Gigastrand Celebrates 10 years of Linux Advocacy

February 1st 2006, Gigastrand International* was founded. At the time, Linspire was the flagship operating system product, and Gigastrand’s mission was simply Linux advocacy through sales and support. That same month, Gigastrand attended the very last Desktop Linux Summit in San Diego.

Linspire logo

Linspire folded in 2007. After looking at creating a Gigastrand distribution and evaluating several existing distributions (including a short-lived distro called Klikit) Linux Mint KDE became the new flagship OS.

From 2008 – 2011, Gigastrand simply existed while it tried and failed at several grand ideas. Some stuck, some didn’t. For those years Gigastrand survived off of the remnant sales of freespire and Linux Mint discs it sold online. Some Ebay and Zazzle sales helped pay for the website.

Then, in 2012, Gigastrand caught several breaks. Ventures into a short-lived wholesaling gig and PC servicing helped generate more revenue than in previous years. 

In September of 2012, founder Josh Tordsen rebooted Gigastrand and added services from his previous venture, Gigabytes Computer Store, which he had closed in May 2006. With a small $3000 initial investment, Gigastrand broke sales records year after year. Recently, December 2015, January 2016, and projected sales for February 2016 shatter all previous sales records for those months in the company’s history. 

 

Gigastrand OS Alpha .04

As a part of the reboot, Gigastrand reinvented its Linux advocacy plan by revisiting the idea of Gigastrand OS. It developed the Gigastrand OS into 1.0 and released it January 4th 2014. Six months later, July 14th, 2014, saw the release of Gigastrand OS 2.0 and September 1, 2015 Gigastrand released v3.0 – the first 64 bit version of the operating system.

The effort in developing the OS has been enormous but the results have been encouraging. Gigastrand OS set out to make Linux as easy as possible for everyone. The developers have taken over a decade of trying to convert people to Linux using various distros and incorporated what people want.

Gigastrand’s Best selling PC

The numbers are impressive as well. In the last half of 2015, 100% of new and used computers had Gigastrand OS on them. Since Gigastrand OS 1.0 was released, over 10,000 people have downloaded the operating system. In 2 years of new and used PC sales with Gigastrand OS we have seen a 98% adoption rate and a 0% attrition rate on new computers.

Gigastrand’s bread and butter continues to be technology management and security. It allows the company to focus on development of new solutions like the Gigastrand OS.

Gigastrand Network Video Recorder Software

What does the future hold for Gigastrand? According to founder Josh Tordsen, a lot.

“Our focus in 2016 will be software. A new version of the Gigastrand OS with more features is not out of the question before the end of 2016. More immediately, we are on schedule to release the Gigastrand NVR software for recording security cameras by the end of February then, in March, we will start porting some Windows software we own to Gigastrand OS.”

In short, Gigastrand continues its original mission of Linux advocacy while adding products and services to an ever-expanding technical portfolio. Gigastrand has had many ups and downs but it continues to move forward.

 

 

 

 

*In 2015 Gigastrand has dropped the “International” part of its name though some remnants of the old name can still be found.

Gigastrand Celebrates 10 years of Linux Advocacy

Security and Surveillance Signs

These signs have been highly requested by our customers. So, we made some for you to download and print. So, here are 6 signs you can use in your installation for free!

videotaped  You are being videotaped

recordedbyaudio You are being recorded by electronic audio devices

premisesprotected Premises protected by electronic and video security

monitoredbyav Monitored by audio / video security systems

avsurveillance Audio / video surveillance in use

audionpremises Audio recording on premises

Security and Surveillance Signs

Gigastrand 2016 Calendar

Gigastrand is celebrating 10 years of Linux advocacy this year and one of the ways we are doing that is by bringing back our annual wall calendar.

This calendar has been released every year up until a few years ago and was free to anyone who wanted to download and print it off. Every year had a slightly different theme but for the most part, it is just a nice, basic calendar.

http://gigastrand.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Calendergigastrand2016.pdf 

It is designed to be printed on legal size paper, but can be printed on letter size by checking the box “Shrink to fit” when you print it out.

Gigastrand 2016 Calendar

Development begins on Gigastrand OS Video Surveillance

Gigastrand has begun development of a Linux based video surveillance using the Gigastrand OS as the base operating system. Gigastrand currently sells Windows based hybrid video solutions however, a Gigastrand OS solution has been intended since development began back in 2012. Gigastrand OS has been developed from the start with the intention of a video surveillance solution in mind.

Surveillance Video Recorders on the Gigastrand platform are projected to cost 25% – 50% less than the current systems. This is made possible, in part, due to the lower licensing costs associated with the Gigastrand OS.

The developers have already successfully tested 3 potential video security software solutions to pair with the Gigastrand OS. All have varying capabilities and interfaces but they all function properly in Gigastrand OS. Stability and feature testing will begin soon.

Testing will continue through January with a product release sometime in late February. A special video surveillance edition of the Gigastrand OS will be made available to purchase separately and will be pre-installed on Gigastrand Security systems.

Gigastrand Security

Gigastrand OS

Development begins on Gigastrand OS Video Surveillance

Gigastrand OS Makes Its Local Television Debut

A little bit of earned media can go a long way and this is exactly what we are talking about – a teeny bit of television news media. About 3 seconds to be exact at 1:10 and 1:15 – but we’ll take it.

http://www.keloland.com/newsdetail.cfm/escape-605-/?id=189190

Gigastrand was called in to help a local startup – Escape 605 – with audio/video technology and displays for escape rooms. Gigastrand OS machines were used to run the displays and a Gigastrand Security DVR runs the audio and video feeds.

KELO TV did a story on Escape 605 and showed how some of the equipment worked. Briefly, the Gigastrand equipment was shown – including a shot of Gigastrand OS.

Because there was no blueprint, Gigastrand was able to design all of the systems from scratch. Using the Gigastrand OS was a natural fit for this application as it had all of the elements needed to run the room built-in.

The one problem we have is not everything can be run from Gigastrand OS. The DVR and Control PCs need to be Windows PCs (for now). Gigastrand is working on a port for the software.

Gigastrand is also working on some of the imagineering behind the rooms.

Gigastrand OS Makes Its Local Television Debut

Gigastrand Security: Tornado caught on security cam

It is amazing what security cameras capture when no one is looking. A good security system is key to knowing what happens when no one is around to see what is going on.

When choosing a video security system, never settle for appliances you can’t upgrade with cheap cameras and inexperienced installers. These types of systems will cost you more in the long run.

A good system will pay for itself several times over during its lifetime. Gigastrand custom-builds video security solutions tailored to your security needs and your business. We know what it takes to capture high-quality video and, as technology experts, we can help you take full advantage of the system and all its features.

The video below is not from one of our systems but is pretty spectacular nonetheless.

 

Gigastrand Security: Tornado caught on security cam

PC or PoC: Blackberry Classic

I am just going to come right out and say it: the Blackberry Classic is the very nearly the most perfect smartphone ever (and no, I am not being paid a dime to say it).

As many of the regular readers know (thank you, btw) I started with a Blackberry 8300 that I had to get along with for a while. I was surprised at how much that could be done on such limited hardware. I then upgraded to a Blackberry 8330. This was a considerable upgrade that I will blog about later. It was still very difficult to do much of what I needed, however, the communications blew my android phones out of the water and the battery life bested all other smart phones.

The 8330 did about 50% of what I needed to do which necessitated the purchase of an android tablet. Between the 2 devices I managed to do 99% of what I needed to do.

I began to run into limitations on both the tablet and the phone. For one, the tablet sucked at running Facebook. The app on the Blackberry was faster and better for messages. The Blackberry could also be used as a USB mass storage device, however it was limited to 32Gb and I really needed more space.

I considered a Q10. It had the storage I needed and because it was essentially an android phone with a different OS, I could maybe run some of the apps I needed.

The long and short of it is while deliberating, the Blackberry Classic came out. I decided to wait until it came out because it was 4 times the phone the Q10 is.

I bought it online and I was not disappointed. It is a very heavy phone by comparison to other devices. It is a little smaller than an S5 and the screen is about 60% the size of an S5 (40% is keyboard and buttons). It does everything my 8330 did and just as well (the Facebook app works similarly to the curve, but with much more improved features), plus it has 4GLTE, and it can do 98% of what my tablet can do. It is also faster than my wife's S5. Much faster.

Thanks to the folks over at Crackberry, I can load android apps and run nearly every one. Screen size is sometimes an issue with apps and a couple of places it falls down is Hangouts, Google+, and Hulu. I had to use Box rather than Google to automatically backup photos and video. I also had to turn off automatic updates in the Play Store so it didn't update software I loaded using other apps. Opera Mini is still my best friend on this phone for some things.

Full support for Google apps is one of the things that would really make it a perfect phone. It has very decent (not spectacular) battery life and will charge off nearly anything I can plug it in to. It is one of the only phones with a physical keyboard (could use a number row) and it doesn't screw around with proprietary drivers for USB mass storage. Send and end buttons are wonderful to have as well for phone communications. I can't think of how many times I fought with a touch screen on a phone trying to flash or end a call.

Blackberry has a winner here. In my opinion, they are currently the only manufacturer that really knows how to design a cell phone.

MR GB

(This post composed primarily on my Blackberry using the Blogger app.)