Hello All. I have not posted in a while, but all the talk about Google Chrome OS has gotten my brain churning. Everywhere I look I seem to run into one of two types of people. Type 1 is the Chrome OS nay sayers who claim that if it doesn't run games, or doesn't run native office apps, or doesn't do this that or the other thing that it will fail completely why would I ever give up anything my computer does ever?!?! In my personal opinion these are the same people who purchased netbooks early on and then were furious . . . FURIOUS I say that they didn't do everything their desktop did and returned them. Simple fact: Windows and Linux netbooks saw higher than normal computer return rates early on when people didn't understand them, then those return rates dropped as the lightbulbs turned on.
Type 2 seem to be people who think that Chrome OS is going to completely re-invent the computing paradigm and change everything forever. These are the same people who likely rang the death knell of traditional notebook sales when we saw the $199 EEE PC. Amazingly netbook prices have increased, with the average being around $300-$400 and traditional notebooks came down in price to deal with the reality of the market and seem to be surviving quite nicely.
So that leaves us with Chrome OS, and will it "succeed"? In my personal opinion it will. I will also not use it. At least not till it has been through several iterations. It does not meet my needs as a user. The only reason it does not meet my needs is that I run Xubuntu quite nicely on my netbook. If I ran Windows on a Netbook let me tell you the right marketing campaign and a quality demo experience would likely move me to Chrome OS. Why you say? The reason is simple. Netbooks aren't full computers. They were never meant to be, but they come with the bloat that is Windows for simple tasks. Netbooks are meant to be get work done, play simple games maybe, run some chat programs. That's all they are, that's all they were ever supposed to be. As people have gotten used to them and their expectations have come in line with that reality we don't see the constant returns, and people are using them for tasks they are suited to. If everyone were technically adept, and Linux had great marketing power and didn't have HUGE regression issues every release (I'm looking at you Ubuntu. I love you, so why do you hurt my hardware so. What did it ever do to you?) then plenty of people would run Linux on their netbooks. Linux doesn't have any decent marketing people behind it, and at the end of the day there are still hardware regression issues with every release. Without getting too far into that issue right now those issues are built into the decentralized Linux development model. You build drivers into the kernel, and you're going to have breakage. You have breakage on Windows as well, but then the third party can just release a patched driver that works with the new windows and you can download it. While not everyone does, and that causes some consternation, the third party hardware developers who choose to have that option. On Linux as an "End User" (definition of end user. NOT WILLING TO COMPILE THE KERNEL. DEAL WITH IT ZEALOTS) you have to wait for the next version of the OS which will come with new breakage. Yay, what a lovely development cycle that is. You also often have to install a new version of your OS to install new versions of popular applications in the distro supported manner. Compare this to the years of new application support that comes with every Windows release. It wasn't till Vista was almost out that I saw any applications that wouldn't run on Win2K. That's worth something.
So here comes Chrome OS. Fewer regression issues because it's completely developed by a centralized company. You don't have to wait for a new version of the OS to install updated applications. In fact you don't have to install them, they are updated automatically in the cloud, and you don't have all the overhead of Windows for the simple tasks people want to do with netbooks. This is a recipe for success. So why am I not going to use it you ask? I am not going to use it because I don't use my netbook like a normal netbook. I do audio editing in Audacity with it, I do accounting on documents that I can't ethically store on external servers, my husband does webcaming on it, which while available through the browser from Google isn't quite where he wants it yet. I am not the target audience. The target audience is a brand of consumer that currently runs Windows, hates how slow their Netbook is because they just want to chat, surf, check e-mail, and maybe play an online game or two, but isn't comfortable with "Linux".
In summary, Chrome OS isn't going to please a lot of the people who write about bleeding edge tech, which is why it isn't getting great reviews right now. It also isn't going to replace anyone's Windows/Linux/Mac workhorse machines. It is going to bring the things that make Linux good for netbooks to netbooks, while clearing out some of the deadwood that has kept the masses from adopting Linux. It is also going to cause Linux distros and Microsoft to look at how they were not serving this market and perhaps improve their offerings. Microsoft has already done it in response to the original Netbook craze. So Chrome will fill a niche that is being poorly served right now. It will likely do it well enough to be a lasting product. It's not going to take over the world, and as with most of Google's product that doesn't seem to be their aim. They are more interested in products that shape the total market into something that is better for them to sell ads. If MS and Linux redesign their products in such a way that makes the Intenet a quality enough experience that Chrome OS isn't necessary, and everyone uses the Internet more enthusiastically on their existing platforms has Google really lost?
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Why Windows isn't Ready for the Desktop (Well Some of them Anyway) and Linux is (Well Again Some of Them)
I have read a lot of posts about why Linux is ready for the desktop, and why Windows isn't. I think they tend to miss the fact that Windows WILL always be better for some people. Yes I said it, Windows is the right choice for some people, I would go so far as to say lots of people. It is however, the wrong choice for a lot of people, and then there are people like me where it is the right choice for some machines, and some machines it just makes no sense on at all. So I'm going to detail why Windows isn't the right choice for the machines I run Linux on, and finally why Windows is the right choice for the one machine I run it on.
Windows is the Wrong Choice:
Reason 1: One Size Fits all Software
I dislike a LOT of windows software. Office being at the top of the list. Surprisingly my issue with Office has nothing to do with Office itself. It has to do with all the other mainstream office productivity options on Windows. Works is a JOKE, WordPad fails as a text editor because it's written to work like a word processor, and fails as a word processor because a complete lack of features. WordPerfect is just as bloated and monolithic as Word, and OpenOffice is close behind. The large packages aren't bad programs, they just tend to be like breaking a 1.4 in dowel rod with a planetary laser for me. I want applications that are appropriate to the scale of my task. When I was a student I needed to be able to write basic papers for class, something AbiWord can accomplish quite nicely. I don't want a bunch of other software overhead slowing me down, especially if I'm not using the features. This applies to graphics work, as well as audio editing and a variety of other tasks. Now many of the open source programs I know and love are available on windows, but they involve the windows GTK libraries, and then I get back into that overhead thing. On Linux those libraries are what's running the OS, and as they are loaded anyway program initiation is snappier, and so is execution of the program itself. I am also still locked out of most QT driven applications on Windows. I know KDE is working to fix that, but even once all of KDE is ported to Windows you will still be left with a lot of overhead because you're loading up enough libraries to run a whole desktop environment on top of windows just to run a few applications. Not my idea of efficiency. So for most of my machines I will stick with the platform that gives me a variety of quality applications for the tasks I do. While Windows might run the most popular applications, I think I will always find those applications to be too bloated for my purposes.
Reason 2: Lousy Network Support
Yes, you read me correctly. Windows has lousy network support. What I mean by this is Windows just doesn't support the protocols I want to make use of in my home network. The big one being SSH for file sharing. What do you mean Windows doesn't have SSH support you say? There is a wide variety of EXCELLENT applications to log into your secure FTP server in windows. That is technically accurate. Thing is I don't want SFTP. I want SSHFS (SSH File system. Think your SFTP setup as a mounted drive). I do not like running Samba. My authentication options are limited, and once I log in as one person to my SMB file server I can't login to another directory on that server as a different user on the same windows machine.(Before people start screaming and yelling, I am talking about Windows home. I don't feel I shoudl have to out the cash for their business offering for my home network) I like being able to give multiple users their own personal space on my server, and they know that no one else will be able to get to their files, and know that if I am logged onto my personal directory my partner isn't going to have problems logging on to their directory with their authentication without restarting our main desktop computer. It seems like a reasonble thing to be able to do. With Linux desktop clients I can have this setup and working flawlessly in . . . oh wait it works flawlessly by default. I found a program that supports SSHFS on windows. It requires .NET. When I downloaded the .NET installer I discovered it's one of thoes stupid installers that then downloads the actual program. I don't know who came up with that idea, but it makes me all sorts of sad. So this program hung repeatedly and would not install .NET. Then there was another program that it depended on, and installation was a huge pain. In linux I use apt-get and everything is taken care of for me. There is also this method which needless to say takes a touch more setup than in Linux. I want to be able to run a home network that has robust username options without any meaningful work. Again, I don't think I'm asking for much. On a final note for this one, if I port forward my SSH server through my router I can mount this drive anyway. If I'm not on my local subnet samba WILL NOT work, no matter how much I might like it to. That's kind of a HUGE reason to use SSH instead of samba, which also leaves me needing a desktop environment that will play well with SSH for mountable file sharing.
Reason 3 Easy Installation and Rapid Upgrading
While I don't necessarily like reinstalling the OS on my computer, and I know a lot of people who wouldn't even be willing to try it with Linux I like the fact that I know every 6 months significant if incremental improvements are going to be made to my desktop environment. Shove application updates aside, and I know they are a lot of distro upgrades each new version of the major distros include improvements to the underpinning of the system. Since August 24th 2001 to November 8th 2006 there were 2 service packs to Windows XP, and they were really just stability and security fixes. Patches the lot of them. There has been one service pack to XP since Vista came out. Compare that with a new Ubuntu every 6 months, and similar release cycles for many other distros. These releases add percevable improvements. While there were regression issues for a while associated with the limited testing forced by this rapid release schedule, but you always have the option of running a slightly older system and waiting for them to fix the regressions, which is certainly a better option than just not having your system updated for over 6 years, and then having it be such a dramatic update you don't know where anything is. Some computers I don't update for extended periods of time, and others I refresh every time a new version comes out, and I like knowing that is my choice.
When I look at the reasons I stay with Linux I am struck that the philosphy that keeps me away from Windows is design that inherently inhibits choice. Now I have heard lots of arguments about that being one of Windows strengths. End Users don't want a ton of choices, it confuses them. I actually agree with that principle in many ways. If you look back at what I have listed I deal with lack of protocol support that isn't MS protocol, lack of quality applications to fit different market segments, and forcing users into sudden major upgrade changes because they can't be bothered to do actual incremental UI releases. There are choices for multiple levels of applications on Windows, it's just only the top tier ones get the support necessary to create a quality application. If Windows didn't get a single new application, but many of the applications that aren't aimed at high end busienss users got more spit polish and quality attention this would be fixed, so I'm not talking about having a million configuration options and 50 desktop environments. I'm just talking about having software quality even if I don't want to drop hundreds of dollars for the full office suite. Which by the way is not because I'm a cheapskate like all open source people not willing to pay for software. I'm willing to pay for software, but if I'm only using 10% of the features I want 10% the software, and 10% the price. That model works in other industries, it should work in the software industry.
Now, with all of that said, Windows isn't all bad. Much as I prefer Linux for basic desktop and web work at the end of the day that's not all computers are used for. I will list the mighty reasons the computer attached to my television in my living room still runs Windows. WoW and Hulu. I have a computer plugged in exclusively for entertainment purposes, and sadly it has an intel graphics processor. Problems with the latest versions of latest X server have caused WoW to be a royal pain, and destroyed video performance. My attempts with various fix tutorials have failed. There is a history of various bugs with WoW on Linux, so I stick with Windows. Every now and then I drop in a Linux install and check to see if performance has improved. I suspect as these are my only remaining reasons for staying with Windows that in another version or two things will change. Till then Windows still wins the entertainment center battle.
On a final note I do have to give Windows a few props. It is a decent operating system, and when the world was Windows vs. Mac won very much on it's merits, much as the die hard Mac people might disagree Mac before the X was . . . well there is no way to be polite about my feelings there so I'll just leave it at that. Now OSX is in my humble opionion a superior system, but not as superior as the price premium you pay. Apple is ok with that. They have enough market share to make them happy, and for some companies being in the luxury business is the place to be. I say bully for them. I don't buy anything "because it's luxury", so I'm just never going to be a Mac owner. I buy on affordability and being able to easily do what I WANT TO DO. What I want to do isn't what everyone wants to do. I'm sure most end users couldn't even make sense of my reasons for caring about the network options I care about in a home environment. That's fine. I'm also sure most people don't care about the fact that they are paying for an extra gig of ram just so office doesn't feel sluggish while they write the next 1-2 page paper that's due. Those are not concerns everyone cares about, and quite honestly I don't begrudge them not caring about it. Linux is a GREAT system, and unlike so many hard core Linux geeks I don't care if eveyone uses it. All I care about is that we make it accessible enough to get enough market share that game developers start releasing for Linux, and hardware support is more ubiquitous when new hardware comes out, and maybe we don't have to worry about regressions so much because more consumer companies are supporting Linux instead of leaving the drivers to larger projects that have their own priorities (I'm not ripping on you guys, I know there's a lot in the kernel/xserver/whatever and you can't stop a release every time Intel performance slows or one particular web cam stops working.). Once we get there as far as I care Windows can have the rest.
Windows is the Wrong Choice:
Reason 1: One Size Fits all Software
I dislike a LOT of windows software. Office being at the top of the list. Surprisingly my issue with Office has nothing to do with Office itself. It has to do with all the other mainstream office productivity options on Windows. Works is a JOKE, WordPad fails as a text editor because it's written to work like a word processor, and fails as a word processor because a complete lack of features. WordPerfect is just as bloated and monolithic as Word, and OpenOffice is close behind. The large packages aren't bad programs, they just tend to be like breaking a 1.4 in dowel rod with a planetary laser for me. I want applications that are appropriate to the scale of my task. When I was a student I needed to be able to write basic papers for class, something AbiWord can accomplish quite nicely. I don't want a bunch of other software overhead slowing me down, especially if I'm not using the features. This applies to graphics work, as well as audio editing and a variety of other tasks. Now many of the open source programs I know and love are available on windows, but they involve the windows GTK libraries, and then I get back into that overhead thing. On Linux those libraries are what's running the OS, and as they are loaded anyway program initiation is snappier, and so is execution of the program itself. I am also still locked out of most QT driven applications on Windows. I know KDE is working to fix that, but even once all of KDE is ported to Windows you will still be left with a lot of overhead because you're loading up enough libraries to run a whole desktop environment on top of windows just to run a few applications. Not my idea of efficiency. So for most of my machines I will stick with the platform that gives me a variety of quality applications for the tasks I do. While Windows might run the most popular applications, I think I will always find those applications to be too bloated for my purposes.
Reason 2: Lousy Network Support
Yes, you read me correctly. Windows has lousy network support. What I mean by this is Windows just doesn't support the protocols I want to make use of in my home network. The big one being SSH for file sharing. What do you mean Windows doesn't have SSH support you say? There is a wide variety of EXCELLENT applications to log into your secure FTP server in windows. That is technically accurate. Thing is I don't want SFTP. I want SSHFS (SSH File system. Think your SFTP setup as a mounted drive). I do not like running Samba. My authentication options are limited, and once I log in as one person to my SMB file server I can't login to another directory on that server as a different user on the same windows machine.(Before people start screaming and yelling, I am talking about Windows home. I don't feel I shoudl have to out the cash for their business offering for my home network) I like being able to give multiple users their own personal space on my server, and they know that no one else will be able to get to their files, and know that if I am logged onto my personal directory my partner isn't going to have problems logging on to their directory with their authentication without restarting our main desktop computer. It seems like a reasonble thing to be able to do. With Linux desktop clients I can have this setup and working flawlessly in . . . oh wait it works flawlessly by default. I found a program that supports SSHFS on windows. It requires .NET. When I downloaded the .NET installer I discovered it's one of thoes stupid installers that then downloads the actual program. I don't know who came up with that idea, but it makes me all sorts of sad. So this program hung repeatedly and would not install .NET. Then there was another program that it depended on, and installation was a huge pain. In linux I use apt-get and everything is taken care of for me. There is also this method which needless to say takes a touch more setup than in Linux. I want to be able to run a home network that has robust username options without any meaningful work. Again, I don't think I'm asking for much. On a final note for this one, if I port forward my SSH server through my router I can mount this drive anyway. If I'm not on my local subnet samba WILL NOT work, no matter how much I might like it to. That's kind of a HUGE reason to use SSH instead of samba, which also leaves me needing a desktop environment that will play well with SSH for mountable file sharing.
Reason 3 Easy Installation and Rapid Upgrading
While I don't necessarily like reinstalling the OS on my computer, and I know a lot of people who wouldn't even be willing to try it with Linux I like the fact that I know every 6 months significant if incremental improvements are going to be made to my desktop environment. Shove application updates aside, and I know they are a lot of distro upgrades each new version of the major distros include improvements to the underpinning of the system. Since August 24th 2001 to November 8th 2006 there were 2 service packs to Windows XP, and they were really just stability and security fixes. Patches the lot of them. There has been one service pack to XP since Vista came out. Compare that with a new Ubuntu every 6 months, and similar release cycles for many other distros. These releases add percevable improvements. While there were regression issues for a while associated with the limited testing forced by this rapid release schedule, but you always have the option of running a slightly older system and waiting for them to fix the regressions, which is certainly a better option than just not having your system updated for over 6 years, and then having it be such a dramatic update you don't know where anything is. Some computers I don't update for extended periods of time, and others I refresh every time a new version comes out, and I like knowing that is my choice.
When I look at the reasons I stay with Linux I am struck that the philosphy that keeps me away from Windows is design that inherently inhibits choice. Now I have heard lots of arguments about that being one of Windows strengths. End Users don't want a ton of choices, it confuses them. I actually agree with that principle in many ways. If you look back at what I have listed I deal with lack of protocol support that isn't MS protocol, lack of quality applications to fit different market segments, and forcing users into sudden major upgrade changes because they can't be bothered to do actual incremental UI releases. There are choices for multiple levels of applications on Windows, it's just only the top tier ones get the support necessary to create a quality application. If Windows didn't get a single new application, but many of the applications that aren't aimed at high end busienss users got more spit polish and quality attention this would be fixed, so I'm not talking about having a million configuration options and 50 desktop environments. I'm just talking about having software quality even if I don't want to drop hundreds of dollars for the full office suite. Which by the way is not because I'm a cheapskate like all open source people not willing to pay for software. I'm willing to pay for software, but if I'm only using 10% of the features I want 10% the software, and 10% the price. That model works in other industries, it should work in the software industry.
Now, with all of that said, Windows isn't all bad. Much as I prefer Linux for basic desktop and web work at the end of the day that's not all computers are used for. I will list the mighty reasons the computer attached to my television in my living room still runs Windows. WoW and Hulu. I have a computer plugged in exclusively for entertainment purposes, and sadly it has an intel graphics processor. Problems with the latest versions of latest X server have caused WoW to be a royal pain, and destroyed video performance. My attempts with various fix tutorials have failed. There is a history of various bugs with WoW on Linux, so I stick with Windows. Every now and then I drop in a Linux install and check to see if performance has improved. I suspect as these are my only remaining reasons for staying with Windows that in another version or two things will change. Till then Windows still wins the entertainment center battle.
On a final note I do have to give Windows a few props. It is a decent operating system, and when the world was Windows vs. Mac won very much on it's merits, much as the die hard Mac people might disagree Mac before the X was . . . well there is no way to be polite about my feelings there so I'll just leave it at that. Now OSX is in my humble opionion a superior system, but not as superior as the price premium you pay. Apple is ok with that. They have enough market share to make them happy, and for some companies being in the luxury business is the place to be. I say bully for them. I don't buy anything "because it's luxury", so I'm just never going to be a Mac owner. I buy on affordability and being able to easily do what I WANT TO DO. What I want to do isn't what everyone wants to do. I'm sure most end users couldn't even make sense of my reasons for caring about the network options I care about in a home environment. That's fine. I'm also sure most people don't care about the fact that they are paying for an extra gig of ram just so office doesn't feel sluggish while they write the next 1-2 page paper that's due. Those are not concerns everyone cares about, and quite honestly I don't begrudge them not caring about it. Linux is a GREAT system, and unlike so many hard core Linux geeks I don't care if eveyone uses it. All I care about is that we make it accessible enough to get enough market share that game developers start releasing for Linux, and hardware support is more ubiquitous when new hardware comes out, and maybe we don't have to worry about regressions so much because more consumer companies are supporting Linux instead of leaving the drivers to larger projects that have their own priorities (I'm not ripping on you guys, I know there's a lot in the kernel/xserver/whatever and you can't stop a release every time Intel performance slows or one particular web cam stops working.). Once we get there as far as I care Windows can have the rest.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Applying a Proprietary Paradigm to an Open System
I would like to start off by saying I am a big fan of the open development model for almost all software. Over the past several months however I have seen a lot of users, many of them long term FOSS users, try to apply the proprietary paradigm to open projects. This is most obvious with KDE 4.0, but I have seen it in a less dramatic way with other projects. The specific paradigm I speak of is the x.0 product ready for the masses paradigm. Everything I have seen of KDE 4.0 tells me that it will not be ready for the masses. That is not to say it won't be a good product, but it won't be ready for the masses. Even the people within the KDE development community have been saying on forums and in blog posts that they recommend people wait till 4.1 for a really complete user experience, and recommend distributions wait until 4.1 to include the code base. This hasn't stopped Kubuntu from including KDE 4.0 code before KDE is even released.
At issue is the need for community feedback. I have heard this from several developers, if they don't release something *.0 they don't get enough users to really find all the bugs and fix them. In a proprietary company there are large scale structured betas, and people who are paid specifically to try and break the software. In high school I was one of those people. I got a delightful $6.50 an hour back in the 90's to try and break an online curriculum for elementary school kids and do detailed bug reports. The problem we run into with FOSS software is that it's made by developers, and while we are starting to get "end users" with all the good and bad stigma that holds in our community, they are not the ones running betas. Mostly developers and hard core geeks are running betas, especially of products like KDE which if you run are going to take over your entire GUI experience. Developers and hard core geeks are by and large going to be more similar to the people who wrote the software than your average end user, and the whole point of a beta is to get a very different set of eyes on the software. This is still a problem with proprietary models, but it seems to be less so because so many people want the status of getting that early release of windows or office. I have met these people, they make no sense to me at all.
I do not know how to fix this problem. It's tied into a well established way people think about alphas and betas and RCs and the entire version numbering system and what certain number combinations mean. These preconceptions were established when proprietary software ruled all, and not all of those pre conceptions apply to FOSS. I do think we need to begin to move away from that numbering system in some way. Before we can get to that though is the real crux of what I wanted to talk about (sorry that first paragraph was setup). People in the community need to understand the dynamics of how FOSS is developed and that a *.0 for a community FOSS project isn't going to be the same thing as a *.0 proprietary or even corporate FOSS project. I have seen so many people frustrated and disappointed by what they are seeing in KDE 4.0. Many of them have been very "vocal" about this in forums. Some of them in constructive ways, some of them in flaming "KDE SUCKS SEE I TOLD YOU GNOME WAS BETTER" way. I have also seen KDE developers over and over talk about how they are accomplishing pretty much everything they want with 4.0. They wanted to do a complete overhaul of dead code, and attempt to make system which will prevent them from becoming dependent on specific technologies. They have established a wonderful working system that can be much more easily built on and developed from this point forward. They have not made a great desktop yet. It's not there, and more importantly that wasn't the point for 4.0. The point was to make it easier to move towards developing a great desktop. This dynamic is true for many large community open source projects, especially when they do a major overhaul like KDE has needed to, and it is important for those of use who promote FOSS to try to keep these dynamics in mind when discussing these projects.
I think this same problem is mirrored in many of the complaints about Ubuntu and their rapid release cycles. Their release cycles have caused them to move forward with usability features much faster than any other desktop. They develop at a rate which boggles the mind in many cases. It has also caused an incredible number of bugs. I have an HP dv6000z laptop. I installed Edgy Eft on it. I had a ACPI problem that was easily enough fixed by turning ACPI off at boot. Not a huge issue, but it needed to be addressed eventually. The headphone jack didn't work. Again a minor nuisance thatneeds to be addressed eventually. Finally it had a broadcom wireless card. Enough said about the wireless. So I figured based on experience with previous distros that within a couple releases I would be fairly good to go. A couple releases later I can't get Ubuntu to run at all. Feisty had a sound glitch that locked the whole system up as the first bit of the startup sound repeated over and over and over. I tried to recompile ALSA, I tried various fixes, all to no avail. Feedback about my laptop became harder and harder to find. That told me more and more people were just giving up on it. When the good fight is happening forum posts happen. If a laptop is trash for Linux you cease to hear about it. So Gutsy comes along, and the sound repeat is still there, and I can't get rid of it, no matter how much I re-compile ALSA, but it no longer locks up all of the X system. Also my desktop system where my wireless card worked perfectly with Feisty had to be moved to a different room so it could be plugged into my router to run Gutsy. I think everyone has heart about Gutsy's wireless woes. Ubuntu is the only system I know of that has these kinds of regressions. These are the sorts of regressions that are supposed to happen as you add new features to developer releases, and alpha/betas. Not when holding finished products up next to each other. Many non Ubuntu fan boys scream about these issues and point to them as why Ubuntu is filth and polluting the purity of linux. Here's the thing, these are not LTR editions. If you look at how long Apple and Microsoft take to release an OS, it is not every 6 months. Apple is closer than Microsoft, but they still don't release at that harried rate. It all comes back to getting eyes on the software because FOSS projects don't have the money to put into testing that Apple or Microsoft do. So they make releases. If Ubuntu takes the time to make sure their LTR cycle products have the kind of quality that a commercial release gets, and moves forward with the bleeding edge on their short term products then I have no complaints.
At issue is a matter of mind share and marketing. These are the largest issues for FOSS. No one is spending the money on marketing that they should be. We see the occasional linux ad from IBM or Novell, but when is the last time you saw a really good Red Hat ad. I never have. I've never even seen a really bad Red Hat ad. I've never seen an Ubuntu ad, or a Mandrake ad, or a Linspire Ad. It's time to start thinking about how people view our software, and to send messages that clearly communicate what we intend each release to be. Microsoft and Apple spend billions of dollars on this process. Unfortunately a lot of it is spin, smoke and mirrors. I would hope that FOSS organizations would take a more honest approach, but even something in the mold of the same old same old would be better than everyone just making assumptions based on ingrained paradigms that don't apply.
As a final disclaimer to the people who will inevitably flame me about Ubuntu good or bad. I don't know that Ubuntu is doing what I suggested. Their upcoming LTR release might be as flakey and slow and unfortunate as their in-between releases. I just want to give them the benefit of the doubt. For the fan boys, even with the flakeyness I still use Ubuntu because I love the interface and features.
At issue is the need for community feedback. I have heard this from several developers, if they don't release something *.0 they don't get enough users to really find all the bugs and fix them. In a proprietary company there are large scale structured betas, and people who are paid specifically to try and break the software. In high school I was one of those people. I got a delightful $6.50 an hour back in the 90's to try and break an online curriculum for elementary school kids and do detailed bug reports. The problem we run into with FOSS software is that it's made by developers, and while we are starting to get "end users" with all the good and bad stigma that holds in our community, they are not the ones running betas. Mostly developers and hard core geeks are running betas, especially of products like KDE which if you run are going to take over your entire GUI experience. Developers and hard core geeks are by and large going to be more similar to the people who wrote the software than your average end user, and the whole point of a beta is to get a very different set of eyes on the software. This is still a problem with proprietary models, but it seems to be less so because so many people want the status of getting that early release of windows or office. I have met these people, they make no sense to me at all.
I do not know how to fix this problem. It's tied into a well established way people think about alphas and betas and RCs and the entire version numbering system and what certain number combinations mean. These preconceptions were established when proprietary software ruled all, and not all of those pre conceptions apply to FOSS. I do think we need to begin to move away from that numbering system in some way. Before we can get to that though is the real crux of what I wanted to talk about (sorry that first paragraph was setup). People in the community need to understand the dynamics of how FOSS is developed and that a *.0 for a community FOSS project isn't going to be the same thing as a *.0 proprietary or even corporate FOSS project. I have seen so many people frustrated and disappointed by what they are seeing in KDE 4.0. Many of them have been very "vocal" about this in forums. Some of them in constructive ways, some of them in flaming "KDE SUCKS SEE I TOLD YOU GNOME WAS BETTER" way. I have also seen KDE developers over and over talk about how they are accomplishing pretty much everything they want with 4.0. They wanted to do a complete overhaul of dead code, and attempt to make system which will prevent them from becoming dependent on specific technologies. They have established a wonderful working system that can be much more easily built on and developed from this point forward. They have not made a great desktop yet. It's not there, and more importantly that wasn't the point for 4.0. The point was to make it easier to move towards developing a great desktop. This dynamic is true for many large community open source projects, especially when they do a major overhaul like KDE has needed to, and it is important for those of use who promote FOSS to try to keep these dynamics in mind when discussing these projects.
I think this same problem is mirrored in many of the complaints about Ubuntu and their rapid release cycles. Their release cycles have caused them to move forward with usability features much faster than any other desktop. They develop at a rate which boggles the mind in many cases. It has also caused an incredible number of bugs. I have an HP dv6000z laptop. I installed Edgy Eft on it. I had a ACPI problem that was easily enough fixed by turning ACPI off at boot. Not a huge issue, but it needed to be addressed eventually. The headphone jack didn't work. Again a minor nuisance thatneeds to be addressed eventually. Finally it had a broadcom wireless card. Enough said about the wireless. So I figured based on experience with previous distros that within a couple releases I would be fairly good to go. A couple releases later I can't get Ubuntu to run at all. Feisty had a sound glitch that locked the whole system up as the first bit of the startup sound repeated over and over and over. I tried to recompile ALSA, I tried various fixes, all to no avail. Feedback about my laptop became harder and harder to find. That told me more and more people were just giving up on it. When the good fight is happening forum posts happen. If a laptop is trash for Linux you cease to hear about it. So Gutsy comes along, and the sound repeat is still there, and I can't get rid of it, no matter how much I re-compile ALSA, but it no longer locks up all of the X system. Also my desktop system where my wireless card worked perfectly with Feisty had to be moved to a different room so it could be plugged into my router to run Gutsy. I think everyone has heart about Gutsy's wireless woes. Ubuntu is the only system I know of that has these kinds of regressions. These are the sorts of regressions that are supposed to happen as you add new features to developer releases, and alpha/betas. Not when holding finished products up next to each other. Many non Ubuntu fan boys scream about these issues and point to them as why Ubuntu is filth and polluting the purity of linux. Here's the thing, these are not LTR editions. If you look at how long Apple and Microsoft take to release an OS, it is not every 6 months. Apple is closer than Microsoft, but they still don't release at that harried rate. It all comes back to getting eyes on the software because FOSS projects don't have the money to put into testing that Apple or Microsoft do. So they make releases. If Ubuntu takes the time to make sure their LTR cycle products have the kind of quality that a commercial release gets, and moves forward with the bleeding edge on their short term products then I have no complaints.
At issue is a matter of mind share and marketing. These are the largest issues for FOSS. No one is spending the money on marketing that they should be. We see the occasional linux ad from IBM or Novell, but when is the last time you saw a really good Red Hat ad. I never have. I've never even seen a really bad Red Hat ad. I've never seen an Ubuntu ad, or a Mandrake ad, or a Linspire Ad. It's time to start thinking about how people view our software, and to send messages that clearly communicate what we intend each release to be. Microsoft and Apple spend billions of dollars on this process. Unfortunately a lot of it is spin, smoke and mirrors. I would hope that FOSS organizations would take a more honest approach, but even something in the mold of the same old same old would be better than everyone just making assumptions based on ingrained paradigms that don't apply.
As a final disclaimer to the people who will inevitably flame me about Ubuntu good or bad. I don't know that Ubuntu is doing what I suggested. Their upcoming LTR release might be as flakey and slow and unfortunate as their in-between releases. I just want to give them the benefit of the doubt. For the fan boys, even with the flakeyness I still use Ubuntu because I love the interface and features.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Why Linux is Ready, Not Ready for the Desktop and Why we Care in the Wrong Way.
Ok, for starters, I'm not going to enumerate on linux's weaknesses and strengths and talk about why it is or is not ready for the desktop. I know, I know my title would make it seem like that was going to be my focus, but it is not. Instead I'm going to talk about the community's idiotic (yeah you heard me bring the flames, go ahead my e-mail is ciggychan@gmail.com) treatment of this subject. Too many other people have talked about what the problems are, and why they do or do not matter, to discuss that would be a waste of my time. I'm going to discuss why those people are all focusing on the WRONG thing.
The Linux Isn't Ready Argument and the Flame Responses
We've all read these articles, and most of us have written angry responses. Listing flaws that either we all know about, or flaws we have no control over. These articles get it wrong because Linux is indeed ready for OUR desktops, and obviously ready for the desktops of certain professional developers, and public library and education stations. Well you know why it's ready for those desktops? Because either they are being maintained by someone who is doing hardware research and only purchasing hardware that will just work when plugged in, or it's in the hands of techies who care enough to look up tutorials and dig into the terminal and hack away at ndiswrapper to get things to work. I am one of those people. Linux is ready more or less for my desktop, and it is totally ready for many other people's desktop. Every time there is an improvement in a new release it becomes ready for a few more desktops. Now here is the point that all the responses miss. We should be leveraging Linux at these people. Do we see marketing campaigns? Well do we? NO, we don't. There is no bloody marketing, except for the occasional ad for major server linux products from IBM, and I haven't even seen that in a while. Because the one flaw we have very little control over, third party app development and hardware support is best changed through getting a larger audience. We should be pushing Linux hard at the people it's ready for. Which also means ACCEPTING WHO IT'S NOT READY FOR!
2 The Linux is Too Ready Articles and Flame Responses
Now come the responses that make me even more crazy that the ignorarant Linux isn't ready articles. They miss the point in an even more painful way because they are from people inside the community. Linux isn't perfect people. It has flaws, just like Windows and Mac. We need to be adult enough to look at those flaws and see what we can do to change them. We cannot stick our heads in the ground. Again I'm not going to waste my time listing those flaws many other people have done that for me. Linux is not ready for the desktop of your average facebook obsessed, web camming, newest version of Photoshop/Flash/proprietary Cannon printer using gaming consumer. The same way Windows isn't ready for our desktop. That's right Windows isn't READY for our desktop. If we can look at those flaws, and ask ourselves, what can we do to fix that. Can we push the big distributors towards collaborating more closely with the LSB to get a more stably API to make development easier. Can we really talk at these various distro developer conferences about usability issues, and working webcam support into Pidgin, and working on the JRE so it works more similarly to the Windows and Mac version. We need to stand up and work on making the product better. Accept our responsibility, while calling people to task who claim Linux is "Not Ready" instead of just writing off their criticism.
There are some good signs, GIMP is accepting major usability suggestions from the community for the next version (THANK GOD). Pidgin is finally moving forward after all that stupid legal bog down. Ubuntu is introducing all sorts of usability advancements. They could use some speed and performance help, but there is still good innovation happening there. We need to push those innovations forward, while taking criticism professionally. That is productive. If we can start doing that, we can begin to significantly increase how many desktops we are ready for. Linux will never be ready for everyone. We are a community that embraces choice, and choice means someone will want something different. That's OK, the joy of distros is we can have one distro for the hard core tech and one distro where you never see the terminal. I am all for this. I approve of it. We have gotten our choice, we got it a while ago. It's time to give the average consumer their choice, and that means making the desktop ready for them to help them. Not to shove Microsoft off their throne. Because when we start doing things for positive instead of negative reasons we will be a lot more willing to actually listen to the needs of the people who's desktop Linux isn't ready for.
The Linux Isn't Ready Argument and the Flame Responses
We've all read these articles, and most of us have written angry responses. Listing flaws that either we all know about, or flaws we have no control over. These articles get it wrong because Linux is indeed ready for OUR desktops, and obviously ready for the desktops of certain professional developers, and public library and education stations. Well you know why it's ready for those desktops? Because either they are being maintained by someone who is doing hardware research and only purchasing hardware that will just work when plugged in, or it's in the hands of techies who care enough to look up tutorials and dig into the terminal and hack away at ndiswrapper to get things to work. I am one of those people. Linux is ready more or less for my desktop, and it is totally ready for many other people's desktop. Every time there is an improvement in a new release it becomes ready for a few more desktops. Now here is the point that all the responses miss. We should be leveraging Linux at these people. Do we see marketing campaigns? Well do we? NO, we don't. There is no bloody marketing, except for the occasional ad for major server linux products from IBM, and I haven't even seen that in a while. Because the one flaw we have very little control over, third party app development and hardware support is best changed through getting a larger audience. We should be pushing Linux hard at the people it's ready for. Which also means ACCEPTING WHO IT'S NOT READY FOR!
2 The Linux is Too Ready Articles and Flame Responses
Now come the responses that make me even more crazy that the ignorarant Linux isn't ready articles. They miss the point in an even more painful way because they are from people inside the community. Linux isn't perfect people. It has flaws, just like Windows and Mac. We need to be adult enough to look at those flaws and see what we can do to change them. We cannot stick our heads in the ground. Again I'm not going to waste my time listing those flaws many other people have done that for me. Linux is not ready for the desktop of your average facebook obsessed, web camming, newest version of Photoshop/Flash/proprietary Cannon printer using gaming consumer. The same way Windows isn't ready for our desktop. That's right Windows isn't READY for our desktop. If we can look at those flaws, and ask ourselves, what can we do to fix that. Can we push the big distributors towards collaborating more closely with the LSB to get a more stably API to make development easier. Can we really talk at these various distro developer conferences about usability issues, and working webcam support into Pidgin, and working on the JRE so it works more similarly to the Windows and Mac version. We need to stand up and work on making the product better. Accept our responsibility, while calling people to task who claim Linux is "Not Ready" instead of just writing off their criticism.
There are some good signs, GIMP is accepting major usability suggestions from the community for the next version (THANK GOD). Pidgin is finally moving forward after all that stupid legal bog down. Ubuntu is introducing all sorts of usability advancements. They could use some speed and performance help, but there is still good innovation happening there. We need to push those innovations forward, while taking criticism professionally. That is productive. If we can start doing that, we can begin to significantly increase how many desktops we are ready for. Linux will never be ready for everyone. We are a community that embraces choice, and choice means someone will want something different. That's OK, the joy of distros is we can have one distro for the hard core tech and one distro where you never see the terminal. I am all for this. I approve of it. We have gotten our choice, we got it a while ago. It's time to give the average consumer their choice, and that means making the desktop ready for them to help them. Not to shove Microsoft off their throne. Because when we start doing things for positive instead of negative reasons we will be a lot more willing to actually listen to the needs of the people who's desktop Linux isn't ready for.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Novell "Fork" and Strange opinions in the OSS Community.
I have read a great deal over the past few days about a "Fork" in OpenOffice.org. First I would like to say I am appalled at Groklaw's reaction to Novell's announcement.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061204130954610
Everything they are doing is being released back to the OpenOffice project, and they have maintained a separate version of OpenOffice for some time that they make widely available. Other distros do the same. Not only that but they show Novell's press release in the article where they accuse them of "forking" the project and in the press release is the following quote:
Novell will release the code to integrate the Open XML format into its product as open source and submit it for inclusion in the OpenOffice.org project. As a result, end users will be able to more easily share files between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org, as documents will better maintain consistent formats, formulas and style templates across the two office productivity suites.
Now I have never taken a law class, but I have been reading open source articles, and articles that take court cases and bring them down to a common level of understanding for a long time. Last I checked none of the words in this quote had been dramatically changed in definition by Websters. How Groklaw could write the article they did, accusing Novell of the things they have accused them of while placing this text in the exact same document is beyond me.
Then I read a bunch of fired up forum posts one of which linked to Luis Villa's Blog
http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/12/05/quick-thoughts-on-novell-blogs-as-journalism-etc/
He had a very even headed response to the entire thing, and feels about Groklaw about the same way I do. However he made one other point that I heartily disagree with. That is he says he thinks supporing Microsoft OpenXML is a bad idea because it gives legitimacy to the standard. Now I'm sorry, but one of the only things that has made OpenOffice a viable alternative to Microsoft Office is that when some average joe consumer sends you a file they made in Microsoft Office we have to be able to open it. So when Microsoft has a closed format it's appropriate to crack it, but when they make an open format and submit it as a standard it's unacceptable to use? Aren't we getting just a little bit childish here. If Microsoft changed their .doc format in an attempt to keep us from being able to read the files, or just because they wanted to, we would accuse them of playing unfair. We would have cracked that baby faster than my little sister used to break into the cupboard to eat all the raw sugar. Yet now they open it to use, as many flaws and absurdities as it may posses, and we say, no I'm sorry we wouldn't want to give you legitimacy.
Microsoft is not the anti-Christ. They are a corporation that happens to have a great deal in common with IBM from back in the day. Now who is one of our greatest supporters? IBM. Microsoft has some shady dealings, and many of the people who have made them despicable over the years are still there, but some of those people are fading out. Some day Microsoft is going to wake up and they are going to have as close to a functional management as a large corporation can have, and they are going to enter into a key meeting where they decide to do the next version of Windows or Office in a manner which is in some major way directly beneficial to Open Source. They will still be competition, but as with the Novell and Microsoft deal sometimes you have to work with your competition while still competing against them to get things done.
It's time for us to at least try and look at Microsoft's actions for what they are and at least turn the anti-Christ, nothing they do can be good tint down a little bit. If we don't the other 90-95% of the population that doesn't bow at the foot of the Open Source religion is never going to take us seriously.
Forget giving legitimacy, or who's evil. Just ask the people what they want, and then show them that Open Source can give it to them.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061204130954610
Everything they are doing is being released back to the OpenOffice project, and they have maintained a separate version of OpenOffice for some time that they make widely available. Other distros do the same. Not only that but they show Novell's press release in the article where they accuse them of "forking" the project and in the press release is the following quote:
Novell will release the code to integrate the Open XML format into its product as open source and submit it for inclusion in the OpenOffice.org project. As a result, end users will be able to more easily share files between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org, as documents will better maintain consistent formats, formulas and style templates across the two office productivity suites.
Now I have never taken a law class, but I have been reading open source articles, and articles that take court cases and bring them down to a common level of understanding for a long time. Last I checked none of the words in this quote had been dramatically changed in definition by Websters. How Groklaw could write the article they did, accusing Novell of the things they have accused them of while placing this text in the exact same document is beyond me.
Then I read a bunch of fired up forum posts one of which linked to Luis Villa's Blog
http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/12/05/quick-thoughts-on-novell-blogs-as-journalism-etc/
He had a very even headed response to the entire thing, and feels about Groklaw about the same way I do. However he made one other point that I heartily disagree with. That is he says he thinks supporing Microsoft OpenXML is a bad idea because it gives legitimacy to the standard. Now I'm sorry, but one of the only things that has made OpenOffice a viable alternative to Microsoft Office is that when some average joe consumer sends you a file they made in Microsoft Office we have to be able to open it. So when Microsoft has a closed format it's appropriate to crack it, but when they make an open format and submit it as a standard it's unacceptable to use? Aren't we getting just a little bit childish here. If Microsoft changed their .doc format in an attempt to keep us from being able to read the files, or just because they wanted to, we would accuse them of playing unfair. We would have cracked that baby faster than my little sister used to break into the cupboard to eat all the raw sugar. Yet now they open it to use, as many flaws and absurdities as it may posses, and we say, no I'm sorry we wouldn't want to give you legitimacy.
Microsoft is not the anti-Christ. They are a corporation that happens to have a great deal in common with IBM from back in the day. Now who is one of our greatest supporters? IBM. Microsoft has some shady dealings, and many of the people who have made them despicable over the years are still there, but some of those people are fading out. Some day Microsoft is going to wake up and they are going to have as close to a functional management as a large corporation can have, and they are going to enter into a key meeting where they decide to do the next version of Windows or Office in a manner which is in some major way directly beneficial to Open Source. They will still be competition, but as with the Novell and Microsoft deal sometimes you have to work with your competition while still competing against them to get things done.
It's time for us to at least try and look at Microsoft's actions for what they are and at least turn the anti-Christ, nothing they do can be good tint down a little bit. If we don't the other 90-95% of the population that doesn't bow at the foot of the Open Source religion is never going to take us seriously.
Forget giving legitimacy, or who's evil. Just ask the people what they want, and then show them that Open Source can give it to them.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Internet Multimedia and Mozilla Flash Agreement
There has been a lot of madness going on recently in the open source community. Oracle grabbing up Red Hat's distribution and re-branding it as unbreakable. Which in my opinion is kind of funny, anyone who's ever tried to administer any computer system at all knows that the word "unbreakable" is kind of like a Greek woman fawning all over their new born baby in front of a shrine to Zeus.
In the midst of all this excitement there was a small insignificant announcement that Adobe was going to be handing over the code for the ActionScript virtual machine to the Mozilla foundation. This will have the effect of improving the efficiency of Flash content in Firefox by building some of the interpretation into the browser. This will certainly help with cross platform compatibility. Considering the headache they've been going through trying to implement Flash in linux using only a minimal set of libraries to avoid dependency issues it comes as no surprise to me that they made this move.
Personally I think this move in the long run has the potential to be more exciting than either of the "Take down the Red Hat" announcements. If this code is released under a full open source license, which it is my understanding that it will be, then there is the possibility of someone really attacking the project of writing an open source program that does what Flash does. Now I don't mean writing a flash replacement. That is such an enormous monolithic project I don't see how anyone could catch up to it. However, as with Photoshop there is only a small percentage of the people who use Flash who make use of all of it's capabilities. If somehow over the next several years someone was able to create a project that implemented vector graphics interactivity and animation in the Flash style and only got to the point of the Flash 4 feature set then that would be really exciting. I don't think it would cut into Adobe's market all that much either. The people who are willing to pay Adobe's astronomical pricetag for Flash aren't going to be interested in a smaller open source alternative. For people interested in just doing web interactivity work in the .swf format with Actionscript controls though having an affordable alternative would be a major step forward. Macromedia made Flash available at reasonable educational prices. I knew students who invested 100 bucks and got the entire MX 2004 suite from my college. The academic price for flash itself is now a couple hundred bucks. I wish I had the programming know how to start a project like this, because it is time. There is a huge market of people who are ready to make the web far more interactive than most of it is now, but aren't that crusty top layer that Adobe sells to. It's time to make a product for the rest of us.
In the midst of all this excitement there was a small insignificant announcement that Adobe was going to be handing over the code for the ActionScript virtual machine to the Mozilla foundation. This will have the effect of improving the efficiency of Flash content in Firefox by building some of the interpretation into the browser. This will certainly help with cross platform compatibility. Considering the headache they've been going through trying to implement Flash in linux using only a minimal set of libraries to avoid dependency issues it comes as no surprise to me that they made this move.
Personally I think this move in the long run has the potential to be more exciting than either of the "Take down the Red Hat" announcements. If this code is released under a full open source license, which it is my understanding that it will be, then there is the possibility of someone really attacking the project of writing an open source program that does what Flash does. Now I don't mean writing a flash replacement. That is such an enormous monolithic project I don't see how anyone could catch up to it. However, as with Photoshop there is only a small percentage of the people who use Flash who make use of all of it's capabilities. If somehow over the next several years someone was able to create a project that implemented vector graphics interactivity and animation in the Flash style and only got to the point of the Flash 4 feature set then that would be really exciting. I don't think it would cut into Adobe's market all that much either. The people who are willing to pay Adobe's astronomical pricetag for Flash aren't going to be interested in a smaller open source alternative. For people interested in just doing web interactivity work in the .swf format with Actionscript controls though having an affordable alternative would be a major step forward. Macromedia made Flash available at reasonable educational prices. I knew students who invested 100 bucks and got the entire MX 2004 suite from my college. The academic price for flash itself is now a couple hundred bucks. I wish I had the programming know how to start a project like this, because it is time. There is a huge market of people who are ready to make the web far more interactive than most of it is now, but aren't that crusty top layer that Adobe sells to. It's time to make a product for the rest of us.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Xubuntu's Edge First Impressions
So as soon as the Xubuntu page updated, which was sadly after both Ubuntu and Kubuntu, I ran in and grabbed the shiny new 6.10 iso. I have not played with any pre-releases or betas, or production spins for the simple reason that I don't currently have a computer that is working. I was lucky enough that my boyfriend is getting a new laptop and turning over his Dell desktop that he picked up for 10 bucks because of a financial aid program to me. I can have a samba and apache server again, and it makes me happy. We are still waiting for his laptop to arrive, so this is only going to be a review of the live CD experience. Now I should preface this by saying I never really used Dapper. I used 5.10 Kubuntu and at one point did the Synaptic "Update All" thing. The interface changed quite a bit, so I presume this was basically Dapper, but it had some personality problems. So if I mention some issues I had with previous versions of Kubuntu in my case that seem well obscure and weird, consider the source.
So as soon as the Xubuntu page updated, which was sadly after both Ubuntu and Kubuntu, I ran in and grabbed the shiny new 6.10 iso. I have not played with any pre-releases or betas, or production spins for the simple reason that I don't currently have a computer that is working. I was lucky enough that my boyfriend is getting a new laptop and turning over his Dell desktop that he picked up for 10 bucks because of a financial aid program to me. I can have a samba and apache server again, and it makes me happy. We are still waiting for his laptop to arrive, so this is only going to be a review of the live CD experience. Now I should preface this by saying I never really used Dapper. I used 5.10 Kubuntu and at one point did the Synaptic "Update All" thing. The interface changed quite a bit, so I presume this was basically Dapper, but it had some personality problems. So if I mention some issues I had with previous versions of Kubuntu in my case that seem well obscure and weird, consider the source.
Bootup: Bootup was delightful. It was exceptionally quick for a live CD. I am looking forward to seeing how quickly it boots when actually installed. When the desktop showed up there was an icon for my iomega USB hard drive, which has been on the Dell since my computer toasted itself a couple weeks ago. There was also an icon for the DVD burning drive that had a random ATI driver disk in it that I hadn't taken out before I booted. There was no icon for the CD burner that I was running the live CD out of, but that makes a certain amount of sense.
First Action: The first thing I did was double click on the iomega drive and try to load a pdf and a .mpg. The reason I did this is my Kubuntu file manager always freaked out a little over actually launching files from the media:/ location. I hated the fact that if I wanted to run anything, I had to manually go to the location in the Unix file structure. I really wanted the drive icons on my desktop to go there for me since the media:/ thing obviously didn't work. In Xubuntu this worked perfectly, and again even though I was on a live cd the launch time was tolerable. Not what I'd call peppy, but tolerable, which is an excellent sign when launching from CD.
Icon Options and Arrangement: The Applications menu was well laid out. The options were in good places, and there was a decent selection. I had a couple problems. One there was no burning program that I could find. Now this may be because it's a live CD, but I would hope that since live CD function is generally used to evaluate an OS before you actually install everything would be here. There are companies now that you literally cannot purchase a computer from without at least a CD writer. As I have been shopping for a laptop to replace my now defunct desktop most configurations start with a DVD player/CD burner combo drive. I know Xubuntu is meant for older computers, but given how most software is distributed for linux not having the burning interface installed is kinda silly.
The Little Things I Noticed: Firefox is included with its honest to god, not free as in freedom icon. I say good for the Ubuntu people. I personally think that if Firefox wants to maintain a certain amount of quality control around the code that gets distributed under their trademark then they should. It is that kind of attention to quality that keeps so much proprietary software ahead of the game (go ahead flame me I can take it), and it's what has allowed Firefox to take so much of IE's market share. I personally hope they keep it up.
The next little thing I noticed was the "Add Remove" icon in the "Other" sub-menu of the Applications menu. Now when you open this thing you realize it's synaptic with the menus and options taken away. It even uses the same icon. I opened synaptic next to it to see if they were similar, and they do not have even remotely similar interfaces. In fact there is one interface change in synaptic from my old Kubuntu 5.10 install that I am rather annoyed about. The lack of a search field in the main window interface (something Add/Remove has I must say). When using synaptic you're probably going to be searching, because if you know the package that's what apt-get is for. The advantage of synaptic is you can browse package lists. I think it's good that they included Add/Remove. Personally I think they should have taken some time to make a different icon so they could both be in the system sub-menu. I mean "other" why would you go to all the trouble of including and possibly developing (I don't know if the ubuntu people did this interface or not) a whole interface for newbies, and then put the link to it in some weird place no newbie would ever look? This isn't the end of the world, but it's a sloppy little tidbit on the end of an otherwise nice move towards non linux usability while maintaining the options for power users.
Other Usability Complaints: Ok while I'm on the subject of usability. I would like to comment on the media:/ thing again. So while writing this review I open Abi-word to check out how it inputs .odt files. I click the open icon. It gives me a very attractive maclike interface. I click on the desktop to get to my USB drive, and am greeted with . . . nothing. There is no link on my desktop to my iomega USB hard drive. This is totally unacceptable. Ubuntu took the time to generate a whole false hierarchy that only works when you are in their file managers. They didn't even both to alter the code to the packages they distributed so that it would work with them. Way back in the day when I used Xandros 2.0 their weird "My Computeresq" file structure was at least recognized by the programs that Xandros supported. If you installed someone else's software you were out of luck, but it worked with what came with the OS. Now here is my question. If you are going to spend all that time developing a whole new data file structure, you might as well build it into the actual file structure. I mean really. I would rather the mount points actually be on the desktop. Would that be so bad, I mean really would it? Or here's another possibilty could you possible setup a program that could dynamically create actual file structure virtual links? Would this create a lot of messy referencing if you are in the terminal. Why yes yes it would, and let's see this is for the benefit of newbies. If a newbie is in terminal then he deserves to have to start actually learning what things are. This NEEDS to be fixed. I like the link on the desktop, I like that fact that I can actually launch from it. It absolutely must show up when I use the open file command inside of the programs that come with the flippin distro. My other problem is that the live CD did not detect my sound card properly. It is an on board Dell Sound Card. This is not a new dell, this is a rather old dell. It is running 256 megs of SDRAM, the 133 Mhz variety and a 1.6 Ghz P4. So it's not like there were any surprises waiting.
Ok now that my rant is done, I will resolve. This is a good distro. As I never really played with dapper I can't say how much of an improvement it is, but I can say it is closer to a usable desktop than any other I have used. My major complaints detailed above are shared by the vast majority of linux desktops. While Xandros has done a wonderful job of tackling some of these usability issues when you boot into Xandros even now it feels like you are running something that is almost a decade old. Is Xandros ready for prime time commercial desktop, sadly no. I have yet to play with a linux desktop that is. Is it a good choice for linux geeks wanting a complete distribution based off simple low system requirements packages that provide support for all the modern goodness that we have come to expect from distributions, definitely. As someone who doesn't care about bouncing icons and 3D animated squares for my desktop (it looks cool, but I'm sorry it's the stupidest UI idea I've ever seen), Xubuntu makes me very happy. Hopefully it will continue to improve over time, and in a few more versions some of the basic flaws that still plague it will be worked out. Till then it's the best I've seen on the market.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Linux needs to be less like Windows and more like Mac
Ok, so here's for my latest rant about Linux. I'm sort of over my previous period of maddness and fury having to do with my various linux woes. Since then I have thought a lot about some of the flaws with linux. I have been away from linux for a while because my processor in my desktop had an unfortunate run in with fan failure while I was away and overheating as a result. I have not had the time to tinker with my box, and haven't been home much anyway. So I have been using the computers at work/friend's houses. These are all winxp boxes with a variety of open source applications installed.
There is one exception to this. My boyfriend's room mate has a mac. It is the World or Warcraft box in the dorm room, and as such I spend what little relaxation/game time I have on that computer. Now I have never liked Macs. Going back to the dark ages of computing I always thought Macs were silly, poorly designed and bound to that stupid one button mouse. My opinion of the Mac OS has improved dramatically over the past couple years. The interface is beautiful. I don't like all the eye candy taking up precious system resources, but modern linux distros and windows are both going that direction as well, so I can't complain too much. At least with linux you have the option of picking a distro with slenderness as a design goal. Windows and Mac you're at the whim of whatever you are able to turn off. What has struck me about Mac while using the WoW machine in my boyfriend's dorm room is that if you added a second mouse button (this still irks the ever living innapropriate explitive out of me) it would be a better interface than windows. It's easy to use, responsive, has a logical file system interface as far as I can tell.
Here's the important part. The configuration interfaces are easy to figure out. I mean really really easy to figure out. There is very little you have to tinker with manually, but it is nothing like windows. It doesn't look like windows, things aren't in the same place as windows, the aesthetic is different, the buttons on the top of the program windows are different.
Linux is a nightmare to navigate. If a driver doesn't manually detect, you're probably going to have to go into the text prompt to fix it. Especially if you need ndiswrapper for wifi or something similar. Either it just works or you're going to rip your hair out getting it to work. There is no, well this needs some configuration but the system is standard enough that we could write you a decent graphical interface to do it with. Not with drivers, or for that matter most of the system. Some things aren't like that anymore, samba, cups, x.org. But too much of linux still needs you to go far too deep to get it to work.
Every time someone brings this up the inevitable conversation comes up about linux "becoming like windows". I say we need to be like mac. Not have easy to use config utilities and interfaces in the places Mac has them, but just have them. Make them as easy to use as we possibly can then put them where we think they make sense. Stop worry about "easy" being too like Microsoft. We need to be unique, but start targeting people who are the reason you now have to request a sys restore disk from major OEMs. We are past "Well Linux is easy to install". Who cares if it's easy to install, most people never install an OS, windows, mac, linux or otherwise. The very idea of it terrifys them. We need an interface that Dell would be comfortable putting in a home computer and selling to one of these people. We need a home video program as simple as Mac's, we need a music player as easy and slick as iTunes, and so on and so forth. Before anyone flames me Amarok is great and all, but it looks too much like a program. Audio is one of those consumer electronics things. People want it to looks pretty, and Amarok is just not a pretty program. I'm really hoping songbird fills this void.
Linspire is starting a real honest to god OEM channel program, and god bless them for it. We need more though. Linspire while an ok consumer OS still has K3B as a burning program, and well no offense, but that just doesn't cut the mustard. The wifi support is great, but if you run into anything non standard in a network someone else controlls at a coffeehouse or something you are still out of luck. Xandros is great in some respects, but it looks like you're running something from the Windows 98 Mac OS 8 era, and well that just doesn't cut it either. I don't want to talk about Fedora, Slack, Ubuntu, or any other distros for that matter because quite honestly they are great linux geek distros, and Ubuntu wants to be a distro for the masses, but until it comes with some proprietary sugar coating it's going to be a geek only distro. Like it or not 90% of the population doesn't give two whits about software philosophy and it's time we started admitting that.
There is one exception to this. My boyfriend's room mate has a mac. It is the World or Warcraft box in the dorm room, and as such I spend what little relaxation/game time I have on that computer. Now I have never liked Macs. Going back to the dark ages of computing I always thought Macs were silly, poorly designed and bound to that stupid one button mouse. My opinion of the Mac OS has improved dramatically over the past couple years. The interface is beautiful. I don't like all the eye candy taking up precious system resources, but modern linux distros and windows are both going that direction as well, so I can't complain too much. At least with linux you have the option of picking a distro with slenderness as a design goal. Windows and Mac you're at the whim of whatever you are able to turn off. What has struck me about Mac while using the WoW machine in my boyfriend's dorm room is that if you added a second mouse button (this still irks the ever living innapropriate explitive out of me) it would be a better interface than windows. It's easy to use, responsive, has a logical file system interface as far as I can tell.
Here's the important part. The configuration interfaces are easy to figure out. I mean really really easy to figure out. There is very little you have to tinker with manually, but it is nothing like windows. It doesn't look like windows, things aren't in the same place as windows, the aesthetic is different, the buttons on the top of the program windows are different.
Linux is a nightmare to navigate. If a driver doesn't manually detect, you're probably going to have to go into the text prompt to fix it. Especially if you need ndiswrapper for wifi or something similar. Either it just works or you're going to rip your hair out getting it to work. There is no, well this needs some configuration but the system is standard enough that we could write you a decent graphical interface to do it with. Not with drivers, or for that matter most of the system. Some things aren't like that anymore, samba, cups, x.org. But too much of linux still needs you to go far too deep to get it to work.
Every time someone brings this up the inevitable conversation comes up about linux "becoming like windows". I say we need to be like mac. Not have easy to use config utilities and interfaces in the places Mac has them, but just have them. Make them as easy to use as we possibly can then put them where we think they make sense. Stop worry about "easy" being too like Microsoft. We need to be unique, but start targeting people who are the reason you now have to request a sys restore disk from major OEMs. We are past "Well Linux is easy to install". Who cares if it's easy to install, most people never install an OS, windows, mac, linux or otherwise. The very idea of it terrifys them. We need an interface that Dell would be comfortable putting in a home computer and selling to one of these people. We need a home video program as simple as Mac's, we need a music player as easy and slick as iTunes, and so on and so forth. Before anyone flames me Amarok is great and all, but it looks too much like a program. Audio is one of those consumer electronics things. People want it to looks pretty, and Amarok is just not a pretty program. I'm really hoping songbird fills this void.
Linspire is starting a real honest to god OEM channel program, and god bless them for it. We need more though. Linspire while an ok consumer OS still has K3B as a burning program, and well no offense, but that just doesn't cut the mustard. The wifi support is great, but if you run into anything non standard in a network someone else controlls at a coffeehouse or something you are still out of luck. Xandros is great in some respects, but it looks like you're running something from the Windows 98 Mac OS 8 era, and well that just doesn't cut it either. I don't want to talk about Fedora, Slack, Ubuntu, or any other distros for that matter because quite honestly they are great linux geek distros, and Ubuntu wants to be a distro for the masses, but until it comes with some proprietary sugar coating it's going to be a geek only distro. Like it or not 90% of the population doesn't give two whits about software philosophy and it's time we started admitting that.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Flash player, development, and the silly FOSS community.
The Flash player beta is live for linux. I am quite pleased that this piece of software is finally available for linux. Though when I saw the blog posting about this going live and I saw the two versions of the player something struck me.
There is a moz plugin and there is a standalone GTK player. I decided to do a little digging and see what dependencies this baby had. What did I find out. I found out that as linux goes it has as close to none as is practically possible. It uses video4linux for video output, it uses basic alsa, X11, GTK, POSIX threads and BSD sockets for non HTTP connections, it also uses openSSL. Now many of these dependencies are for specific features like the video4lin is for webcam input. Most flash doesn't need this. Similarly I imagine computers without some of the later listings would still run the plugin until you tried to use the specific functionality.
This highlights something that really kind of bothers me about how the community has treated Adobe during this process, and it highlights one of the strengths of the closed source development model. This baby will run on just about anything under the sun. I mean really just about anything. Find my a KDE user who is enough of a purist to not have GTK installed on their system. Let's be honest when you think about the history of Qt and Gnome's inception you can venture a guess that they have the lion's share of the purists anyway. So why is this so special, because if this plugin had been developed openly it likely would have used extra development libraries to make things "easier". Would it have gotten out faster, well you bet it would have, and it would have been a beautiful plugin for the people running the distros that properly supported it. Or people running distros that it got into the repositories right away. But even with apt, there have been times, more frequent than I like to list where I have tried to install something and the dependencies weren't in the standard repositories that came listed in my distro, so I had to go in and hunt down new ones that had the required files. This is unacceptable. I am all for distros maintaining quality and perhaps even setting up the version of synaptic on their distro to alert you when you are downloading packages from somewhere other than their main repository, but they should still come connected to a truly comprehensive respository.
The flash plugin avoids all of this, and why do you ask, well likely because the Adobe people reinvented the wheel making the thing. They likely produced all sorts of fun crazy functions and classes that have functionality elsewhere and as a result the program is probably larger than it needs to be, and took a lot longer to get out the door than was necessary, but you know what? I don't care, because it isn't going to be a superior or easier experience on one modern distro than another. It's going to just work, and while I respect the open source development process, and I think it should continue, I wish the FOSS community would start encouraging some closed software where it's appropriate. I like closed and open software. The open software I use, I only use because it is better software. That whole "I don't own a DVD player because it uses CSS" bull that Stallman rants about is in my opinion silly. Open software is a really really good thing. It keeps an open sofware ecosystem, and active software ecosystem, and it keeps the commercial guys on their toes. If it were superior in every way there would be a flash equivalent out. GIMP would be as good as Photoshop, and Blender would be as easy to use as Rhino.
I use GIMP regularly, and I think Blender has come a long way. They are both wonderful programs, but they do not stand up to their commercial counterparts. And the day someone in the open source community takes on Flash I will throw a big ole' here's to the vain hope you keep your sanity party for them. I don't mean vector, I mean a complete open source package integrating vector, and interactivity with a scripting language as dynamic and powerful as actionscript. There isn't even an inferior attempt at this one because no one has been crazy enough to try it.
So give the commercial guys a break, especially when they decide to support us. Maybe if we supported them some the reciprocation would happen more often.
There is a moz plugin and there is a standalone GTK player. I decided to do a little digging and see what dependencies this baby had. What did I find out. I found out that as linux goes it has as close to none as is practically possible. It uses video4linux for video output, it uses basic alsa, X11, GTK, POSIX threads and BSD sockets for non HTTP connections, it also uses openSSL. Now many of these dependencies are for specific features like the video4lin is for webcam input. Most flash doesn't need this. Similarly I imagine computers without some of the later listings would still run the plugin until you tried to use the specific functionality.
This highlights something that really kind of bothers me about how the community has treated Adobe during this process, and it highlights one of the strengths of the closed source development model. This baby will run on just about anything under the sun. I mean really just about anything. Find my a KDE user who is enough of a purist to not have GTK installed on their system. Let's be honest when you think about the history of Qt and Gnome's inception you can venture a guess that they have the lion's share of the purists anyway. So why is this so special, because if this plugin had been developed openly it likely would have used extra development libraries to make things "easier". Would it have gotten out faster, well you bet it would have, and it would have been a beautiful plugin for the people running the distros that properly supported it. Or people running distros that it got into the repositories right away. But even with apt, there have been times, more frequent than I like to list where I have tried to install something and the dependencies weren't in the standard repositories that came listed in my distro, so I had to go in and hunt down new ones that had the required files. This is unacceptable. I am all for distros maintaining quality and perhaps even setting up the version of synaptic on their distro to alert you when you are downloading packages from somewhere other than their main repository, but they should still come connected to a truly comprehensive respository.
The flash plugin avoids all of this, and why do you ask, well likely because the Adobe people reinvented the wheel making the thing. They likely produced all sorts of fun crazy functions and classes that have functionality elsewhere and as a result the program is probably larger than it needs to be, and took a lot longer to get out the door than was necessary, but you know what? I don't care, because it isn't going to be a superior or easier experience on one modern distro than another. It's going to just work, and while I respect the open source development process, and I think it should continue, I wish the FOSS community would start encouraging some closed software where it's appropriate. I like closed and open software. The open software I use, I only use because it is better software. That whole "I don't own a DVD player because it uses CSS" bull that Stallman rants about is in my opinion silly. Open software is a really really good thing. It keeps an open sofware ecosystem, and active software ecosystem, and it keeps the commercial guys on their toes. If it were superior in every way there would be a flash equivalent out. GIMP would be as good as Photoshop, and Blender would be as easy to use as Rhino.
I use GIMP regularly, and I think Blender has come a long way. They are both wonderful programs, but they do not stand up to their commercial counterparts. And the day someone in the open source community takes on Flash I will throw a big ole' here's to the vain hope you keep your sanity party for them. I don't mean vector, I mean a complete open source package integrating vector, and interactivity with a scripting language as dynamic and powerful as actionscript. There isn't even an inferior attempt at this one because no one has been crazy enough to try it.
So give the commercial guys a break, especially when they decide to support us. Maybe if we supported them some the reciprocation would happen more often.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Review of Google Docs
So just like everyone else I saw that Google had released this new Google Docs thing. So I thought I would take a look at the program to see what it was all about, and I have to say it's pretty exciting. It isn't going to replace OpenOffice for doing serious page layout. It is rudimentary in a way that I don't even remember Abiword being back when I first used it in 2000. The interface is slow and awkward, and I don't have even a tenth of the options I use in OpenOffice, which given how I rant about word processing programs having too many features for what they are supposed to do, that is saying something. However, it provides all the basic necessities, and allows me to save the documents on a server where I can get to them from anywhere. I don't have to save them on my USB key and use up precious writes to my poor flash memory. I don't have to burn them off to a CD or e-mail them to myself, or upload them to an FTP. I can just save them directly onto storage, and I can choose other people to have access to them, both plain viewing access as well as collaborative access. In fact there is a little line of text in the bottom of the screen telling me no one else is currently editing this very document and a link to Add Collaborators. This program in many ways reminds me of songbird. It lacks a lot of things that everyone else on the market has, but it brings a lot of engaging new functionality to the table that is far more exciting that getting all the old stuff right again for the who cares numberth of times.
I think one of two things will happen with Google Docs. Either google with aggressively develop and market this delightful little morsel of code and it will develop a significant niche, or perhaps grow into a full fledged productivity and collaboration product, or the features available in this program will over the next few production cycles begin making their way into the established products with the old reliable and oh so unfortunately necessery functions established and polished.
The biggest possibilities for this program lie in it's ability to interface with Blogger. The possibilities available in collaborative blogging are delightful, and while Google Docs lacks much of the functionality that I have come to love so much from my mainstay office productivity programs, as a blog publishing program it is far more advanced than anything I've seen in a wordpress interface, or a blogger interface before. By positioning this technology in such a way that it is compared to established online production and publication technologies instead of office productivity technologies Google has given it a market fertile with changes for development, and who knows it may well develop into something that could eventually displace or at least play with the bigger static boys. So I would say take a look, and think about what you do on a daily basis, you might just find yourself using this little AJAX wonder more than you thought.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Why do podcasts have a freakin XML extension.
Now, I know that podcasts are written in xml. But really, does that actually matter. How hard would it have been in the specification to have the file extension for the xml file to be oh I don't know. . . .pod, or .pdc, or .pd, or anything other than .xml?
Why does this matter do you ask? It matters because I'm working for a radio station and no one knows what to do with the podcast link. They say "what is all this gobledy gook code when I click on the podcast hyperlink? If there were a unique extension even if it was still holding a standard text file with all standard XML code in it, you could bloody well associate it with Itunes, or songbird, or amarok, or any number of other audio players that support podcasts. This seems like a major oversight, and I haven't seen anyone deal with it yet. Tell me this is up for some sort of rewrite in the next version of the podcast spec. Oh wait, probably not.
Why does this matter do you ask? It matters because I'm working for a radio station and no one knows what to do with the podcast link. They say "what is all this gobledy gook code when I click on the podcast hyperlink? If there were a unique extension even if it was still holding a standard text file with all standard XML code in it, you could bloody well associate it with Itunes, or songbird, or amarok, or any number of other audio players that support podcasts. This seems like a major oversight, and I haven't seen anyone deal with it yet. Tell me this is up for some sort of rewrite in the next version of the podcast spec. Oh wait, probably not.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Linux and my spleen on a stick.
Ok, now I know no one will ever read this because who cares about my little bloc, but I'm going to rant anyway.
LINUX SUCKS!!!!!!!!!
Ok there I have gotten that out of my system. Now I don't really believe this, it's just the intense intoxication of the past few days talking. Intoxication brought on by nothing working in either of the Linux environments I was working in.
So first I download freespire. I have been chomping at the bit for the final release of this baby. I'm sick and tired of everyone moaning and complaining about the fact that freespire is including proprietary software with their distro. Cry me a river. I understand they had to get licenses, and I understand Ubuntu and Fedora and everyone else wanting to play it safe legally. I run Kubuntu normally (though I will get to why I am fed up with them soon). And up until recently have been very satisfied with the experience, but seriously if Linspire wants to put out a different product don't rip them for it, just don't use it. It doesn't serve the geek segment. It isn't targeted at the geek segment, and they even made an all OSS version for the geek segment. So stop thrusting your silly little idealigical paradigm on all the non geeks. They end up resenting us for it.
So I boot up the freespire live CD to find out of it supports my particular wireless card and I am greeting with a list of the wireless networks in my area. YAY!!! The drivers work, I won't have to install windows on my linux box when my boyfriend goes back to the dorm. I can use my apartment complex's wireless networks. . . . Oh wait never mind I can't get an IP. So I search the freespire forums. I see tons of other wifi problems (this makes me oh so optimistic about what it's going to be like if I actually fix my current problem). I sadly find nothing on my problem. So I do a general linux wifi search and find one problem that looks like mine and it says that when I leave eth0 enabled sometimes it messes with other network connections. Now this is just brilliant. Freespire has a profile manager to deal with this sort of thing, but say I don't like freespire and I take the time to make ndiswrapper work and I try to be able to accomodate my wireless network at home, and the various wireless networks at Starbucks, Bloomington Bagel Company, the Airport, my friend's house, random hotels, and occasionally accomodate the random hotel networks that require you to plug into an ethernet jack in the room. I was in such a hotel just a couple months ago and this was at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, so they aren't that obscure. This is a pretty big problem if I don't want to spend all my time enabling and disabling random network interfaces. Which for the record I don't.
So I disable eth0 and oh it still doesn't work. Bah. I decide I'm sick of it take the liveCD out of my boyfriend's computer and let it boot back into windows where I know my wireless will work I'll just have to deal with everything running at a third the speed it should because Microsoft hasn't cared about OS efficiency and productivity since . . . oh wait nevermind.
So now I jump back to Kubuntu where I boot up with a new mouse. It has a scroll wheel which my last on didn't, and it's a standard ps2 mouse. Kubuntu now looks like satan has taken over as random input from the ps2 interface completely overwhelms the KDE interface and random programs start and stop in a constant dance of insanity and hate. Time to try that freespire liveCD again as I need to burn some files off of my ReiserFS hard drive. So I boot into Freespire and my mouse is mostly fine. There is a little twitch to it that makes me think maybe the hardware is a little flakey, but when I say twitch I mean the cursor shutters a couple millimeters every now and then and then goes back to normal. This is hardly the manifestation of Beelzabub that showed up on my screen in Kubuntu. So I go to burn my anime so I can be distracted at work during the slow periods an activity which my employer is perfectly kosher with. The first 4 episodes I need burn slowly but they burn. The next three will not. Now my CD burner drive is old and has personality so this I will not blame on linux, it is totally not the OS's fault. It however leads me to another interface abomination that really is the OS's fault. I throw in my USB key, so I can grab at least one more episode to bring with. It won't fit. I get 95 percent and boom it's out of space. Now does it tell me it's out of space? No, the file transfer stalls and nothing more happens. I'm sorry, I don't care what weird wacked out world you live in. No OS, not even windows 3.0 has any excuse for not being able to tell when you've maxed out a supported file system. So I cancel the file transfer. Go in and shred the partial file. I'm a touch peeved that Freespire didn't do this for me when I canceled the file transfer. Again this is windows 3.0 functionality here. Come on people. Then I delete a couple other things so I can get my Loki fix, and I try again. I only get about 6 megs transfered. NANI?!?!?
After one more attempt where I get 3 megs transfered I take a look at the available space on my key, and there is none. I shredded the files. It tried to put them in the trash can but I stopped that right away because maintaining a trash can for a USB disk is sort of idiotic. Post shredding Linux didn't update the file system. Now I know Unix saves deletes and file reorganization for when the system isn't busy or for shutdown. It just logs that it needs to do it. I remember from back in my RedHat 6.0 days that this is a big part of why you never want to just kill your computer. Proper shutdown is a must. This is a server mentality. Servers have lots of resources to work with in the way of disk space, so a little virtual linking dosn't hurt anyone, and the performance hit of actually altering a file system while the computer is being actively used makes a difference on a server. This is a desktop OS. No one in their right mind is going to say Freespire is designed for server work, and it's a freaking mounted USB thumb drive. I mean come on. When I say shred the file shred the damned file. I shutdown stuck my thumb drive in my boy's windows comp to make sure things weren't damaged and everything was fine. What if I had taken the thumb drive out before shuting down though? As this would be the normal situation. What if?
I could go on about my complaints over the past month with at least 3 other distros including DMS, Puppy Linux, Vector Linux, and Xubuntu. All these were attempt to make my boyfriends old 500 Mhz 60 Megs of Ram laptop usable again. Which I finally pulled off with Vector linux, but only after working around one of the more idotic bugs ever.
Linux is fine for tinkering, it's great for servers, but until these really basic interface stupidites are worked out it's never going to be Year of Linux on the Desktop. Are there ways of working around these problems. Sure there are. There are always ways of working around problems. But the fact of the matter is why is the averag user going to want to put in that extra effort when they don't have to with windows. Will linux run faster, sure it will, but you know what unless you're doing a bunch of multi tasking and high profile computing which means you are more likely to be a linux or Mac person to begin with then who cares. The computer will run fast enough, even if it's only a $299 e-machine. I expected more from the community distro run by Linspire, which is supposed to be one of the linux for the masses distros. If they can't get stuff this simple right then we might as well lay down for Redmond now.
LINUX SUCKS!!!!!!!!!
Ok there I have gotten that out of my system. Now I don't really believe this, it's just the intense intoxication of the past few days talking. Intoxication brought on by nothing working in either of the Linux environments I was working in.
So first I download freespire. I have been chomping at the bit for the final release of this baby. I'm sick and tired of everyone moaning and complaining about the fact that freespire is including proprietary software with their distro. Cry me a river. I understand they had to get licenses, and I understand Ubuntu and Fedora and everyone else wanting to play it safe legally. I run Kubuntu normally (though I will get to why I am fed up with them soon). And up until recently have been very satisfied with the experience, but seriously if Linspire wants to put out a different product don't rip them for it, just don't use it. It doesn't serve the geek segment. It isn't targeted at the geek segment, and they even made an all OSS version for the geek segment. So stop thrusting your silly little idealigical paradigm on all the non geeks. They end up resenting us for it.
So I boot up the freespire live CD to find out of it supports my particular wireless card and I am greeting with a list of the wireless networks in my area. YAY!!! The drivers work, I won't have to install windows on my linux box when my boyfriend goes back to the dorm. I can use my apartment complex's wireless networks. . . . Oh wait never mind I can't get an IP. So I search the freespire forums. I see tons of other wifi problems (this makes me oh so optimistic about what it's going to be like if I actually fix my current problem). I sadly find nothing on my problem. So I do a general linux wifi search and find one problem that looks like mine and it says that when I leave eth0 enabled sometimes it messes with other network connections. Now this is just brilliant. Freespire has a profile manager to deal with this sort of thing, but say I don't like freespire and I take the time to make ndiswrapper work and I try to be able to accomodate my wireless network at home, and the various wireless networks at Starbucks, Bloomington Bagel Company, the Airport, my friend's house, random hotels, and occasionally accomodate the random hotel networks that require you to plug into an ethernet jack in the room. I was in such a hotel just a couple months ago and this was at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, so they aren't that obscure. This is a pretty big problem if I don't want to spend all my time enabling and disabling random network interfaces. Which for the record I don't.
So I disable eth0 and oh it still doesn't work. Bah. I decide I'm sick of it take the liveCD out of my boyfriend's computer and let it boot back into windows where I know my wireless will work I'll just have to deal with everything running at a third the speed it should because Microsoft hasn't cared about OS efficiency and productivity since . . . oh wait nevermind.
So now I jump back to Kubuntu where I boot up with a new mouse. It has a scroll wheel which my last on didn't, and it's a standard ps2 mouse. Kubuntu now looks like satan has taken over as random input from the ps2 interface completely overwhelms the KDE interface and random programs start and stop in a constant dance of insanity and hate. Time to try that freespire liveCD again as I need to burn some files off of my ReiserFS hard drive. So I boot into Freespire and my mouse is mostly fine. There is a little twitch to it that makes me think maybe the hardware is a little flakey, but when I say twitch I mean the cursor shutters a couple millimeters every now and then and then goes back to normal. This is hardly the manifestation of Beelzabub that showed up on my screen in Kubuntu. So I go to burn my anime so I can be distracted at work during the slow periods an activity which my employer is perfectly kosher with. The first 4 episodes I need burn slowly but they burn. The next three will not. Now my CD burner drive is old and has personality so this I will not blame on linux, it is totally not the OS's fault. It however leads me to another interface abomination that really is the OS's fault. I throw in my USB key, so I can grab at least one more episode to bring with. It won't fit. I get 95 percent and boom it's out of space. Now does it tell me it's out of space? No, the file transfer stalls and nothing more happens. I'm sorry, I don't care what weird wacked out world you live in. No OS, not even windows 3.0 has any excuse for not being able to tell when you've maxed out a supported file system. So I cancel the file transfer. Go in and shred the partial file. I'm a touch peeved that Freespire didn't do this for me when I canceled the file transfer. Again this is windows 3.0 functionality here. Come on people. Then I delete a couple other things so I can get my Loki fix, and I try again. I only get about 6 megs transfered. NANI?!?!?
After one more attempt where I get 3 megs transfered I take a look at the available space on my key, and there is none. I shredded the files. It tried to put them in the trash can but I stopped that right away because maintaining a trash can for a USB disk is sort of idiotic. Post shredding Linux didn't update the file system. Now I know Unix saves deletes and file reorganization for when the system isn't busy or for shutdown. It just logs that it needs to do it. I remember from back in my RedHat 6.0 days that this is a big part of why you never want to just kill your computer. Proper shutdown is a must. This is a server mentality. Servers have lots of resources to work with in the way of disk space, so a little virtual linking dosn't hurt anyone, and the performance hit of actually altering a file system while the computer is being actively used makes a difference on a server. This is a desktop OS. No one in their right mind is going to say Freespire is designed for server work, and it's a freaking mounted USB thumb drive. I mean come on. When I say shred the file shred the damned file. I shutdown stuck my thumb drive in my boy's windows comp to make sure things weren't damaged and everything was fine. What if I had taken the thumb drive out before shuting down though? As this would be the normal situation. What if?
I could go on about my complaints over the past month with at least 3 other distros including DMS, Puppy Linux, Vector Linux, and Xubuntu. All these were attempt to make my boyfriends old 500 Mhz 60 Megs of Ram laptop usable again. Which I finally pulled off with Vector linux, but only after working around one of the more idotic bugs ever.
Linux is fine for tinkering, it's great for servers, but until these really basic interface stupidites are worked out it's never going to be Year of Linux on the Desktop. Are there ways of working around these problems. Sure there are. There are always ways of working around problems. But the fact of the matter is why is the averag user going to want to put in that extra effort when they don't have to with windows. Will linux run faster, sure it will, but you know what unless you're doing a bunch of multi tasking and high profile computing which means you are more likely to be a linux or Mac person to begin with then who cares. The computer will run fast enough, even if it's only a $299 e-machine. I expected more from the community distro run by Linspire, which is supposed to be one of the linux for the masses distros. If they can't get stuff this simple right then we might as well lay down for Redmond now.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Why do people hate Flock???
Ok I have to rant about a couple technological things. They are not directly related to Flock specifically, but they have been active in the Flock world recently. At least the world of "users". Why do so many open source people have a problem with Flock? I can't tell you how many times I've seen people complain that "Oh Flock is just Firefox with some plugins". Now if you just look at a feature list this is technically true, but if you have used Flock and Firefox with said plugins then you know what a monumental difference there is. What's lacking from Firefox with the plugins. Drumroll please. . . . ."USABILITY RESEARCH!!!!!"
After reading the other day about the Better Desktop Initiative it's obvious to me that the people getting paid to develop open source software understand that software by programers for programers will never go anywhere in the general market. Let me say this again. Software by programers for programers is USELESS to non-programers. And most firefox plugins are software by programers for programers. Not all of them are, many of them are wonderful, Forecastfox is fabulous, as are the majority of the transparent plugins that are meant to speed up the performance of your browser or make pdf downloading easier, or other such niceties. However, the RSS reader options in the firefox plugin section for lack of a better description are terrible, and I haven't found any decent blogging options. Why? Because they lack integration with each other. Do the blogging plugins work with the photo upload plugins, work with the shared bookmark plugins? No they don't. And what would it take for these plugins to work together. A unified effort with unified developers working on all of them, and someone getting paid in some manner so the project stayed alive. Hmmm. Now in order for this to happen one would assume that one would need a product. Something that you could eventually sell, or at least give away and have it bring people to a sponsored search partner or some advertising media to bring in revenue.
Now I want all you developers out there to stop being a developer for a minute. Now think about advertising. Try to get inside the head of a person who doesn't know what a plugin is, or how to configure one, or has the expertise to navigate an interface with no formal usability testing behind it. Now will this person respond to unified plugins (translation, ew I'm gonig to have to configure it myself), or a social networking browser that brings together all your favorite features for you? (translation Yay! someone else got paid to configure it for me!!!).
I am so sick of hearing about "Linux on the Desktop" and "Of course linux is good enough for everyone" and "why are you still using office, when Open Office will do everything you need, and it's so similar in interface (anyone who's ever watched a non techie go from office to openoffice and try and find the word count knows there are enough differences to matter to the base consumer, even if not to the basic adept corporate receptionist).
For the record. I don't use Flock, I've downloaded every version to see what it's about, and I find it exciting. I am a techie. I don't care about it personally, and I run a linux desktop/server, and I have used OpenOffice since it was StarOffice 5.1, and I used several of the OpenOffice pre 1.0 releases. Going back to 2000. I can do all of that, but I also know most people can't. The year of the Linux Desktop will come when the people giving back to open source projects for free understand they aren't coding for their buddies. They are coding for the guy down the street that coaches basketball, and his wife who has taught French since 1985. We all know their kids can use our stuff, and yes if they got over they psychological block against change in technology we all know they are intelligent to use our stuff as well. But they don't want to get over that block, it isn't worth it to them, and it's time we stopped asking them to.
Novel/RedHat/Xandros are not going to have the kind of money for usability research that Microsoft has any time soon, and Microsoft already has a huge head start on them and a larger paid developer base than they do to keep that lead. Our advantage is our numbers, but the numbers need to know what they are facing and honestly approach it. And for the record Kudos to those few of you who do.
After reading the other day about the Better Desktop Initiative it's obvious to me that the people getting paid to develop open source software understand that software by programers for programers will never go anywhere in the general market. Let me say this again. Software by programers for programers is USELESS to non-programers. And most firefox plugins are software by programers for programers. Not all of them are, many of them are wonderful, Forecastfox is fabulous, as are the majority of the transparent plugins that are meant to speed up the performance of your browser or make pdf downloading easier, or other such niceties. However, the RSS reader options in the firefox plugin section for lack of a better description are terrible, and I haven't found any decent blogging options. Why? Because they lack integration with each other. Do the blogging plugins work with the photo upload plugins, work with the shared bookmark plugins? No they don't. And what would it take for these plugins to work together. A unified effort with unified developers working on all of them, and someone getting paid in some manner so the project stayed alive. Hmmm. Now in order for this to happen one would assume that one would need a product. Something that you could eventually sell, or at least give away and have it bring people to a sponsored search partner or some advertising media to bring in revenue.
Now I want all you developers out there to stop being a developer for a minute. Now think about advertising. Try to get inside the head of a person who doesn't know what a plugin is, or how to configure one, or has the expertise to navigate an interface with no formal usability testing behind it. Now will this person respond to unified plugins (translation, ew I'm gonig to have to configure it myself), or a social networking browser that brings together all your favorite features for you? (translation Yay! someone else got paid to configure it for me!!!).
I am so sick of hearing about "Linux on the Desktop" and "Of course linux is good enough for everyone" and "why are you still using office, when Open Office will do everything you need, and it's so similar in interface (anyone who's ever watched a non techie go from office to openoffice and try and find the word count knows there are enough differences to matter to the base consumer, even if not to the basic adept corporate receptionist).
For the record. I don't use Flock, I've downloaded every version to see what it's about, and I find it exciting. I am a techie. I don't care about it personally, and I run a linux desktop/server, and I have used OpenOffice since it was StarOffice 5.1, and I used several of the OpenOffice pre 1.0 releases. Going back to 2000. I can do all of that, but I also know most people can't. The year of the Linux Desktop will come when the people giving back to open source projects for free understand they aren't coding for their buddies. They are coding for the guy down the street that coaches basketball, and his wife who has taught French since 1985. We all know their kids can use our stuff, and yes if they got over they psychological block against change in technology we all know they are intelligent to use our stuff as well. But they don't want to get over that block, it isn't worth it to them, and it's time we stopped asking them to.
Novel/RedHat/Xandros are not going to have the kind of money for usability research that Microsoft has any time soon, and Microsoft already has a huge head start on them and a larger paid developer base than they do to keep that lead. Our advantage is our numbers, but the numbers need to know what they are facing and honestly approach it. And for the record Kudos to those few of you who do.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Testing the Flock Beta
I don't think I've ever seen the basic interface of a program change so much between 0.2 worth of version increment. Flock has grown up a lot, and lost a little bit of it's early energetic charm I unfortunately have to say, but I think it may well be a more mature and hopefully usable project. We'll see, for now I just want to see how well it updates.
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