Google's Chromebook

Starting its intense advertising in November and continuing up until 2014 began, Google has been pushing their Chromebook for months. And it's working; Chromebooks were the top selling laptop on Amazon.com during the 2013 Christmas season. To be honest, I myself am writing this blog post from my Chromebook, but I got mine in September, and unlike the three HP computers I've gone through in 3 years due to "irreparable manufacturing errors," I have never had a problem with my Chromebook.

The Chromebook is made by many manufacturers: Samsung, Acer, HP, Google, and Lenovo. Toshiba is coming out with its model later this year. The cheapest is the Acer model for about $200, and the most expensive is the Google Pixel, which retails for $1300. I have never tried that model out, but according to all the reviews online, it ranks very highly on their lists of "nicest computers ever used." Plus it's a touchscreen. I bought the Samsung model over Amazon after some research and debate, not only between Chromebooks but between the Microsoft Surface tablet as well.

The Chromebook arrived! It has an 11.7 inch screen and weighs about 2 pounds. Let's turn it on and see what happens.

I needed something that would allow me to connect with the internet in my apartment and in general areas on campus, but was also portable and had a keyboard. I bought the Samsung Chromebook for about $250, which is so much cheaper than both the Macbook Air and the Microsoft Surface tablet. It arrived the next day, and I immediately started to use it. Setting it up for the first time was super simple, since all it asked me to do was log in to my Google account. Turning it on took about 5 seconds in total. The Chromebook has a Linux based OS, and everything on it is connected to a larger cloud storage unit. For more information on Linux and clouds, see previous blog articles here and here.

Setting up the options and entering my information. After this I signed into my Google account and finally had a computer that I could use in my apartment. I took my Chromebook to a conference in LA instead of my laptop, and I could carry it around with me the entire time. 

The critics of Chromebooks have been complaining that "Chromebooks can't do anything without an internet connection," "they're cheaply made," and "the only apps you can run must be Chrome-based from the Chrome Store," among other things. The truth is every single one of these things is right. Without a Wifi connection, I'm only allowed to write essays in Google Docs Offline, or play very simple games that hardly link to anything. (Note: My Samsung also sells as a more expensive model that includes 3G capabilities, but since you have to pay a monthly fee to use the network, and since I'm usually connected to the Hopkins Wifi anyway, it was a poor investment for me to have made. Still, the business persons of the world may benefit from this 3G ability.) The Chrome Store is not nearly as vast or varied as the Apple Store in terms of apps, and this laptop is made from plastic and some metal chips inside, so it scratches easily. But I knew all this before I bought the Chromebook, and since it's $250, if it gets ruined, stolen, or lost, it's not the end of the world.

If you as a student have to work in terminal or analyze anything in Matlab, C, Fortran, Phython, or IDL, then stay away from the Chromebook. But if you're one of the countless students who only uses a computer to write essays, buy books, chat with friends, check email, etc., then the Chromebook might be a great investment for you. They are very light and have fantastic battery lives (mine lasts for 5 hours on a single charge, and I listen to Pandora a lot). All of your information is automatically stored if you write in Google Docs, so no more lost documents. This also means you can access your essay from anywhere, or share it with multiple people instantly. Updating it is very simple, just restart it. I had a friend over once and we were going to watch something on the Chromebook, but I decided to restart it first. It took about 30 seconds to turn off, update, and turn back on again. In his words: "That was it?"

I really cannot say enough good things about the Chromebook. I will admit that it is frustrating to not have Microsoft Word or Excel on it, and I can't play DVDs or CDs, but it can literally do almost anything else that I have needed it to do. Have I mentioned it's great for someone on a budget?

So before you look down on the Chromebook thin client laptop, remember that it too is surviving a Hopkins education. And it's going to graduate with honors. 

Linux Operating System

When you turn your computer on, you may not be aware of the large amount of communication going on inside of it. A lot of the communication that happens has to do with the operating system (OS) installed on the computer and the applications you might be running. The basis of an OS is software consisting of data and programs that is used to relay information between the hardware and applications. Any computer, including video game consoles and cellphones, uses some type of OS, whether it be Unix, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and, our topic of today, Linux.

Linux first made its debut at the hands of Linus Torvalds in 1991, a then-21 year old Finnish student at the University of Helsinki. Torvalds wrote the Linux kernel so that it would be the first free and open source OS for computers, in contrast to the older Unix and MINIX operating systems. Unix and MINIX both restricted the use of their codes, limiting it only to academic institutions and businesses, with MINIX used more to teach students about OS than for its useful execution outside of the classroom.

The kernel of an operating system is the link between applications on the computer and the hardware, specifically the CPU, memory, and devices. The Linux kernel was first written in the programming language C, but it has been expanded to work with almost any other programming language, including C++, Java, PHP, Python, and Fortran. It is a monolithic kernel, which means that executes all the operating system code in the same address space to increase the performance of the system.

Linux is mostly used on servers, which is how Linux ended up running the 10 fastest supercomputers in the world, but its popularity on desktops has increased in recent years, possibly as a result of a 2007 "rebellion" in the Linux development community. As a result, many applications that used to run on only Windows or Mac OS have now been "translated" to Linux, including popular games such as World of Warcraft and Team Fortress 2, and more mundane applications such as Mozilla's FireFox internet browser.

However, if you're the kind of person who likes to look at code, the prospects for the Linux market are growing rapidly. The latest version of the Linux kernel is about 13 million lines of code, and with the ever-present advances in technology, the next one will be longer and more complex. Linux is definitely something to watch for and understand in the world of computing and technology.