available disk-space, RAM, and so on and also commented that he could try the "live" CD which is available as an option when one begins the Ubuntu installation.

On reflection, I realized that I had been using another flavor of Linux in 2009 or 2010 (Mandriva, which is RPM based,) but not Ubuntu, which is Debian based. Also, I had not completely written about the process for creating a dual-boot machine, (as this was not the point of my post). Thus I thought I'd outline those three initial steps as well for good measure. Here goes...

First of all, you should have a reasonable amount of spare disk-space to play around with. Also, your main operating system (in my case Windows 7) should not be endangered or compromised in any way, so care should be taken while rearranging/partitioning your hard drives. In my case, I had Windows 7 installed on drive C: plus a second partition -- drive D: -- to store data, files, etc. I planned to use drive D: as the "common-denominator" between Windows and Ubuntu, to share files if necessary. Windows 7's drive had about 130 GB only in total (didn't I mention this was a "test" laptop?) and drive D: was only using about 15 GB. Thus I couldn't spare too much space for Ubuntu. Also, my system had just about 4 GB of RAM to play around with. Hence I was forced to allocate just 15 GB to Ubuntu.

I opened up my Windows' Disk Management Utility (Right-Click on Computer, chose "Manage") and then selected C: I then chose to "Shrink" the drive, leaving about 15 GB of "Unallocated Space."

This is quite important ... don't play around with Disk Management Utility unless you are confident that you know what you're doing. Else your system may be rendered inoperable and, unless you have a recovery tool, you're in for some headaches later on.

I left the 15 GB "Unallocated Space" as-is, for I planned to point Ubuntu here, upon installation. (As it turned out, I didn't need to do anything because Ubuntu is now intelligent enough to apparently look for this space and install itself here, without compromising any existing drives or data. Cool!)

I next logged out of Windows, inserted the Ubuntu boot USB (which I had earlier created from the downloaded ISO image), chose the option to boot from this and, as I wrote yesterday, everything went swimmingly.

Hope this helps my ex-colleague, if he's reading this (I plan to copy this to Linked-In as well, just in case) and anyone else who may have a similar experience.

More about Ubuntu 14.04

 Well, I finished toying with the idea I mentioned yesterday. Took the plunge, removed Ubuntu from my VirtualBox environment and installed it as a dual-boot on my Windows-7 laptop!

All went as swimmingly as the VirtualBox from Oracle installation. It found my location (which means it found my internet connection and GPS worked) and my sound-hardware right off -- no need to point it anywhere as in the installation I remember from all those years ago.

 Once I'd completed almost all the options of installation (successfully), it asked me to choose a computer name, username and password, which I did (quite egoistically, as you can see!), but chose the option to "Require my password to log in" rather than the default "Log in automatically." That's just me being suspiciously paranoid, (or paranoically suspicious -- if there is such a word!)

Having finally installed updates from the internet and finished "cleaning up", the system then asked me to reboot, signifying another successful setup!

 I logged in after that, downloaded and installed the available anti-virus (Clam) from the Software Centre, updated a couple more programs, and there you have it. A fully functional (did I mention "free") and reasonably secure operating system.

I did notice, though,  the same up-front legal declaration similar to a declaration regarding Windows 10 Tech Preview. This one indicated that, if one chose to search through it's "Dash" option for locally-installed programs or from the internet, one's keystrokes would be logged and sent back to the developers for test purposes. This default, however, could be turned off in the Privacy settings, so I promptly did so.


Of course, this installation is just for my own test-purposes, so I'm not going to key in any security or privacy stuff. So I'll go ahead and explore some more...

 I'm sure this must have already been documented elsewhere, but -- having written about my experience running Windows 10 Tech Preview in a virtual environment the other day -- I thought I'd try a similar exercise installing Ubuntu on my old Windows 7 laptop, and document it for what it's worth. Here goes ...

 First off, I downloaded the necessary files to make this happen (from Oracle) and then went through the process of installing VirtualBox first. That done, I took the plunge and ran the Ubuntu executable (again, without backing up anything ... too lazy!)

VirtualBox had already made the Type and Version choices for me so I left those as they were and just typed in the name box for the virtual machine. I also stuck with the paltry 512MB RAM, as suggested and clicked Next, then chose to "Create a virtual hard drive now" from the next screen, and chose VDI as the hard drive type from the following screen. I followed these choices with the "Dynamically allocated" option, because I had a bit of free space available and, on the next screen I stuck with the default options. That was it. I just needed to click the green Start arrow and installing Ubuntu was just a few clicks away...

I pointed to the ISO location and VirtualBox launched it without a hitch. Ubuntu (or VirtualBox -- I don't know) appears to have some issue initializing my SMBus base address, but it breezed smoothly on, usin 0xaddr. I wasn't worried because, if anything went wrong I could always wipe the machine and start over.

 

I continued to stick to the default options, except where I was asked to make a choice (such as downloading updates, skipping languages, etc...) and Ubuntu was up and running.

 The whole process took little under an hour, unlike the 45 minutes it took yesterday with Windows 10 Tech Preview on my Apple MacBook. But this was definitely because of the low RAM I allocated. Also, as my laptop has a total of only 4GB RAM, I was quite happy to wait.

I must say I was quite impressed with the way Ubuntu has improved over the years (I last used it in 2008) and am now toying with the idea of making my laptop into a dual-boot machine. Let's see how far that thought takes me ...

Keylogger???

Having downloaded and installed in a VirtualBox environment on my MacBook (yesterday -- see this post), I was a wee bit concerned to learn that -- allegedly -- Microsoft is tracking me and collecting all my data. I turned to the internet to verify this and got a whole host of posts and blogs from people and forums with similar concerns. However, as I learned on reading various posts, including the hard-hitting one from The Register, MS has been open and right upfront about this. In fact, data collection from its "Insiders" is the whole point of Windows 10 Technical Preview.

Nevertheless, people are concerned, and some allege that Windows 10 has a "built-in keylogger" which logs every keystroke we type. According to MS, they indicated that they would be collecting data way up front in the User Agreement. Here's a quote attributed to one of their spokespersons:

"Users who ... opt-in to the Windows 10 Technical Preview are choosing to provide data and feedback that will help shape the best Windows experience for our customers."

The Windows Insider Program's Terms of Use includes this statement:

" * enter text, we may collect typed characters and use them for purposes such as improving autocomplete and spell-check features."

And this clause, possibly, is what triggered the furore.

MS, however, doesn't specifically state which data it collects (one assumes that all typed information, file interaction, etc., is being logged for research purposes) but, this is a "Preview" OS (not even beta, for goodness' sake!) If you use it to conduct internet banking and write personal emails,  log into your private Social sites with your personal passwords, then you have only yourself to blame in case this collected data is hacked on its way to MS' servers -- however unlikely that may be.

Windows 10 Tech Preview on my MacBook!

This morning I read a very informative post on Macworld which, in a nutshell, details how to install Windows 10 Technical Preview on a Mac. I was intrigued by this for, as you may recall, I'd earlier posted here that I was unable to install it on a laptop PC running Windows 7. The writer details two methods -- one using Apple’s built-in Boot Camp software and the other (safer) method as a virtual machine inside an OS X program.
 
I decided to give it a shot on my old, trust, Macbook 2008 (with only 4GB RAM in total) and opted for the (safer) method of VirtualBox from Oracle.

I took a huge risk and did not back up my Mac at all. Even though Windows 10 is reported to be experimental software, I just didn't want to take the time (just bone lazy, I guess.)

To cut a long story short, my experience too (as with the Macworld poster,) was issue-free. I installed Windows 10 Technical Preview on my early 2008 MacBook with just 4GB of RAM. I also only allocated a single paltry GB to VirtualBox for the Preview. Because of this probably, it took a long time to install (nearly 45 minutes -- with the last "Almost ready" screen lasting for 8 minutes.) Nevertheless, after verifying my email address, it started and ran understandably jerkily but good enough for me to test. (I was interested, though, to see that the "Welcome" link on my desktop worked quite quickly.)

I hope this exercise doesn't do anything dreadful to my old Macbook, as I've gotten quite fond of it over the years (it's my only Mac!) and wouldn't like to send it to that great Macyard in the sky anytime soon.