Windows screwup forces Ubuntu shift (The Inquirer)

An interesting account of what can go wrong with vendor delivered Windows recovery disks. I don't know if you can blame Microsoft for this or the guys at HP.

Link to Windows screwup forces Ubuntu shift

ESR's Desktop Linux 2008 Deadline

Link to Slashdot | ESR's Desktop Linux 2008 Deadline

Aha, the discussion continues. Eric S. Raymond released the fox in the hen house when he started promoting the inclusion of proprietary drivers and codecs in Linux distributions in order to increase the critical mass of users. Without such a critical mass companies will not be inclined to provide open source drivers and/or codecs. The entire argument with the title World Domination 201 can be found here. An interesting read but I doubt whether most of the critics at Slashdot actually read the article in it's entirety.

As far as I understand there are two main arguments. One, in 2008 the transition to 64-bit computing will be complete (or at least reached a critical mass). Previous hardware transitions also saw a definite shift in main operating systems. If Linux can not dominate the 64-bit market this window of opportunity closes. Second, the average desktop user is spoiled with his/her multimedia experience (either under Windows or Mac OS X) and this will determine the succes or failure of Linux on the 64-bit hardware platform. The story is not all bleak though for Linux. When it comes to driver support, the strength of the developer community and legacy emulation Linux has a head start. Multimedia is a serious weak point, mostly the result of the strong root and presence in the server market.

ESR is no fool and he is certainly someone we should listen to. I don't agree with his choice for Linspire as the flag bearer for Linux in this regard, but I do agree that the inclusion of proprietary drivers and codecs would benefit adoption on a larger scale. Larger than now that is. I also feel that far more is needed to reach the large scale adoption that ESR wants to achieve. The inclusion of proprietary elements would improve the first impressions of W2L migrators and make life easier. But will this alone convince Auntie Agatha or Joe Smith to install Linux on the box? Nope, it removes but one obstacle. ESR treats the issue of desktop domination as a technical issue, but he fails to take into account a much larger ecosystem perspective. Yes, the technological side is important, as is user exeprience. But without childhood adoption, without teaching and educational aids for schools, companies and individual, without ubiquity of Linux in all facets of life, without decent promotion or marketing only a small niche of new W2L migrators can be reached. Mac OS X is a great operating system with all the nice things ESR wants in Linux and even that never led to mass adoption. Yes, the iMac and the iPod are icons, but most people use the iPod in conjunction with their Windows PC's. They are not buying iMacs in droves. So far -and this for a long time already- desktop computing equals Windows, both in the 16 bit as in the 32 bit world.

No, forget about the 2008 deadline. Forget about the hardware issue. Focus on ubiquity. Create digital playgrounds and internet café's in the neighborhoods, in pubs, in libraries, in schools, supported and maintained by local Linux user groups. This costs money, so set up an international infrastructure for funding, for buying used hardware and redeploying them as Linux boxes. Companies like HP, Sun and IBM will have to be convinced to put their weight behind it as part of a long-term strategy. Realizing a paradigm shift takes time and effort.

Contributing to the Open Source movement

The increased use of Linux on my desktop is pushing to an even more active involvement in various aspects of the open source movement. Not as a developer. I don’t think my rudimentary knowledge of programming Basic on the Vic20 or the TurboPascal a few years later would be enough to make any sort of contribution. This doesn’t mean that promoting open source software is not within my reach. On the contrary. I do believe I have other skills that could be of some use.

One is this blog, to write down my experiences, my reviews and the search for solutions. I have decided to stick mostly with the perspective from the Windows user who dips a toe in the Linux pond. I do believe that Linux is mature enough for the desktop and should be discussed, criticized, valued and judged accordingly. Over the last few years I have written various articles about open source software under Windows in comparison to proprietary, closed source software. Straight forward comparisons with little consideration for the fact that open source software was/is for free. I want it to be good and I think developers need this kind of feedback from desktop users. Moving this perspective to the entire Linux desktop is actually a small and logical step.

Secondly I am more active in various IRC channels than in the past. I have no time to spend entire days in the channels, but when I can spare an hour I join a few of them. Currently I focus on the Ubuntu and the Sabayon channels, the two distributions I am using. It is interesting to see which questions people ask and how often I have a suggestion or two to help out. The questions themselves are a great source of inspiration for the book I am writing.

Thirdly there are the bug reports. It’s a small thing to do, but it is the stuff the developers need to see how their software is doing under various circumstances. Yesterday I filed three bug reports. Maybe they were already known, but each piece of the puzzle can be of use.

Fourthly I still write my articles and give a workshop here and there. I am doing this for a few years now and has provided me in turn with knowledge and skills that are invested in the book.

And that is the true beauty of it all. The more you get involved and contribute, the more you get back. You can contribute when you are able to in various ways and as a reward you learn more about the operating system, the world and the underlying philosophy: “there is more happiness in giving than in receiving.” Without it, there would be no Linux, no open source software.

The River and The Salmon

While life has been moving in the right direction for a long series of months I always kept in mind that things would turn again. It always does and will continue to do so for a time to come. One motivational speaker said that you can expect four serious crises each year and -while I don’t completely agree with the number- my own life experience seems to prove the statement true.

The last couple of weeks have been rocky with no clear end in sight. First, my dad had a cardiac arrest at the age of 61 and what followed where three and a half weeks of travelling up and down to the hospital, motivating and encouraging him, my stepmother and myself, dealing with emotional and physical stress while at the same time contuining with the daily affairs of life. He is okay now and the process of rebuilding his life and confidence has begun. I am glad it all turned out that way. However, the whole time period brought me to the brink of another burnout, the fourth one, and it takes a lot of energy and effort to avert that from happening. Thirdly there is the issue with the book we are writing. There is a strong possibility that the current project will be halted. The best case scenario hints at a delay (meaning a serious re-write of the chapters somewhere next year), the worst case would be a complete cancellation. Due to the inability of the publisher to make amenable agreements with one of the authors we might loose him and his long-time experience in Ubuntu as well.

When things start to move in the negative direction I become more introspective, tapping the source of inner strength and conviction. I start thinking about my life plan which was carefully designed and is in the middle of execution. What are my goals? Why did I choose those goals? Does the current crisis change any of those? Since the life plan and it’s goals are firmly rooted in scriptural principles this kind of introspection also brings me closer to the spiritual man. This time it brought me to the scripture “keep on searching and you will find, keep on knocking and it will be opened to you, keep on asking and you will receive”. Keep on…. Life and the pursuit of it’s goals is a process. Getting the results is not a one time effort or a one shot affair. Keep on…

The image that came to mind was that of water. Left to it’s own water follows the laws of nature and will take the path of least resistance. Water always runs down a mountain, never the way up. And don’t we say that life is an uphill battle. But when the water runs down, how do we ever get up. The answer was and is simple. Be like a salmon. The salmon is driven by a strong inner instinct to move to the spawning grounds, where new life will be brought into existence. Rapids, rocks, bears and waterfalls.. the salmon doesn’t care about any of them. On the contrary, it results into one of the strongest images in nature. The salmon jumping out of the water, ignoring the claws of the bears in order to reach the next level of it’s journey. The salmon doesn’t follow the current. It fights it, goes against it. Not all salmons reach their destination, only the strongest, the most determined and the ones who were not caught by the bears and fishermen. And yet, what a journey they make.

From there it was a small step to another motivational speaker who discussed the value of goals in life. The goals themselves are unimportant. They are merely the tools for the life you lead in order to pursue them. Pursuing the goals change the person you are into what you want to become. And when the goals are achieved, like the salmon when it reaches the spawning grounds, it brings new life into existence. Now it time to stop introspecting and continue swimming. Blasted rocks.;-)

The Google Desktop

I always seem to find time to play with the computer, to test out new things. In the long run this habit causes an instable system and a lecture from Agnes about the time I spend behind the computer. She is right of course.
My recent project (small as it is) was signing up with all services that Google is providing. I had read the various articles about “Google now adding.. ” or “Google now has….”, but never really tried it. Signing up through the various offering is easy once you have a GMail account. From then on it is simple to create your own Google start page with links to the Google Desktop: documents, spreadsheets, notebook, creating HTML pages, chat, email, newsgroups, photoalbums and a weblog. Picasa gives the warning that it supports Windows only, but it is no problem to upload pictures to my album under Linux.

It is an interesting collection of web-based applications/tools, all accessible through one account and one password. Single sign-on all the way (except maybe for Blogger). The settings for each app/tool reveal functionalities that just beg to be tested. Like the ability to recieve notifications from your online calendar via SMS. I want to know whether it works and whether a price tag is involved (since I can hardly imagine it being free). The online help is not really helping since it states that it depends on the provider. “It could be free”. The Calender can be integrated in a personal website. Simple documents and spreadsheets can be created, shared and edited.

The Google Notebook is a fun little tool which embeds itself in Firefox. The right mouse button option to add text to your notebook only works when there is no other extension in FF claiming that (like Radial Context in my case). But the Add note button works just as well and this is great when surfing around and gathering information. The selected text is preserves as well as the hyperlink. You can create multiple notebooks for various projects.

Time to stop playing and start working again, but I can suggest you to Google Desktopping yourself.

And back to Sarge again

After two days of attempting to solve the problems with Debian Sid I decided to delete the whole installation and revert back to Sarge again. The problem with the USB drive could be traced back to udev and the fact that a newer kernel needed to be installed. That’s what I did and upgraded the kernel from 2.6.8 to 2.6.18. With that came a full upgrade of Sarge to Sid again and when that was finished I had an inaccesible system again. Just like with Ubuntu. Why? Because Sid comes with a change in the xserver from xfree86 to xorg as well.

I did my Googling and asking around, but there doesn’t seem a clear solution to the issue. The boards are full of attempts, but nothing final. There were some posts that said that when it worked, it worked erratic. I don’t like erratic. I like stable.

For now I have to conclude that either the kernel or the xserver changes don’t go well with the iMac and that there is no easy solution in sight. So, while I am typing this the third network install of Debian Sarge is under way. That will leave me with quite a few dated packages, but I will give it a try to upgrade those on an application basis. As long as Synaptic doesn ‘t tell me it will uninstall gnome-development or do something with x there is little to worry about.

Am I disappointed? Yes and no. I did learn a lot again, but I there were other things I could have done with the time. The issue isn’t a new issue. It has been around for almost a year, but apparently it is not considered urgent enough (or not big enough in terms of userbase) to fix it. One thing is good though. When Debian tells you it is stable, it is stable. When it is unstable…. no warranty included. There is something to say for stability after all.

From Sarge to Sid

With the iMac almost ready it is timeto look forward to the real task of writing 100 pages on the day to day use of Linux. Not about geeky shellscripting, not about running Linux as part of a renderfarm, but plain simple effective day to day use. About the programs that make you forget the software you used to pay for.
I have been playing with computers since the Commodore Vic 20. No GUI in those days, but that was hardly needed. Wordperfect did the job just fine on the HeadstartII which sported two 5.25″ floppy drives and a 320 Kb virtual C: drive. Then came the windows era, from Windows 3.0 to XP and Vista. About seven years ago I was asked to help out by the it department to unlock the information from the students database. It appeared I was the only one with sufficient DOS knowledge to make that happen (long story, but it saved the school from a hefty fine. I got promotion after that).
Anyway, things have changed with even the more experienced users being used to sitting behind a nice GUI instead of a command prompt. That is the target audience. Adventurous enough to try a completely new operating system, but it has to work out of the box. Can Linux deliver? In the book we will make our case for it. On the level of applications I would say yes. For most people. The ones who run Dreamweaver to build simple websites, or use Word for straight forward text editing. And I am firmly convinced this counts for the majority of users.

On a side note. I decided to experiment a bit with the Debian sources.list and add the Sid source to it followed by a complete upgrade. It took a few hours and the system feels somewhat unstable (switching themes causes problems and Kde thinks it is running on laptop with an empty battery, hence shuts the system) the upgrade is worth it. The instability can be fixed, as well as some other issues (like a non-mounting USB drive), but I do have all applications on the same level as Ubutu now.

MacDebian

It looks like Debian is here to stay on the iMac. On the Gnome-Look website I found a complete theme pack to turn the desktop into an Ubuntu style desktop. I also found some other interesting looks as well, so it might alter from time to time. With synaptic and some additions to the sources.list (non-US, main, stable, non-free and contrib) there is plenty to install. There is already a big difference between Debian and Ubuntu: Ubuntu made some good choices for the default desktop. The default Debian desktop has far more software by default, but why Mozilla and Epiphany and not Firefox? The Debian menu seems less organized, but Debian is not for first time Linux users. I installed Sarge 3.1R3, released on September 1, so quite recent. Debian is stable, solid and -with some visual tweaks- good to look at.

Yellowdog out, Debian in

Yellowdog, day 2
And it could well be the last day. When you are used to the well-stocked and easy accessible Debian repositories, the Yellowdog repositories seem pretty bare. Adding a new repository in yum.conf was a series of trial and errors, before I could finally connect to FreshRPMs. Abiword was not in there, but Bluefish was. But yum install bluefish, brought me to the heart of dependency hell. The Abiword RPM gave an even longer list of dependencies. Only then can you appreciate the strength of apt-get and synaptic.
Yellowbird is an overall disappointment. For a distro that targets the Mac users it is unpolished and illogical. The iMac has a single button mouse. Who came with the idea to use F10 and F11 as alternate mouse buttons? It doesn’t follow the Mac oOSX experience. Why add Gnumeric, but leave out Abiword? And to use version 1.1.8 of OpenOffice is also a blast from the past. Yellowbird is definitely not keeping up with Fedora Core, where FC 5 met with wide acclaim as a strong progressive distro. I wonder if Debian is available for the PPC? I need to check that out.

[update]
The answer is yes. The net-based install is running. l might have the same problem with x, but I know where to look and how to fix it.

[update2]
Well, that went smooth enough. It was simply a matter of selecting the default desktop install and on it went. As expected, X did not work, but dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xf86config along with the information from the Yellowdog experiment was sufficient to have it up in five minutes. Strange enough, synaptic did not work from the menu, but starting it from the terminal went fine. I want to change the sources list in order to add the unstable and testing repositories. And I want to install the Ubuntu theme , because the default Debian gnome theme is a bit ugly, too dark for my taste. But it works and that was the whole purpose of this endeavor.

MacLinux.... at last

Linux on the iMac at last! Finally, because I was about to give it up. Both Ubuitu and Xubuntu did install, but booted up extremely slow and when I clicked on a menu item the system froze. Yellowdog Linux would be my last attempt in these series.
The install wouldn’t use the graphical mode, so that was not promising. I don’t mind the text-based mode, so on I went. The process went smoothly, though a few options did raise my eyebrows a few years ago. I realized again how much Linux made me learn about computing. If only for that reason it is a bit of a shame that most distro’s have simple install nowadays.
The really big glitch came after the reboot: no screen, no X. What followed were two hours of digging into the X configuration file, the error logs and checking the internet. I had to dig into Vi again in order to edit XF86config and yaboot.conf. That was fun. Time consuming, but fun. As the install procedure had shown, the system did not recognize the graphics card properly. It had to be added manually to XF86config and the Yellowdog forums showed the exact information for the iMac Indigo. After that a reboot ended up in the default KDE desktop.
It worked but not thanks to Yellowdog. The iMac is listed as a supported system, with only the infrared option mentioned as a problem. It is a prebuild system with well described components, so all drivers should have been there with all hardware recognized. Still the Yellowdog forum was filled with people having similar problems. I cannot understand why it has not been fixed yet. This way, only a geek can make it work. But then again. only a geek would want to install Linux on a Mac.
Anyway, the experiment succeeded. I wanted to have Linux on the iMac, because I like to write on that box. It’s an inspiring piece of hardware and now I have all the programs on hand I am writing about. Only ten days to go. But first I have to fix the fact that it won’t mount cd’s automatically, nor configure the single button mouse properly, things that would run fine with Ubuntu.

Ubuntufying the iMac

I have an old iMac Indigo with a decent 768 Mb ram. Today I tried to install Ubuntu on it. First, I wanted to install it on my external usb drive, but that just stuck, twice. After that I deciced to forego Mac OSX and replace it with Dapper.
Well, the install worked. But that was about it. It was freezing slow. Nope, this did not work. Next experiment: Xubuntu or Yellow Dog. I am slightly more inclined to go for Yellow Dog as it is a company that is fully focused on Linux on Mac. Plus my G3 is mentioned as being supported. Xubuntu will have it’s shot first. Xfce is supposed to be less resource heavy. That said, I did not expect Ubuntu to be that slow either on the old box. I even used the alternate cd, just in case.
Yellow Dog comes with four CD’s. Thank ADSL for overnight downloading.

To the defense of Vista

Microsoft and the EU are at each other’s throat again. This time over Vista and it’s enhanced security and added security applications. ‘Community heroes’ Adobe and Symantec are supporting the EU with complaints against the ‘evil monopolist’. I can imagine Microsoft being annoyed or surprised at all this.
For years people have complained about the security holes in Windows. The Microsoft started to take it seriously, starting with Service Pack 2. And you have to be impressed with what has been done. Besides plugging holes, which were a cash maker for the likes of Symantec, the company started to educate endusers about secure computing and bought companies to add the needed security knowledge. Windows XP is still under constant siege, but with some good user practices it can be secure. Vista is taking this one step further, adding security features well-known to Mac OSX and Linux users.
And adding XPS and PDF export capabilities to Office 2007 is not really ground breaking either. I am using this feature in OpenOffice.org for years now, since it makes for great portability. So, Microsoft is actually listening to the complaints, is fixing them and they get slammed as a result. Yes. I am ‘really’ looking forward to Vista Unplugged, completely stripped of all security features so that you, as a free agent can spend some extra money on the lackluster and buggy McAfee Suite, or the hodgepodge Norton Suite, or try the latest ZoneAlarm Suite that breaks your internet connection by default.
Vista will not create a new and monopolistic ecosystem. It will have to compete with XP for years to come. Halting a secure Vista will not help a migration to Linux on the desktop. A huge economic crisis would be better suited to stimulate that. Vista requires new hardware, and Linux can deliver the same on older hardware.
ln essence, I don’t think this is about creating or keeping a level playing field, protecting European companies against unfair competition. As before, it is the US companies, that fail to convince their own courts and use the European arena to push their own bottom line up and their expensive and/or buggy software through European throats.