Jun

26

Returning from the dead…

Filed Under linux | Leave a Comment

It has been too long since the last post. Things may be changing over the next few days as I prepare to relaunch the site. There is a lot to talk about. The dream many of us had years ago is coming true, Linux is becoming mainstream. We are now seeing the meaning of the curse “May your wishes come true”. Pissing matches, regressions and catfights rule the day. A voice has appeared like a prophet from the wilderness.

These are interesting times (another curse).I’m in the odd position of being both as happy and as frustrated as I’ve ever been with Linux.

More soon.

Nov

13

Linux Preloaded–an Insider’s View

Filed Under Editorial, Ubuntu, linux | 5 Comments

There is a story today that WalMart’s $200 Linux machine running Ubuntu with Enlightenment is sold out and selling like hotcakes. The article links to WalMart’s product page, where it is listed as sold out and filled with glowing reviews. It feels good to see that. I’ve always felt that Linux was ready for general consumption. At one point I got to put my money where my mouth was, but was burned by bad timing. Hopefully the story might interest you.

I managed a regional computer store in Metro Detroit. I had always loved the company, it was one of the few places you could go and actually see the product you were buying. Motherboards were open and available to handle. If you needed it, they carried it. The sales staff was always knowledgeable and helpful. I felt fortunate to work for them, and took over a store in a major regional mall.

I had always wanted to see Linux systems up and for sale. One day the owner and COO were in the store, so I stepped away and fired up Mandriva 2007 Spring on one of the machines. It looked fresh and impressive. Compiz definitely gave the OS a unique look and feel. Based on this, I was given the opportunity to sell Linux systems. The experience was an eye opener.

My initial thought was to go with an underdog. Since Mandriva had been the distro that helped me sell it to the bosses, I thought I would give them a try. I contacted them, they were very nice with a thought out plan. The costs were more than I could justify, though. This was a pilot program, and the costs had to be as close to zero as possible, initially, to justify the experiment. The major selling point was to be able to offer systems where hardware was the only cost. It became apparent that Mandriva would not work, initially at least.

I contacted Novell. I knew how the community felt about them, so I had hesitations. We were also potentially going after the business market, so it made sense. I found out right away that my pilot program was just not big or fancy enough for Novell. I suffered through a condescending phone call basically saying “How cute! When you become a player, let us know and we will work with you!” Never mind the fact that at the time my company was a major regional player that worked on a national scale. I was now 0 for 2.

PCLinuxOS was next. I have always loved PCLinuxOS. Some of my fondest Linux memories were the Mandrake days when Texstar would supply packages. I thought this would be a great opportunity to help the distribution get business cred, and would bring a lot of publicity to my company and PCLinuxOS. I got absolutely nowhere here. I never heard back from anyone. I’ve since read that Texstar is interested in making the distro, but does not care how popular it is. I can respect that, if it is true. It is a great OS. I was now 0 for 3. It was time to stop avoiding the inevitable, and go to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is on their game. From the minute I first contacted them, they were all over it. The entire time I dealt with them I had a sense that whatever I needed (within reason) they would provide. Costs were going to be zero, initially. They offered a clear cut program that made sense. The only thing they ask in return for outstanding service is one key factor. You can ship Ubuntu, but only Ubuntu. They were very clear about this. It is brilliant, when you think about it. They give you everything you need, and one of the only conditions is that they lock other distributions out. That is good business for Ubuntu.

As the ball got rolling, I put a machine on display in the store. It got a lot of attention. I went high on the specs, thinking people would recognize the good deal the machine was. People responded well, but hesitated to drop $400 on an experiment. We were soon going to offer a full line of notebooks that were certified to run Linux. I decided to drop the specs of the display machine and managed to get it to under $200 without a big hit in performance.

At some point during the Ubuntu plan, I got cold feet and wanted to put Sabayon on the machines. I think what Fabio is doing is nothing short of revolutionary. I have to hand it to him. He was as good, maybe even better than Ubuntu in customer service. He was very clear that whatever I needed, I would get, even to the point of a customized distro. By this point it was too late in the game. Dell had launched the Ubuntu notebooks, and my boss wanted to capitalize on the publicity. My dream of a full line of Sabayon laptops died a quiet death.

I continued to be pleasantly surprised by Ubuntu. Every communication was positive. They were going to help in whatever way I needed. By this point it was a matter of waiting for the notebooks to come in, then there would be a launch with a lot of publicity. I was certain I had a home run on my hands. We finally received the notebooks. I loaded them with Ubuntu, customized the install so it ran Compiz-Fusion and threw a bunch of extras on the install. I was pumped. We had forty notebooks and I knew once the announcement was made, we would sell all forty in one day. I would be a hero.

As my ex father-in-law is fond of saying, “Timing is everything.” Just as I was finishing the notebooks, the effects of the dismal Michigan economy took its toll on my company. Just like that most of the stores closed. In the ensuing chaos, my pet project got buried. Soon I was out of a job. My grand experiment died just as it was being born.

So, I am glad to see WalMart having great success with its Linux desktops. It helps me to feel that I did know what I was talking about, and given different circumstances could have really made a go of my idea. I’m not done yet…

Apr

10

Editorial: The Future of the Linux Desktop

Filed Under Editorial, free software, linux | 12 Comments

“The year of Linux on the Desktop.” Typically, these articles show up near the end of the year. They always cause a big debate “Will 200* be the year of Linux on the Desktop?!” is the headline, followed by comment wars. The comment wars break down like this. Linux vs. Windows users, Mac vs. Linux users, a branch war of Windows vs. Mac users, KDE vs. Gnome users, Ubuntu lovers/haters, Compiz vs. Beryl, pro/anti DRM people and the list goes on and on. A consensus is never reached. Some concepts show up over and over. This editorial addresses those concepts.

Dear Old Grandma

“Linux will never be ready until my mom/grandma/aunt can use it!” It is funny to me that it almost always is a female. Linux is ready, since this mythical female only uses the computer to do email and browse the web. Linux isn’t ready because this same female won’t understand the package manager or this or that. Once everyone agrees that this female can use Linux, the heavens will open and finally, Microsoft’s monopoly will be over. This concept is fundamentally flawed.

When speaking of the mom/grandma/aunt, people are really speaking of “normal” everyday users. I’ll refer to them as older people for the sake of this article. The goal is to get Linux to the point where older people can use it. Oddly enough, we are pretty much there. For simple and basic computing tasks (think internet appliance) there is no reason why Linux isn’t appropriate. If the old person isn’t going to play games or run Photoshop, modern distros provide everything needed. Firefox and Thunderbird give you a great web browser and email client. OpenOffice.org covers word processing needs. There are plenty of other great programs, including Gaim (now renamed Pidgin) for instant messaging, GIMP for photo editing and plenty of card games. They will run into trouble when they try and download “The Prize Machine” or some other junk from a website, but for all intents and purposes they are covered. Linux can handle, very nicely, their basic computing needs.

That doesn’t mean they will switch, though. These people have a different mindset than you, the person reading this. They want to stick with what is familiar to them, what is known. Do you have a relative that refuses to switch from AOL, even after they have gotten broadband? I do, and I bet there are plenty out there. You can tell them all you want about the security of Linux, how it is “Free as in Freedom”, how they won’t really notice a difference, but it will fall on deaf ears. In their mind, Linux is this weird thing that they are better off not taking a chance on. These are the people that are happy to pay the Geek Squad to install an anti-virus on their Windows 98 Celeron box, rather than get something better, for free, from you. That is fine. When their ten year old motherboard fails, they can’t fault the “Linux you installed on it that broke it”. After all, it was working fine until you got to it.

Let them be. They can be someone else’s problem. If you’ve ever lived the nightmare of free phone support to these people then you know you are better off staying away.

Me: “Click ‘file’ which is on your top toolbar”

OP: “Toolbar? I don’t have a toolbar!! What does it look like?”

Me: “It should be near the top of your screen, above the navigation buttons…”

OP: “Navigation buttons? You mean at the bottom?! I don’t see any buttons. You mean on the keyboard?”

God forbid they accidentally delete their Internet Explorer icon from the desktop. They no longer have the internet!

The times are changing. Leave the old people that aren’t technically inclined to their comfortable existence, with its viruses, spyware and network of zombie drone machines. You can’t really teach an old dog new tricks. A lot of effort is being wasted on preparing something for people that do not want it. Imagine if video game manufacturers said games won’t be ready until their grandma can play them.

The YouTube Generation

Younger people are different. The world they know is different than the one most of us grew up in. Music for them isn’t something you go and purchase at the store. Cheap thrills don’t come through the underwear section of the Sears catalog, they flow freely through their torrent clients. It isn’t the number of signatures in their yearbook that count, it is the size of their friends list on MySpace. Technology isn’t some newfangled thing to gripe about, it has been part of their existence their whole life. A lot of these kids are trying Linux. They may not know that Ubuntu is a Debian derivative or have read the GNU manifesto, but they are installing and running Linux. They run MythTV. This is our audience. These are the people to court.

The 3D desktop in Linux is pulling these people in. Flaming window animations, spinning transparent cubes, wobbly windows are catching people’s imaginations. This is completely unscientific, but will illustrate my point. A search for “Beryl” on YouTube gives 4,120 results. “Compiz” gets 799. “XGL” nets 2640, “AIGLX” 500. “Ubuntu” gets 3240. “Aero” gives 3,900 with a lot of non-Windows results. “Aero Vista” gives 167. “Kelly Ripa” gets 352, so Beryl is immensely more popular than Kelly Ripa on YouTube. At this point, it isn’t trivial to install Compiz or Beryl but these people are doing it. Not only are they doing it, but they are taking the time to take video of their screens and promote it on YouTube.

The more technically inclined of this group is fiercly anti Digital Rights Management (or Digital Restrictions Management). They want their media on their terms. Piracy is rampant. Paying for software is a concept to be mocked by some of them. They want bling. They want speed. They are installing Ubuntu and Sabayon and aren’t concerned about how Flashplayer or their video card drivers fit into the Free Software world. Free Software is familiar to them from Firefox, Wordpress, Drupal and to a lesser extent, Blender. They game on their consoles.

These people will make excellent converts to the cause. If I were running a distribution targeted at them, like Linux Mint or Sabayon, I’d make education part of the Distribution. Include links to the Free Software Foundation, the GNU project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation prominently in Firefox. Get some documentation out saying that while you include MP3, Flash and Nvidia/Ati drivers by default, here is why people are against doing that. Promote the fact that they are running a legitimate operating system and why this is better than just pirating XP or Vista. I admit that this sounds cheesy, but I believe that we can gain some traction here. As dark clouds gather, with Trusted Computing, DRM and Patent disputes on the horizon, we need as many people as we can behind us. Now is the time.

But… My App Won’t Run

One thing I read consistently is that this or that app doesn’t run on Linux. Photoshop, CAD Software, I even read a complaint that Visual Studio doesn’t run on Linux. Wine has come a long way, and you can get some programs running with it, but it is mostly irrelevant. Cedega from Transgaming has done nice work getting games to run on Linux. Still, Photoshop does run under Linux. Any Windows program you name does. All you have to do is install a Virtual Machine, be it VMware, Xen, QEMU or whatever, then install Windows. You can then run Linux, and easily run any Windows native program you need. This solves the perceived hassle of dual booting. Linux doesn’t require complete monogamy.

I have run Linux almost exclusively for the past ten years. I love it. It does just about everything I need, and more. It still did not save me from the hand of the Great Monopoly, though. When sending out my resume, most employers requested it in Word format. Using Open Office and saving it as a .doc screwed up the formatting, something unacceptable to future employers. After trying a few things, I finally had to bite the bullet and use Microsoft Office. OpenDocument (.odt) is a great format, but it isn’t widely known and accepted. Did I sell out? Possibly. The way I looked at it, I had to use the right tool for the right job. I needed to create a perfect looking Word document, so I used Word to do it.

This is changing, as well. There are great free online office suites. Google Docs and Spreadsheets work well. Zoho Office is amazing. Offline, Open Office, Abiword and Kword all do a very good job, a hell of a lot cheaper than Microsoft Office. If you have basic word processing needs, I can easily recommend all of the above. 

The Future

64 Bit Computing. Distros should focus more on this area. The need to run 64 bit applications is debatable; 64 bit processors run fine in 32 bit mode. The problem is that you really cannot buy a 32 bit processor anymore, so the future is now. I haven’t run into too many problems running 64bit distros, but there are a few gotchas here and there. Let’s continue the work so we can run what we need natively.

Educate. As new users enter the fold, let’s make sure they understand the importance of why they are able to freely use what they are using. Most may not care, but the ones that do can help to be influential. The stakes are high, and we should make sure they understand what they are.

We welcome our new Google Overlords. Google Docs and Spreadsheets and Zoho Office are our best chance of breaking the Microsoft Office monopoly. Picasa and Google Earth run on Linux. The move away from applications being OS dependent will only help us in the long run.

Compiz/Beryl/Compositing Community. It is still early, and the 3D desktop on Linux is working very well. There are a lot of great changes coming in the near future. I have seen nothing excite normal people the way this has. It may be frivolous to have all of these effects running, but overall people like them. The days of Linux being disregarded as some UNIX dinosaur that is a nightmare to use are over. Things are moving rapidly in this space, and it is great to see.

Virtualization. You can now run Windows fairly easily within Linux using any of the Virtualization tools out there. You can also dabble in Solaris or any of the BSDs. If you have to run something that will not run on Linux, fine. Boot up your VM and run the program from there. Obviously, the reverse is true. If you are afraid of getting rid of windows, go ahead and install VMware Server and try Linux out inside of it. Hell, install Linux, then Windows in a VM, then install a VM in windows and install BSD, repeat until you reach infinity.

Keep the Faith. Since I’ve long past gone out on the limb of sounding cheesy, I’m going for broke. There are a lot of challenges ahead for Linux. There is also nothing out there like Linux. It has been an exciting ten years, watching this thing grow and improve almost daily. First and foremost, it is an operating system written by nerds for nerds. That is our greatest strength. Infighting in the community is good, when it displays the passion people feel for a particular piece of software. In my eyes, all of this choice is a good thing. As Linux continues to evolve, things will fall into place. We just need to stay vigilant. The year of the Linux Desktop is here, for those of us that use it every day.

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Dec

7

OpenSUSE 10.2 Released

Filed Under Novell, Uncategorized, linux, openSuse | Comments Off

OpenSUSE 10.2 was released today. Torrents are here. The download page is here, It will be interesting to see the community reaction to this release. I feel bad for the OpenSUSE team. Novell put them in a bad position. The release features ext3 as the new default file system, Firefox 2.0, updated Gnome and KDE and an install add-on disc featuring proprietary software. It is a five cd set, they mention you only need the first 3 discs to install a default Gnome or KDE system in English or German. The announcement is here.
I tried running the 64bit release candidate. I had planned to review it.I wanted to give OpenSUSE an chance. I couldn’t give it a fair review. I hate Yast. I find it gets in my way. I couldn’t use it to edit grub properly. Software management was a nightmare. Updates were unbearable, loading software management took forever. I read that uninstalling zmd (the ZENworks Management Daemon) speeds things up, but I wasn’t able to accomplish this. I don’t know why, but I was caught in rpm hell, a phrase I hadn’t used in years. It was impossible for me to install GCC. Overall, it was a horrible experience and I was glad to wipe it from my hard drive. I understand that I was running a release candidate, but I have never had as many problems running an RC before. I am sure there will be plenty of glowing reviews of openSUSE in the semi-mainstream tech press, though. It looks pretty.

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