Rhythmbox has been really useful as I go through and de-duplicate my library. A few hundred tracks are gone but I could still do a no-repeat month or two. Rhythmbox also has some interesting add-ons here and here.
The worst.
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Monday, September 07, 2009
Linux Labor Day
Linux Labor Day Links
In honor of football season, Windows users are the Charlie Browns of computing, always believing that THIS time Lucy won't pull the football away at the last second.
My music player of choice in Ubuntu is Rhythmbox. In fact it was one of the keys to my switching from Windows. Windows Media Player had too many DRM issues for me. WinAmp had one problem I just couldn't live with: it was impossible to remove tracks from the playback library.
Rhythmbox has been really useful as I go through and de-duplicate my library. A few hundred tracks are gone but I could still do a no-repeat month or two. Rhythmbox also has some interesting add-ons here and here.
For ubergeeks: Update Twitter and Facebook from the Linux command line. Worth doing just to say you did.
Keep your kernel as up to date as possible with KernelCheck
Rhythmbox has been really useful as I go through and de-duplicate my library. A few hundred tracks are gone but I could still do a no-repeat month or two. Rhythmbox also has some interesting add-ons here and here.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Linux Monday: The Economics of Free
Linux Monday: The Economics of Free
On the net, the default price is zero, and Linux and open source fit well into that ideology. Old media, not so much. Journalism and the music industry are struggling. They face much the same dilemma: when the product is free, how do you make money?
Journalism is adapting from a pay model that's as old as the printing press, and digging in its heels with ridiculous plans like the Associated Press' scheme to charge bloggers $12.50 for a five word excerpt. And the music industry has yet to accept that recordings are no longer the money making product, but have become a promotional item that sells concert tickets and t-shirts. Instead, they prefer to sue their own customers.
The Linux community, 18 years in, is dealing with the economics of free much better than the old media. In part that's because open-source has always been about free.
"In the past, the media was a full-time job," says Wired editor Chris Anderson. "But maybe the media is going to be a part time job. Maybe media won't be a job at all, but will instead be a hobby." And indeed, that's how it started for me, as a just for giggles pastime that got serious and eventually (for a year and a half) turned into a paying gig.
That's sort of how Linux grows and grows: a geek needs a driver for one odd piece or hardware, and learns some marketable skills in the process.
But still, doesn't somebody have to feed the beast with some $$$ at some point?
"Basically it's a sophisticated variation of a loss leader, like giving away razors so you can sell blades," writes R. McDougall at Climbing The Hill:
"Decide what it is you do that provides value to someone with money," McDougall concludes. It seems that if the main product is free, the money is in the niches.
Which is part of why I believe that ultimately it will be political interest groups that finance journalism. Just as software has expanded from the either/or Mac/Windows "choice" to the plethora of Linux distributions, TV has expanded from the Big Three to hundreds of channels.
That means there's no market for namby-pamby neutrality anymore. The indifferent and undecided aren't watching news at all anymore. Walter Cronkite's avuncular that's the way it is has been replaced by the open advocacy of Olbermann and Maddow, Limbaugh and O'Reilley. When they get the facts right, it still functions as journalism. It's still the traditional model of advertiser support, though the ads are more niche-oriented. But perhaps the model will shift to the more overt partisan press we see in other countries.
That model it makes us, the sudience, do some of the work of weighing the competing ideas, just like we Linux users have to do a little of the work on our end. You may not have to compile the whole package, whether that package is a story or a program. But you'll be expected to play at least some active role and be informed about what you're using.
On the net, the default price is zero, and Linux and open source fit well into that ideology. Old media, not so much. Journalism and the music industry are struggling. They face much the same dilemma: when the product is free, how do you make money?
Journalism is adapting from a pay model that's as old as the printing press, and digging in its heels with ridiculous plans like the Associated Press' scheme to charge bloggers $12.50 for a five word excerpt. And the music industry has yet to accept that recordings are no longer the money making product, but have become a promotional item that sells concert tickets and t-shirts. Instead, they prefer to sue their own customers.
The Linux community, 18 years in, is dealing with the economics of free much better than the old media. In part that's because open-source has always been about free.
"In the past, the media was a full-time job," says Wired editor Chris Anderson. "But maybe the media is going to be a part time job. Maybe media won't be a job at all, but will instead be a hobby." And indeed, that's how it started for me, as a just for giggles pastime that got serious and eventually (for a year and a half) turned into a paying gig.
That's sort of how Linux grows and grows: a geek needs a driver for one odd piece or hardware, and learns some marketable skills in the process.
But still, doesn't somebody have to feed the beast with some $$$ at some point?
"Basically it's a sophisticated variation of a loss leader, like giving away razors so you can sell blades," writes R. McDougall at Climbing The Hill:
No matter what you make, someone will always either manage to break it; or find some flaw they would like improvement in -- especially as time and market conditions change. So you sell support and contract upgrades.
But since everyone else can just take a copy and distribute it themselves, won't you have endless competition?
Well yes, but the hard truth is that's probably in your own long-term best interest. There is collective benefit to having competition.
As the creator of the software you have competitive advantage amongst any pretenders; you know it best, and your superior skill will tend to win out in the end. So the only people you are really competing against are other experts.
"Decide what it is you do that provides value to someone with money," McDougall concludes. It seems that if the main product is free, the money is in the niches.
Which is part of why I believe that ultimately it will be political interest groups that finance journalism. Just as software has expanded from the either/or Mac/Windows "choice" to the plethora of Linux distributions, TV has expanded from the Big Three to hundreds of channels.
That means there's no market for namby-pamby neutrality anymore. The indifferent and undecided aren't watching news at all anymore. Walter Cronkite's avuncular that's the way it is has been replaced by the open advocacy of Olbermann and Maddow, Limbaugh and O'Reilley. When they get the facts right, it still functions as journalism. It's still the traditional model of advertiser support, though the ads are more niche-oriented. But perhaps the model will shift to the more overt partisan press we see in other countries.
That model it makes us, the sudience, do some of the work of weighing the competing ideas, just like we Linux users have to do a little of the work on our end. You may not have to compile the whole package, whether that package is a story or a program. But you'll be expected to play at least some active role and be informed about what you're using.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Linux Monday: Updating the Old Boxes
Linux Monday: Updating the Old Boxes
It's been a while since I've had a Linux Monday post; as with the lack of garden posts it's been a matter of more doing and less writing.
We're just finished with curb-shopping season in Iowa City, and between scrounging and Freecycle I put together three more bootable machines. I also stripped for parts and unloaded seven more machines that had cluttered the basement, mostly of a Pentium II 400 vintage.
How many computers is too many? According to me, I have a 16 port hub and I still have slots left, and hey, I shut a couple down with the thermonuclear temperatures of the past weekend. (When I close the office door it gets noticeably warmer. CPU's generate heat and that's why server rooms are air conditioned.)
According to my wife it's some number less than what we have running now:
My good dual core laptop: technically a dual boot but almost exclusively in Ubuntu. I last actually used Windows on it in maybe... January? When I boot Windows, alll I do is... update Windows.
The old laptop, now in use by my wife and still on XP
Her old machine (2 GHz, XP) in use by one kid
A 1.4 gig machine running Qimo Linux for Kids that the other son uses
A 2 GHz Ubuntu machine that I use to test stuff on before I try it on the good laptop
A varying constellation of other Linux boxes used to play with distributions and detect space aliens.
The ultimate goal, I keep telling my wife, is giving some of these away, which I've actually done once. I'd also like to set up a house-wide network with a server and firewall.
I've got some Pentium III's running at 866 MHz and 1 gig. Those would crawl and stall in Vista but are nice and snappy in Ubuntu. But if all you're doing is searching for space aliens, you don't need a big, desktop-oriented setup.
The flexibility of Linux means you can install a full-featured desktop, or a minimalist system. SETI@Home is all about the CPU speed, but with a low-resource distribution, that old machine is using less of its CPU to run itself and more of its CPU to detect aliens.
The slowest machine I have up is a Celeron 700 that's running Puppy Linux. It seems to be really sturdy, and it's an old-style horizontal (as opposed to tower) case that physically fits into an odd nook. It went 57 days without a restart until I bumped the power cord. I originally had Damn Small Linux on this but Puppy was friendlier to my relative newbie skills.
Even though Puppy is nice and reliable, there's a couple quirks. I need to manually reconnect to the net and manually mount the hard drive each time I restart. (You can save sessions to a removable drive, but with two months between restarts I just haven't bothered.)
You can also take a full-feature distribution and tweak it for low resources. My basic setup for the the 866 and 1 gig machines is:
1) a standard Ubuntu install
2) run the Update Manager to get all the latest fixes
3) SETI@home setup, and
4) Fluxbox, a minimal desktop manager.
This gives me options: All the bells and whistles of the full-featured distribution when I want it, low-resource speed when I need it. You can choose between Fluxbox and another desktop manager at login. Ubuntu's default is called GNOME; xfce and KDE are also popular. Each gives your desktop a different look and feel.
The Fluxbox look and feel is very Smell The Glove: It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.
To get anywhere you right-click anywhere and you get the menus. You can do some text-edit voodoo to customize them, but I haven't needed to. If you've installed Ubuntu and then add Fluxbox, all the programs appear on the menus. However, even though you see them, (such as GNOME Terminal) don't seem to respond to the Fluxbox menu. And when I open Nautilus, GNOME's file manager, then close it, my right-click menu is either gone or buried and I can't get anywhere.
But I've also fired up Firefox and browsed away. The fonts are a little simpler but everything seems to work.
I've also tried Blackbox, Flux's ancestor, as well. That works in a very similar fashion and is supposed to be a little bit lighter-weight. But I had trouble with it on one machine and it called up only a very limited menu.
But if I had found Crunchbang first I might not have taken the standard Ubuntu plus Blackbox approach. #! is one of many Ubuntu-based distributions and works a lot like what I did on my own: a Blackbox-style right-click menu.
Crunchbang, geekily abbreviated #!, is one of many Ubuntu-based distributions (such as Qimo and Linux Mint) Libe other minimal distros, #! is designed to boot from a CD or flash drive and load the whole system in RAM. That makes the minimalist distros ideal for system recovery, which is how most people use them.
You could also do a full install of #!, but I just checked out the live CD. Unlike stright Ubuntu, which makes you take one extra step to enable proprietary media formats like Flash and .mp3, #! takes the Linux Mint approach and supports them from the get-go. Took me about 30 seconds to figure out how to connect the wifi and I was surfing.
#! generally includes lighter weight applications that Ubuntu: smaller media players, Abiword for word processing instead of Open Office. It also has a lot of keyboard shortcuts and has a vibe of steering you to the command line.
So I may do a full #! install on one of these old machines... but first I need a nice scientific organized system to determine speed and help me figure out which ones to shut off. What I should be doing, of course, is just booting to the command line and detecting aliens from there. But I'm not that geeky... yet.
It's been a while since I've had a Linux Monday post; as with the lack of garden posts it's been a matter of more doing and less writing.
We're just finished with curb-shopping season in Iowa City, and between scrounging and Freecycle I put together three more bootable machines. I also stripped for parts and unloaded seven more machines that had cluttered the basement, mostly of a Pentium II 400 vintage.
How many computers is too many? According to me, I have a 16 port hub and I still have slots left, and hey, I shut a couple down with the thermonuclear temperatures of the past weekend. (When I close the office door it gets noticeably warmer. CPU's generate heat and that's why server rooms are air conditioned.)
According to my wife it's some number less than what we have running now:
The ultimate goal, I keep telling my wife, is giving some of these away, which I've actually done once. I'd also like to set up a house-wide network with a server and firewall.
I've got some Pentium III's running at 866 MHz and 1 gig. Those would crawl and stall in Vista but are nice and snappy in Ubuntu. But if all you're doing is searching for space aliens, you don't need a big, desktop-oriented setup.
The flexibility of Linux means you can install a full-featured desktop, or a minimalist system. SETI@Home is all about the CPU speed, but with a low-resource distribution, that old machine is using less of its CPU to run itself and more of its CPU to detect aliens.
The slowest machine I have up is a Celeron 700 that's running Puppy Linux. It seems to be really sturdy, and it's an old-style horizontal (as opposed to tower) case that physically fits into an odd nook. It went 57 days without a restart until I bumped the power cord. I originally had Damn Small Linux on this but Puppy was friendlier to my relative newbie skills.
Even though Puppy is nice and reliable, there's a couple quirks. I need to manually reconnect to the net and manually mount the hard drive each time I restart. (You can save sessions to a removable drive, but with two months between restarts I just haven't bothered.)
You can also take a full-feature distribution and tweak it for low resources. My basic setup for the the 866 and 1 gig machines is:
1) a standard Ubuntu install
2) run the Update Manager to get all the latest fixes
3) SETI@home setup, and
4) Fluxbox, a minimal desktop manager.
This gives me options: All the bells and whistles of the full-featured distribution when I want it, low-resource speed when I need it. You can choose between Fluxbox and another desktop manager at login. Ubuntu's default is called GNOME; xfce and KDE are also popular. Each gives your desktop a different look and feel.
The Fluxbox look and feel is very Smell The Glove: It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.
To get anywhere you right-click anywhere and you get the menus. You can do some text-edit voodoo to customize them, but I haven't needed to. If you've installed Ubuntu and then add Fluxbox, all the programs appear on the menus. However, even though you see them, (such as GNOME Terminal) don't seem to respond to the Fluxbox menu. And when I open Nautilus, GNOME's file manager, then close it, my right-click menu is either gone or buried and I can't get anywhere.
But I've also fired up Firefox and browsed away. The fonts are a little simpler but everything seems to work.
I've also tried Blackbox, Flux's ancestor, as well. That works in a very similar fashion and is supposed to be a little bit lighter-weight. But I had trouble with it on one machine and it called up only a very limited menu.
But if I had found Crunchbang first I might not have taken the standard Ubuntu plus Blackbox approach. #! is one of many Ubuntu-based distributions and works a lot like what I did on my own: a Blackbox-style right-click menu.
Crunchbang, geekily abbreviated #!, is one of many Ubuntu-based distributions (such as Qimo and Linux Mint) Libe other minimal distros, #! is designed to boot from a CD or flash drive and load the whole system in RAM. That makes the minimalist distros ideal for system recovery, which is how most people use them.
You could also do a full install of #!, but I just checked out the live CD. Unlike stright Ubuntu, which makes you take one extra step to enable proprietary media formats like Flash and .mp3, #! takes the Linux Mint approach and supports them from the get-go. Took me about 30 seconds to figure out how to connect the wifi and I was surfing.
#! generally includes lighter weight applications that Ubuntu: smaller media players, Abiword for word processing instead of Open Office. It also has a lot of keyboard shortcuts and has a vibe of steering you to the command line.
So I may do a full #! install on one of these old machines... but first I need a nice scientific organized system to determine speed and help me figure out which ones to shut off. What I should be doing, of course, is just booting to the command line and detecting aliens from there. But I'm not that geeky... yet.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Linux Distributions and the Paralysis of Choice
Linux Distributions and the Paralysis of Choice
Linux advocates like to brag about the number of choices people get with open source software. Windows offers very few choices, beyond dropping to your knees and begging "please, PLEASE let me keep XP! How much is a downgrade from Vista?" And Mac World even locks you into the hardware.
Linux offers literally hundreds of niches, a distribution for every need. But is that so much of a good thing that it's scaring people away?
Too often, someone dipping their toes into the waters of Linux is met by enthusiastic geeks who, in an over-eagerness to show off their knowledge, move too fast into debates over the merits of Arch vs. Mandrive vs. Slackware vs. Damn Obscure Linux. (I've been guilty myself and I promise this post will be command line free.) The newbie (n00b in 733+speak) gets overwhemed and retreats.
Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University studies consumer choice and finds that too MUCH choice can be de-motivating. (See full paper or nice summary by Derek Sivers). Iyengar went to the grocery store to get her data. Customers were offered jam samples, and the people who chose between six kinds of jam were ten times more likely to buy jam than those who had two dozen flavors to choose from.
Or, as Sivers writes, "if you ask your customers if they want extensive choice, they will say they do – but they really don’t."
It's pretty much the same problem with Linux, although the jam aisle may be the wrong place to look. "The tortilla chip is a perfect comparison, because the basic chip is always the same: it is made of corn," writes Carla Schroder. "Every brand has its own variation on this basic chip: more salt, less salt, more grease, less grease, more crispy, less crispy, thicker, thinner, different shapes, white, blue, yellow corn, different flavorings. Underneath all Linuxes are pretty much the same; the differences are things like bundled software, user interfaces, configuration tools, and customized functionality."
Clearly she's an experienced geek, because as we all know the tortilla chip is one of the primary geek fuels along with pizza and caffeine. She know that each chip, micro or tortilla, has its purpose. But the analogy shows that we cope with greater numbers of choices all the time, whether it be foods or even other large-ticket items like cars.
We're able to do this in part because we can categorize. Sivers says we can handle a menu of about three to six choices, so we cope better if our choices are clustered. We choose the breakast menu or the lunch menu or the kids menu, then we choose within that menu.
But with open source, there's no one person in charge, so the menu gets jumbled. Since I'm just as qualified as anyone else, I'll offer my own menu. I assume that if you're here, you're a relative beginner.
I've never run a server, never run a netbook, never done extensive system recovery, never set up a full-blown media center.I've set up general purpose desktops, and I've run some distributions designed to run on old, low-resource desktop machines.
My preferred distribution is Ubuntu, currently the most popular. But if I were recommending something for the absolute beginner, I would go with Linux Mint. It's based on Ubuntu, and thus the new release schedule runs about a month behind, but the functionality is almost identical so the online help that's available applies to both.
Why Mint over Ubuntu? The Ubuntu project leaves a few things out for assorted legal and copyright reasons. Most of those are related to media playback. There's many variations of this 10 Things to do After Installing Ubuntu Linux post. And they aren't hard things. But Linux Mint does a lot of them for you. Erlik at From Windows To Linux explains the advantages of Mint over Ubuntu in a bit more depth.
If you have an old machine that you want to make functional, the leaders are Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux. I found Puppy just a little bit easier and have it running on one machine.
And if you have kids, Qimo is very good. It's also Ubuntu based, but it installs with a kid-friendly interface: large icons and lots of educational games. It also works well with older low-resource machines, a smart move since the kids often get the hand-me-down computer.
Linux advocates like to brag about the number of choices people get with open source software. Windows offers very few choices, beyond dropping to your knees and begging "please, PLEASE let me keep XP! How much is a downgrade from Vista?" And Mac World even locks you into the hardware.
Linux offers literally hundreds of niches, a distribution for every need. But is that so much of a good thing that it's scaring people away?
Too often, someone dipping their toes into the waters of Linux is met by enthusiastic geeks who, in an over-eagerness to show off their knowledge, move too fast into debates over the merits of Arch vs. Mandrive vs. Slackware vs. Damn Obscure Linux. (I've been guilty myself and I promise this post will be command line free.) The newbie (n00b in 733+speak) gets overwhemed and retreats.
Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University studies consumer choice and finds that too MUCH choice can be de-motivating. (See full paper or nice summary by Derek Sivers). Iyengar went to the grocery store to get her data. Customers were offered jam samples, and the people who chose between six kinds of jam were ten times more likely to buy jam than those who had two dozen flavors to choose from.
Or, as Sivers writes, "if you ask your customers if they want extensive choice, they will say they do – but they really don’t."
It's pretty much the same problem with Linux, although the jam aisle may be the wrong place to look. "The tortilla chip is a perfect comparison, because the basic chip is always the same: it is made of corn," writes Carla Schroder. "Every brand has its own variation on this basic chip: more salt, less salt, more grease, less grease, more crispy, less crispy, thicker, thinner, different shapes, white, blue, yellow corn, different flavorings. Underneath all Linuxes are pretty much the same; the differences are things like bundled software, user interfaces, configuration tools, and customized functionality."
Clearly she's an experienced geek, because as we all know the tortilla chip is one of the primary geek fuels along with pizza and caffeine. She know that each chip, micro or tortilla, has its purpose. But the analogy shows that we cope with greater numbers of choices all the time, whether it be foods or even other large-ticket items like cars.
We're able to do this in part because we can categorize. Sivers says we can handle a menu of about three to six choices, so we cope better if our choices are clustered. We choose the breakast menu or the lunch menu or the kids menu, then we choose within that menu.
But with open source, there's no one person in charge, so the menu gets jumbled. Since I'm just as qualified as anyone else, I'll offer my own menu. I assume that if you're here, you're a relative beginner.
I've never run a server, never run a netbook, never done extensive system recovery, never set up a full-blown media center.I've set up general purpose desktops, and I've run some distributions designed to run on old, low-resource desktop machines.
My preferred distribution is Ubuntu, currently the most popular. But if I were recommending something for the absolute beginner, I would go with Linux Mint. It's based on Ubuntu, and thus the new release schedule runs about a month behind, but the functionality is almost identical so the online help that's available applies to both.
Why Mint over Ubuntu? The Ubuntu project leaves a few things out for assorted legal and copyright reasons. Most of those are related to media playback. There's many variations of this 10 Things to do After Installing Ubuntu Linux post. And they aren't hard things. But Linux Mint does a lot of them for you. Erlik at From Windows To Linux explains the advantages of Mint over Ubuntu in a bit more depth.
If you have an old machine that you want to make functional, the leaders are Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux. I found Puppy just a little bit easier and have it running on one machine.
And if you have kids, Qimo is very good. It's also Ubuntu based, but it installs with a kid-friendly interface: large icons and lots of educational games. It also works well with older low-resource machines, a smart move since the kids often get the hand-me-down computer.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Save A Job With Linux
Save A Job With Linux
Last week one of my town's major employers, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, announced 130 staff layoffs. Our school district is coping with a budget crunch by, among other things, closing my kid's school. And my city is looking at staff cuts as well.
Now, this being Monday, I'm going to say Linux can fix that too, right? Well, I won't go that far. But in the tough economy, local governments are starting to turn to open-source solutions to save money.
"Why should our school systems be paying for proprietary software when teachers are being laid off?" asks network administrator Chad Wollenberg. He recently workes with a poor school district in rural Virginia that couldn't afford to "upgrade" from Microsoft Office 2003 (soon to be phased out) to the 2007 version.
(Does changing MS Office versions ever REALLY feel like an upgrade? Or does it just seem to break a lot of stuff that worked fine while adding a bunch of functions you don't need? For the little bit of personal stuff I absolutely have to do in Windows, I still use Office 2000, which coincidentally is the last version you don't have to register online.)
"(Wollenberg)'s not talking about major changes, like switching from Windows to Linux on desktops," writes Steven Vaughan-Nichols, who noted that even at Microsoft's discounted rate of $50 per license for schools, the "upgrade" would have cost more than $200,000.
"By convincing them to switch to OpenOffice and Google Docs, Wollenberg saved them that money, said Vaughan-Nichols. "Or, to look at it another way, that was about four mid-level jobs saved."
OpenOffice is cross-platform compatible and supports Microsoft Office formats. I regularly edit my checkbook, which is a simple spreadsheet, in both Excel and OpenOffice, switching between my Linux box and my wife's Windows machine, with no ill effects.
On a larger scale, the city of Vancouver, BC is a leader in open source government. Last year the school district saved enough money to build a new computer lab in every school, simply by not renewing its Microsoft Office licenses. And the city council recently passed a resolution calling for the use of open source programs.
Vancouver's pro-open source government philosophy ripples into the private economy as well. "From a recruitment point of view in the software industry in particular, a city which embraced openness and the internet would be that much more attractive to the kinds of technical, creative, and public-spirited individuals that I seek," writes developer David Ascher.
The scale gets even bigger. A February study by MeriTalk argues that the federal government could save $3.7 billion for using open-source software; $13.3 billion for using virtualization technologies; and $6.6 billion from cloud computing such as GoogleDocs. The Obama Administration is reported to be interested in increasing government use of open source.
Last week one of my town's major employers, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, announced 130 staff layoffs. Our school district is coping with a budget crunch by, among other things, closing my kid's school. And my city is looking at staff cuts as well.
Now, this being Monday, I'm going to say Linux can fix that too, right? Well, I won't go that far. But in the tough economy, local governments are starting to turn to open-source solutions to save money.
"Why should our school systems be paying for proprietary software when teachers are being laid off?" asks network administrator Chad Wollenberg. He recently workes with a poor school district in rural Virginia that couldn't afford to "upgrade" from Microsoft Office 2003 (soon to be phased out) to the 2007 version.
(Does changing MS Office versions ever REALLY feel like an upgrade? Or does it just seem to break a lot of stuff that worked fine while adding a bunch of functions you don't need? For the little bit of personal stuff I absolutely have to do in Windows, I still use Office 2000, which coincidentally is the last version you don't have to register online.)
"(Wollenberg)'s not talking about major changes, like switching from Windows to Linux on desktops," writes Steven Vaughan-Nichols, who noted that even at Microsoft's discounted rate of $50 per license for schools, the "upgrade" would have cost more than $200,000.
"By convincing them to switch to OpenOffice and Google Docs, Wollenberg saved them that money, said Vaughan-Nichols. "Or, to look at it another way, that was about four mid-level jobs saved."
OpenOffice is cross-platform compatible and supports Microsoft Office formats. I regularly edit my checkbook, which is a simple spreadsheet, in both Excel and OpenOffice, switching between my Linux box and my wife's Windows machine, with no ill effects.
On a larger scale, the city of Vancouver, BC is a leader in open source government. Last year the school district saved enough money to build a new computer lab in every school, simply by not renewing its Microsoft Office licenses. And the city council recently passed a resolution calling for the use of open source programs.
Vancouver's pro-open source government philosophy ripples into the private economy as well. "From a recruitment point of view in the software industry in particular, a city which embraced openness and the internet would be that much more attractive to the kinds of technical, creative, and public-spirited individuals that I seek," writes developer David Ascher.
The scale gets even bigger. A February study by MeriTalk argues that the federal government could save $3.7 billion for using open-source software; $13.3 billion for using virtualization technologies; and $6.6 billion from cloud computing such as GoogleDocs. The Obama Administration is reported to be interested in increasing government use of open source.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Linux Monday Links
Linux Monday Links
My way too big inbox tells me it's a year ago this past weekend that I made The Big Switch to using Linux as my main (not yet only) operating system. To celebrate here's some Linux Monday links:
Linux ate my RAM! Actually it didn't. The best basic description I've seen yet on how Linux uses memory (and why you don't need a third-party add-on memory manager like you do in Windows):
Too many exclamation points! But that's just the kindergarten version of the page; the geek page is here.
Ubuntu keyboard shortcuts on a page unfortunately named "Windows tips tricks tweaks and hacks." But a lot of the common ones are Windows-similar.
Distributions for your old low-resource machine. I've got a Celeron 700 MHz happily detecting aliens with Puppy Linux.
A former Mac fan switches to Linux:
After trying Windows 7, this writer stays with Ubuntu: "Much of what I would consider the pros of using Windows 7 are the pros of using any windows, except now it actually feels like using a modern OS that doesn't feel as bloated as Vista so I would say that Windows 7 is merely a "bonus". Perhaps those who characterize it as a service pack to Vista aren't too far off."
"I think all billionaires should give away the vast majority of their fortune," says Bill Gates, but giving away Microsoft software and source code is apparantly a non-starter.
In response to a common "Linux isn't ready for the desktop," here's why Windows isn't ready for the desktop.
My way too big inbox tells me it's a year ago this past weekend that I made The Big Switch to using Linux as my main (not yet only) operating system. To celebrate here's some Linux Monday links:
Linux is borrowing unused memory for disk caching. This makes it looks like you are low on memory, but you are not!
Both you and Linux agrees that memory taken by applications is "used", while memory that isn't used for anything is "free".
But what do you call memory that is both used for something and available for applications?
You would call that "free", but Linux calls it "used".
If your applications want more memory, they just take back a chunk that the disk cache borrowed. Disk cache can always be given back to applications immediately! You are not low on ram!
Too many exclamation points! But that's just the kindergarten version of the page; the geek page is here.
On a Mac, it is easy to do the small things, but once you become a little more savvy, the Mac is harder to use and harder to learn.
Macs have this weird, non-liner learning curve that starts very low and stays shallow for a while, but then gets “super-steep” - it is very difficult to be in the tech-savvy but non-pro middle ground.
Linux’s learning curve starts a little higher - you really have to be able to install your own operating system and brave enough to try.
However, Linux gives you a much smoother transition from novice to native, with very helpful people to guide you on the way.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Linux Monday: A Glass of WINE
Linux Monday: A Glass of WINE
The biggest problem most people have with making The Big Move from Windows to Linux, indeed the problem I had, is the One Critical App. Yes, you say, the cost is great, the security is better, the use of resources is better, I even like the open source philosophy. But there's this one program I absolutely can't live without, and it won't work.
For me, Microsoft Access was the deal breaker. I'd checked out Open Office, the open source community's main office suite, in Windows. And while the word processor and spreadsheet (and as I later found the slide show) worked just fine with my legacy windows files, Open Office Base was useless to me. I had a decade plus of legacy data locked into Access -- custom reports, countless queries, million record data tables -- and without Access I couldn't budge.
I settled for dual-boot for a while, gradually moving more and more of my work to Linux, getting more and more comfortable there, until my Windows partition was just that place I booted to occasionally for some database work.
But my open source ideology and stubbornness got the better of me, and despite my sobriety I got some WINE.
The name WINE is an inside joke--it allegedly stands for WINE Is Not an Emulator. The program allows you to, after a fair amount of tweaking, run Windows programs on a Linux system. It's a controversial issue within the open-source community. Like libertarians arguing whether we should privatize the streetlights now or later, open sourcers disagree in whether the community is better served by the tough love of breaking Microsoft addiction cold turkey, or by using the nicotine patch of WINE to ease people's withdrawal and overcome their fear of transition.
Working with WINE is a multi-step process and is for the committed. You start by installing the WINE program itself from the repository. You then need to open up WINE and install the Windows programs themselves from whatever software source you have (for example, your Microsoft Office disks).
WINE is under constant development and is very version-sensitive. And it supports some programs but not others. I failed with iTunes, and Photoshop doesn't work either. Be prepared to do some Googling to get things to work.
Once you do get things working, you don't on the surface "run WINE." A Windows Programs entry appeared on my desktop menu with Excel and Access and all the usual suspect (even Internet Exploder and Windows Media Player). You just run them like any other program and WINE works under the hood.
My install appeared to go successfully and I could open Excel and Access, but when I tried to open an actual file in Excel or Access the program would crash. Eventually I got my big database to work, but when I checked it out again back in Windows, the file was corrupted. My most recent work was lost, but fortunately I wasn't too long past a backup.
So I seemed to be stalled and went back, chastened, to the occasional Windows boot until I met Crossover.
Crossover Office really isn't in the open source spirit. It's based on WINE but contains additional, proprietary code and costs money. They had a free download day last fall, when I grabbed it, but normally each version--Crossover Linux, Crossover Mac and Crossover Games--is $39.95. I'd call it good value for the money.
Setting up Crossover is pretty similar to WINE: install the program itself, then add the apps. But once that was done, I was in, without a lot of post-install tweaking. Access is working fine, and once I determined that I quit working in Windows once and for all. I occasionally boot it up, but all I do in Windows is... maintain Windows: run the updates, update the firewall, update the antivirus. You know, all the stuff I don't have to think about in Linux.
The only problem I've had is saving in Excel. When I open a file that's saved as .xls, it tells me I have it open as read-only. My next step is making my system open .xls files by default as Open Office, rather than with Crossover-backed Excel.
In other tips: Ubuntu fans have been grumbling about the way Jaunty Jackalope deals with update notification. This tip shows you how to set it back to the way it worked in 8.10 and before, with an arrow in the tray. It's one line of command-line voodoo:
Reboot and the next time you get an update, the friendly old arrow is there. Worked for me.
Another thing I've been playing with is Fluxbox, a minimalist desktop designed for use on low-resource machines. Low-resource distribution Damn Small Linux uses Fluxbox, but it's readily availible in the Ubuntu repositories as well (open Synamptic Package Manager and search on fluxbox).
It's not as user-intuitive as "pretty" desktops like GNOME, KDE and xfce; you have to right-click on it to pull up your menus, and the font is something old, monospaced terminal-looking thing. But on my main laptop, where I normally use GNOME, it automatically included menu items for all the apps (despite scary-sounding menu editing instructions that I didn't need to try). A little tweaking makes it look OK, and if you're using this on a higher end machine it's about performance not looks. I'm running Fluxbox on one of my old backup machines where the goal is to detect as many space aliens as possible, and where I plug in a monitor once a week or so just to make sure the thing's still running.
The biggest problem most people have with making The Big Move from Windows to Linux, indeed the problem I had, is the One Critical App. Yes, you say, the cost is great, the security is better, the use of resources is better, I even like the open source philosophy. But there's this one program I absolutely can't live without, and it won't work.
For me, Microsoft Access was the deal breaker. I'd checked out Open Office, the open source community's main office suite, in Windows. And while the word processor and spreadsheet (and as I later found the slide show) worked just fine with my legacy windows files, Open Office Base was useless to me. I had a decade plus of legacy data locked into Access -- custom reports, countless queries, million record data tables -- and without Access I couldn't budge.
I settled for dual-boot for a while, gradually moving more and more of my work to Linux, getting more and more comfortable there, until my Windows partition was just that place I booted to occasionally for some database work.
But my open source ideology and stubbornness got the better of me, and despite my sobriety I got some WINE.
The name WINE is an inside joke--it allegedly stands for WINE Is Not an Emulator. The program allows you to, after a fair amount of tweaking, run Windows programs on a Linux system. It's a controversial issue within the open-source community. Like libertarians arguing whether we should privatize the streetlights now or later, open sourcers disagree in whether the community is better served by the tough love of breaking Microsoft addiction cold turkey, or by using the nicotine patch of WINE to ease people's withdrawal and overcome their fear of transition.Working with WINE is a multi-step process and is for the committed. You start by installing the WINE program itself from the repository. You then need to open up WINE and install the Windows programs themselves from whatever software source you have (for example, your Microsoft Office disks).
WINE is under constant development and is very version-sensitive. And it supports some programs but not others. I failed with iTunes, and Photoshop doesn't work either. Be prepared to do some Googling to get things to work.
Once you do get things working, you don't on the surface "run WINE." A Windows Programs entry appeared on my desktop menu with Excel and Access and all the usual suspect (even Internet Exploder and Windows Media Player). You just run them like any other program and WINE works under the hood.
My install appeared to go successfully and I could open Excel and Access, but when I tried to open an actual file in Excel or Access the program would crash. Eventually I got my big database to work, but when I checked it out again back in Windows, the file was corrupted. My most recent work was lost, but fortunately I wasn't too long past a backup.
So I seemed to be stalled and went back, chastened, to the occasional Windows boot until I met Crossover.
Crossover Office really isn't in the open source spirit. It's based on WINE but contains additional, proprietary code and costs money. They had a free download day last fall, when I grabbed it, but normally each version--Crossover Linux, Crossover Mac and Crossover Games--is $39.95. I'd call it good value for the money.
Setting up Crossover is pretty similar to WINE: install the program itself, then add the apps. But once that was done, I was in, without a lot of post-install tweaking. Access is working fine, and once I determined that I quit working in Windows once and for all. I occasionally boot it up, but all I do in Windows is... maintain Windows: run the updates, update the firewall, update the antivirus. You know, all the stuff I don't have to think about in Linux.
The only problem I've had is saving in Excel. When I open a file that's saved as .xls, it tells me I have it open as read-only. My next step is making my system open .xls files by default as Open Office, rather than with Crossover-backed Excel.
In other tips: Ubuntu fans have been grumbling about the way Jaunty Jackalope deals with update notification. This tip shows you how to set it back to the way it worked in 8.10 and before, with an arrow in the tray. It's one line of command-line voodoo:
gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false
Reboot and the next time you get an update, the friendly old arrow is there. Worked for me.
Another thing I've been playing with is Fluxbox, a minimalist desktop designed for use on low-resource machines. Low-resource distribution Damn Small Linux uses Fluxbox, but it's readily availible in the Ubuntu repositories as well (open Synamptic Package Manager and search on fluxbox).
It's not as user-intuitive as "pretty" desktops like GNOME, KDE and xfce; you have to right-click on it to pull up your menus, and the font is something old, monospaced terminal-looking thing. But on my main laptop, where I normally use GNOME, it automatically included menu items for all the apps (despite scary-sounding menu editing instructions that I didn't need to try). A little tweaking makes it look OK, and if you're using this on a higher end machine it's about performance not looks. I'm running Fluxbox on one of my old backup machines where the goal is to detect as many space aliens as possible, and where I plug in a monitor once a week or so just to make sure the thing's still running.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Linux Monday Jaunty Reviews
Linux Monday: The Laptop and the Jackalope
After an unbelievable eight weeks and a day in repair, the laptop is back. The entire motherboard and CPU were fried, so it's basically a new computer. (The actual repairs were completed long ago; my techies shipped it to an outside vendor for a warranty-covered job and the idea I get is that they had a $$$ dispute and my machine was held hostage.)
So I did the upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04 Friday night, and it appeared to go smoothly. But as soon as I had time to sit down and try stuff I found two issues.
Problem 1) No. Sound. At. All. That's one of the raps on Ububtu setup and Linux in general: sound is tricky. And as someone with a massive music library, that matters to me. (It's worth the effort to me to avoid the DRM issues with Mac and Windows; we choose our tradeoffs.)
In an effort to solve Problem 1 I downloaded the full CD and tried to burn it when I found:
Problem 2) Intermittent recognition and burning of CDs. I wasted several blanks before I succeeded. Then the Jaunty disk worked in other computers but showed up on the laptop as a blank. So I burned another Jaunty CD, on another computer (in, er, another operating system, sorry) and this time was able to boot from the CD on my laptop.
As the CD boot completed I heard the happy drumbeat of Ubuntu, which told me that the problem was with my install, rather than my hardware (being fresh off of hardware issues I wanted to rule that out). So the next step will probably be a clean install.
Jaunty has a migration utility that will let me keep settings; I tested that on the number two machine first. It popped up, but only offered to import my settings from an old Windows install. Perhaps that was because I'd already installed Jaunty through the upgrade process. Don't know if it would have imported my settings if I'd still had 8.10 installed.
I tried to explain all this to my wife, who has a vested interest in me not banging my head, but her response was, "John, as soon as you say 'Linux' all I hear is 'Linux bla bla bla.'"
The big news in Linux Land this week is that in April's monthly Market Share statistics, Linux topped 1 percent for the first time ever. Hey, that's a bigger share of the vote than Bob Barr got... Windows has dropped to an all-time low of 87.9 percent, meaning one of eight Internet users are using something else. Lots of little systems are nibbling away, like iPhone and iPod Touch.
Other than that, the talk is still Jaunty Jackalope. Several reviews:
Information Week: "With each release to both the left and the right of the decimal point, Canonical's Ubuntu shapes up all the more as the Linux distribution for the end user. Critics are calling it as slick and seamless as the Mac's OS X, and it's come that much closer to being a one-for-one replacement for the Windows operating system as anything yet seen.
That said, Ubuntu isn't without its pitfalls and gotchas -- as well as its hidden delights..."
Tech Republic tries it on an aging machine: "It’s faster than any distribution I’ve seen. It’s more stable than any other Ubuntu release to date. Everything is exactly where you would think it SHOULD be. And it all works perfectly, seamlessly, beautifully."
PC World: Are you impatient? Do you want your computer to work when you're ready to work? While Ubuntu 9.04's no instant-on operating system, like the embedded Linux SplashTop, it is mighty darn fast.
How fast? Well, I didn't see a boot time of 17.5 seconds like some people have, but I was up and working in 41-seconds, which for a box from 2006 and a conventional hard drive is pretty darn impressive."
But Tux Radar misses an old feature: "In the old days, a tray icon would appear with a bubble telling users that updates were available. But as of 9.04, that's been dropped in favour of Update Manager automatically appearing on the screen, only to be minimised. The thinking is that this makes Update Manager harder to ignore, presumably because it's more annoying now.
If people were ignoring the system updates bubble, couldn't you just have done something with the new notifications system to make security updates clearer - something like "Critical updates are available for your computer - click here to install them now." Then don't ask any further questions: if they click that, install the updates straight away rather than showing Update Manager."
My guess is these reviews are of fresh installs, and that the problems I'm facing are by-products of the upgrade install I did. I'll let you know.
After an unbelievable eight weeks and a day in repair, the laptop is back. The entire motherboard and CPU were fried, so it's basically a new computer. (The actual repairs were completed long ago; my techies shipped it to an outside vendor for a warranty-covered job and the idea I get is that they had a $$$ dispute and my machine was held hostage.)
So I did the upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04 Friday night, and it appeared to go smoothly. But as soon as I had time to sit down and try stuff I found two issues.
Problem 1) No. Sound. At. All. That's one of the raps on Ububtu setup and Linux in general: sound is tricky. And as someone with a massive music library, that matters to me. (It's worth the effort to me to avoid the DRM issues with Mac and Windows; we choose our tradeoffs.)
In an effort to solve Problem 1 I downloaded the full CD and tried to burn it when I found:
Problem 2) Intermittent recognition and burning of CDs. I wasted several blanks before I succeeded. Then the Jaunty disk worked in other computers but showed up on the laptop as a blank. So I burned another Jaunty CD, on another computer (in, er, another operating system, sorry) and this time was able to boot from the CD on my laptop.
As the CD boot completed I heard the happy drumbeat of Ubuntu, which told me that the problem was with my install, rather than my hardware (being fresh off of hardware issues I wanted to rule that out). So the next step will probably be a clean install.
Jaunty has a migration utility that will let me keep settings; I tested that on the number two machine first. It popped up, but only offered to import my settings from an old Windows install. Perhaps that was because I'd already installed Jaunty through the upgrade process. Don't know if it would have imported my settings if I'd still had 8.10 installed.
I tried to explain all this to my wife, who has a vested interest in me not banging my head, but her response was, "John, as soon as you say 'Linux' all I hear is 'Linux bla bla bla.'"
The big news in Linux Land this week is that in April's monthly Market Share statistics, Linux topped 1 percent for the first time ever. Hey, that's a bigger share of the vote than Bob Barr got... Windows has dropped to an all-time low of 87.9 percent, meaning one of eight Internet users are using something else. Lots of little systems are nibbling away, like iPhone and iPod Touch.
Other than that, the talk is still Jaunty Jackalope. Several reviews:
That said, Ubuntu isn't without its pitfalls and gotchas -- as well as its hidden delights..."
How fast? Well, I didn't see a boot time of 17.5 seconds like some people have, but I was up and working in 41-seconds, which for a box from 2006 and a conventional hard drive is pretty darn impressive."
If people were ignoring the system updates bubble, couldn't you just have done something with the new notifications system to make security updates clearer - something like "Critical updates are available for your computer - click here to install them now." Then don't ask any further questions: if they click that, install the updates straight away rather than showing Update Manager."
My guess is these reviews are of fresh installs, and that the problems I'm facing are by-products of the upgrade install I did. I'll let you know.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Jaunty Jackalope
Linux Monday: Leaping to the Jackalope
Linux Monday is back even though my laptop isn't. Last week I finally configured a backup machine that does everything I need except fit under my arm, and on Thursday night/Friday morning I upgraded Ubuntu from version 8.10 to the brand new Jaunty Jackalope, version 9.04.
If you saw the liveblog you'll see I had a couple bumps in the road. Turns out my problem was a font package that was messed up in my 8.10 install in the first place. I chose an upgrade that kept my configuration, so what was a problem before remains a problem. Fixing the install took a couple (sorry) command line commands, (sudo apt-get upgrade, for those of you who understand) but then all was well. I also found instructions to fix the font issue as well.
The second machine I upgraded, which was a bit older, had no problems.
I know this doesn't make my proselytizing case well, but truth is the best option here. And for me, the silver lining is that I get a dry run on the backup machine before I work on the laptop.
Semi-random thoughts:
Boy does this version boot FAST.
Audio and video are working well; audio was an issue for me in the upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10. And my Flash video plugins (which you need for YouTube) are working better than they did on this machine in 8.10.
Open Office is upgraded from 2.4 to 3.0 (which just barely missed the cutoff for Ubuntu 8.10). I'd already upgraded that myself on the good machine but this made it easier.
Included by default is KStars, a nice little astronomy program that was configured with one question (where are you), so if you're a space geek like me it's a nice touch. There's also a neat little disk cleanup utility called "Computer Janitor" that clears away unnecessary files and explains why they're no longer needed.
Something I haven't tried yet but plan to: a wizard for creating a bootable USB druve.
The tiny feature I miss the most from the early versions: the clock screen-saver. I think Ubuntu dropped that after 6.06. It's not hard to figure out, but why not just keep it?
So, so far so good. More to come when the laptop returns.
Linux Monday is back even though my laptop isn't. Last week I finally configured a backup machine that does everything I need except fit under my arm, and on Thursday night/Friday morning I upgraded Ubuntu from version 8.10 to the brand new Jaunty Jackalope, version 9.04.
If you saw the liveblog you'll see I had a couple bumps in the road. Turns out my problem was a font package that was messed up in my 8.10 install in the first place. I chose an upgrade that kept my configuration, so what was a problem before remains a problem. Fixing the install took a couple (sorry) command line commands, (sudo apt-get upgrade, for those of you who understand) but then all was well. I also found instructions to fix the font issue as well.
The second machine I upgraded, which was a bit older, had no problems.
I know this doesn't make my proselytizing case well, but truth is the best option here. And for me, the silver lining is that I get a dry run on the backup machine before I work on the laptop.
Semi-random thoughts:
Boy does this version boot FAST.
Audio and video are working well; audio was an issue for me in the upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10. And my Flash video plugins (which you need for YouTube) are working better than they did on this machine in 8.10.
Open Office is upgraded from 2.4 to 3.0 (which just barely missed the cutoff for Ubuntu 8.10). I'd already upgraded that myself on the good machine but this made it easier.
Included by default is KStars, a nice little astronomy program that was configured with one question (where are you), so if you're a space geek like me it's a nice touch. There's also a neat little disk cleanup utility called "Computer Janitor" that clears away unnecessary files and explains why they're no longer needed.
Something I haven't tried yet but plan to: a wizard for creating a bootable USB druve.
The tiny feature I miss the most from the early versions: the clock screen-saver. I think Ubuntu dropped that after 6.06. It's not hard to figure out, but why not just keep it?
So, so far so good. More to come when the laptop returns.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Linux Links
Police Profiling... Linux?!?
You thought I was mad about the Missouri cops profiling people based on bumper stickers? Well now it seems at least one campus security operation (Boston College) is going after someone because he's a Linux user:
Don't get scared, people. The cops may bust you for using the command line, but remember, it's a non-essential, like a keyboard shortcut, in most distributions.
The biggest distro, Ubuntu, upgrades next week with the release of version 9.04, "Jaunty Jackalope," on Thursday the 23rd. That's only 12 days before our sales tax election; why do they always upgrade right when I'm busy? Version 8.10, Intrepid Ibex, came out just five days before the presidential election, and 9.10 ("Karmic Koala"; Ubuntu is always Alliterative Animal) will land right before next fall's city election.
But no matter if you're a yes or no on the sales tax, Ubuntu is tax free.
You thought I was mad about the Missouri cops profiling people based on bumper stickers? Well now it seems at least one campus security operation (Boston College) is going after someone because he's a Linux user:"Mr. Calixte uses two different operating systems to hide his illegal activities (sic). One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on."
Aside from the remarkable overreach by campus and state police in trying to paint a student as suspicious in part because he can navigate a non-Windows computer environment, nothing cited in the warrant application could possibly constitute the cited criminal offenses.
Don't get scared, people. The cops may bust you for using the command line, but remember, it's a non-essential, like a keyboard shortcut, in most distributions.
The biggest distro, Ubuntu, upgrades next week with the release of version 9.04, "Jaunty Jackalope," on Thursday the 23rd. That's only 12 days before our sales tax election; why do they always upgrade right when I'm busy? Version 8.10, Intrepid Ibex, came out just five days before the presidential election, and 9.10 ("Karmic Koala"; Ubuntu is always Alliterative Animal) will land right before next fall's city election.
But no matter if you're a yes or no on the sales tax, Ubuntu is tax free.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Personal Politics of Stallman and Torvalds
Linux Monday: Political Perspectives From the Übergeeks
My move to Linux started as a political thing—I am, after all, a political guy and this is first and foremost a political blog. My personal politics, for you Linux Monday-only readers, are left end of the U.S. Democratic Party, anti-corporate, with a cranky libertarian and politically incorrect streak thrown in. A nice fit for Linux.
But it's not essential that your personal politics match my own to give Linux a try. In fact, the first time I ever saw anyone out and about in public using Linux was at a Ron Paul table in 2007. I find it hard to imagine corporate-style conservatives buying into my anti-corporate mindset, just like I could never understand why there were Republican fans of the Clash or Rage Against The Machine. But as Whitman said, “I contradict myself? Very well. I contradict myself.” (The Clash and Rage contradicted themselves too, preaching revolution while corporate conglomerates marketed the records. “Turning rebellion into money,” as Joe Strummer said.)
So let's just accept that Linux geeks land on all points of the political spectrum and take a look at the personal politics and styles of the two godfathers of the open source movement: Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman.
Torvalds (L), Stallman (R)
Linus (Torvalds is usually “Linus,” but Richard is usually “Stallman”) wrote the original Linux kernel as an undergrad in Finland in the early 1990s. Linus has since moved to the U.S. where he has a long-term Green Card but not citizenship. He's a classic red-diaper baby; his leftist parents met at a protest rally. But Linus' politics are low-key, like his personality.
“I'm absolutely uninterested in politics,” Linus famously (well, famously if you're a Linux geek) said in 1999. “It was a fairly political family, so I may have reacted against that by being non-political.” Yet pressed a little further, he acknowledges leaning more left than right and has expressed opposition to US foreign policy of the Bush 43 administration (along with the rest of the civilized world).
As an immigrant in America, Linus has some comparative thoughts on our system:
Design flaw. Spoken like a true programmer. Linus continues:
This political philosophy (even though Linus defines it as non-political) in support of multi-party democracy plays itself out in the Linux world's let a thousand distributions bloom mindset. Don't see a party (or distribution) that meets your needs exactly? Try another one.
Richard Stallman couldn't be more different. Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1983 to create a free Unix-like operating system. He is an active Green Party member whose personal web site is a very busy read. It's got a retro-simple style like the Drudge Report and a dense, on a mission from God writing style. He's occasionally dogmatic on issues of terminology, preferring the term 'free software' to 'open source':
(I'm taking just the smallest of excerpts here for my regular readership. Übergeeks, please, no holy wars.)
As befits the guy who coined the Linux—oops, GNU-Linux, Stallman is firm on that point too—slogan “free as in beer, free as in freedom,” Stallman is especially interested in privacy and copyright issues. The current front page includes opposition to national ID cards in several countries, calls to sign a petition “to bring the ex-officials of the Bush regime to justice,” and a pro-choice link. It also, high on the page, urges: “Don't Buy Harry Potter Books.”
Huh?
Well, it seems that in 2005, some copies of Book Six leaked early and the Canadian publishers went to court. Stallman posted the plot spoiler (you know, ***** kills **********), just to prove he could and in keeping with the information should be free mindset. “When governments spit on human rights, posting what they wish to suppress is one way humans can protest,” writes Stallman, with an intensity better suited for a secret yellowcake uranium report than a plot detail of a work of fiction.
Or maybe Stallman's just mad because someone said he looks like Hagrid.
In contrast, Linus' personal site uses a low-key standard Blogger template and focuses on the personal ("It's getting later in the release cycle, so I'm spending more time in my 'wait for people to complain' mode, allowing me to read more," begins a typical post.) Updates come every few days to two weeks, and where Stallman is serious, Linus is wry. Picking up on Facebook's “25 things about me” meme, he responds with this list, reposted in its entirety:
My move to Linux started as a political thing—I am, after all, a political guy and this is first and foremost a political blog. My personal politics, for you Linux Monday-only readers, are left end of the U.S. Democratic Party, anti-corporate, with a cranky libertarian and politically incorrect streak thrown in. A nice fit for Linux.
But it's not essential that your personal politics match my own to give Linux a try. In fact, the first time I ever saw anyone out and about in public using Linux was at a Ron Paul table in 2007. I find it hard to imagine corporate-style conservatives buying into my anti-corporate mindset, just like I could never understand why there were Republican fans of the Clash or Rage Against The Machine. But as Whitman said, “I contradict myself? Very well. I contradict myself.” (The Clash and Rage contradicted themselves too, preaching revolution while corporate conglomerates marketed the records. “Turning rebellion into money,” as Joe Strummer said.)
So let's just accept that Linux geeks land on all points of the political spectrum and take a look at the personal politics and styles of the two godfathers of the open source movement: Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman.
Torvalds (L), Stallman (R)
Linus (Torvalds is usually “Linus,” but Richard is usually “Stallman”) wrote the original Linux kernel as an undergrad in Finland in the early 1990s. Linus has since moved to the U.S. where he has a long-term Green Card but not citizenship. He's a classic red-diaper baby; his leftist parents met at a protest rally. But Linus' politics are low-key, like his personality.
“I'm absolutely uninterested in politics,” Linus famously (well, famously if you're a Linux geek) said in 1999. “It was a fairly political family, so I may have reacted against that by being non-political.” Yet pressed a little further, he acknowledges leaning more left than right and has expressed opposition to US foreign policy of the Bush 43 administration (along with the rest of the civilized world).
As an immigrant in America, Linus has some comparative thoughts on our system:
The whole US voting system is apparently expressly designed to be polarizing (winner-take-all electoral system etc). To somebody from Finland, that looks like a rather obvious and fundamental design flaw.
Design flaw. Spoken like a true programmer. Linus continues:
In Finland, government is quite commonly a quilt-work of different parties, and the 'rainbow coalition' of many many parties working together was the norm for a long time. And it seems to result in much more civilized political behaviour.
You couple a polarizing voting system with a campaign that has to make simplified black-and-white statements, and what do you get? Ugly, is what you get.
This political philosophy (even though Linus defines it as non-political) in support of multi-party democracy plays itself out in the Linux world's let a thousand distributions bloom mindset. Don't see a party (or distribution) that meets your needs exactly? Try another one.
Richard Stallman couldn't be more different. Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1983 to create a free Unix-like operating system. He is an active Green Party member whose personal web site is a very busy read. It's got a retro-simple style like the Drudge Report and a dense, on a mission from God writing style. He's occasionally dogmatic on issues of terminology, preferring the term 'free software' to 'open source':
Free software is a political movement; open source is a development model. The term "open source" was promoted in 1998 by people that did not want to say "free" or "freedom." They associated their term with a philosophy that cites only values of practical convenience. If you neglect the values of freedom and social solidarity, and appreciate only powerful reliable software, you are making a terrible mistake.
The fact that Torvalds says 'open source' instead of 'free software' shows where he is coming from... I respect his right to express his views, even though I think they are foolish. However, if you don't want to lose your freedom, you had better not follow him.
(I'm taking just the smallest of excerpts here for my regular readership. Übergeeks, please, no holy wars.)
As befits the guy who coined the Linux—oops, GNU-Linux, Stallman is firm on that point too—slogan “free as in beer, free as in freedom,” Stallman is especially interested in privacy and copyright issues. The current front page includes opposition to national ID cards in several countries, calls to sign a petition “to bring the ex-officials of the Bush regime to justice,” and a pro-choice link. It also, high on the page, urges: “Don't Buy Harry Potter Books.”
Huh?
Well, it seems that in 2005, some copies of Book Six leaked early and the Canadian publishers went to court. Stallman posted the plot spoiler (you know, ***** kills **********), just to prove he could and in keeping with the information should be free mindset. “When governments spit on human rights, posting what they wish to suppress is one way humans can protest,” writes Stallman, with an intensity better suited for a secret yellowcake uranium report than a plot detail of a work of fiction.
Or maybe Stallman's just mad because someone said he looks like Hagrid.
In contrast, Linus' personal site uses a low-key standard Blogger template and focuses on the personal ("It's getting later in the release cycle, so I'm spending more time in my 'wait for people to complain' mode, allowing me to read more," begins a typical post.) Updates come every few days to two weeks, and where Stallman is serious, Linus is wry. Picking up on Facebook's “25 things about me” meme, he responds with this list, reposted in its entirety:
1. I get bored really easily
Friday, March 20, 2009
Command Line as Keyboard Shortcut
Command Line as Keyboard Shortcut
I scared the crap out of my regular readers a couple Linux Mondays by delving into Command Line Hell. In an article about why people don't just adopt our beloved free operating system--and the dreaded termininal prompt is one of the reasons--David Williams makes the point better than I can:
It's a great analogy. I'm still amazed to see people who've been in Windows for years going Menu, Edit, Cut, menu, Edit, Paste rather than ctrl-c, ctrl-v. But to each their own, and that's the good thing about multiple routes to the same destination. You can take the shortcut or the scenic route.
I scared the crap out of my regular readers a couple Linux Mondays by delving into Command Line Hell. In an article about why people don't just adopt our beloved free operating system--and the dreaded termininal prompt is one of the reasons--David Williams makes the point better than I can:
I consider the command line analogous to using keyboard shortcuts.
For instance, I can log in faster by typing my username, pressing tab, entering my password then pressing the enter key than someone who clicks into the login box, type their username, moves the mouse to the password box, clicks, types their password, then moves the mouse to the login box and clicks again.
I can create five directories faster by calling up a terminal window (even in Windows Vista, by pressing the Windows key + R, then typing cmd and pressing enter) and using the mkdir command five times, than someone who opens up their file system and has to click the File/New Folder menu five times, entering a directory name each turn.
Similarly, I can stop and restart services quicker, or search for specific words in a log file or many other activities far more swiftly if I do it on a command line than by using the graphical tools.
That’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s perfectly fine. In modern Linux distros there is no need for anyone to ever to use a terminal window if they don’t wish to. It’s a myth you must type in commands.
It's a great analogy. I'm still amazed to see people who've been in Windows for years going Menu, Edit, Cut, menu, Edit, Paste rather than ctrl-c, ctrl-v. But to each their own, and that's the good thing about multiple routes to the same destination. You can take the shortcut or the scenic route.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Software as a Subversive Activity, Part 15: Qimo and Linux MInty
Linux Monday: Distributions Cool and Minty
This week on Linux Monday, let's look at two Ubuntu-based distributions that are designed to make things easy. One's for kids, and one does a little more of the setup work for you.
We start with the cool as in Qimo, which presumably is pronounced as in es-Qimo, based on the friendly Inuit-looking fellow on the default wallpaper.
Qimo is based on Xubuntu, the Ubuntu variant with the low-impact xfce desktop and a Mac-style dock. Basically Qimo is Xubuntu with a few extra kid games. The xfce choice is appropriate; presumably the distributors get that kids often get the older, hand-me-down machines.
Qimo's site is still really new, with the FAQ not filled in. I first heard of it last week but knew right away I had to give it the real test with my 8 (almost 9) and 6 year old tech advisers.
The boys scrapped over my laptop when I popped it up on the live CD. They gravitated right to the dock and to Tux Paint, a kid-friendly version of the old Windows classic. In no time they were drawing up a storm. They also found a keyboard-learning game (type the right letter and Tux catches a fish -- there's lots of penguin branding here.
In between turns I quality inspected (that's a family in-joke; when I help myself to their candy I say, "I have to quality inspect this to make sure it's safe for kids") and all the apps were where I expected. Then the boys played a Concentration-style memory game.
My big guy Hayden has been very frustrated with his Windows install (in fairness, it was the slowest machine in the house and the hard drive was probably too small; we were putting the programs on a 40 gig drive but Windows itself was living, barely, on an 8 gig drive.) He literally begged to have "kid Linux" installed. I pulled out a 1.4Ghz Celeron with a 40 gig hard drive and (after a couple boots; had to change the settings to boot from CD first) started the install: nothing new here. Just a straight Ubuntu install. The boys got a brief geography lesson as we set the system time("No, Iowa City's not on the map, what's the nearest big city?" "Chicago!" "Right!") and soon our Inuit friend was looking at us again from a fully installed system.
I had a little work to do yet before it was fully ready. Popular kid web sites (basically the Disney/Nick universe) are big on Flash games, and my big guy finds all sorts of Pokemon and Star Wars videos on YouTube. Qimo follows Ubuntu's philosophy of not including certain popular audio and video codecs (that stands for coder-decoder) in the default installation for various copyright reasons. This friendly post tells you what you need to do to get all that stuff, and more, up and flying.
(I also installed the gnome-games package which is included by default in regular Ubuntu but not in Qimo. My little guy Ethan likes the Minesweeper clone.)
But if the "you had to do what with the seat?!?" punchline in the sidebar is you, you might want to start with Linux Mint.
I checked out Linux Mint for the first time last night. I'd read about it before; it's basically Ubuntu with all those codecs installed for you. I was surprised at just HOW much like Ubuntu it was. The default desktop was GNOME (other version are available but I'm basically a GNOME guy), the theme was a little different (none of Ubuntu's default 70s browns and oranges), the menu bar defaulted to the bottom and not the top, and of course my .mp3s and video worked out of the box.
I only had one problem: my audio worked on my built-in speakers but not on my externals plugged into the headphone jack. I had the same problem in Ubuntu when I upgraded from 8.04 to 8.10, and I can't remember just how I fixed it.
Which brings me to my main conclusion about Linux Mint. If you're a complete newbie, starting 100% from scratch, Mint might be the way to go. But if you're in Ubuntu, and have spent any time setting stuff up Your Own Way at all like I have, there's not a compelling reason to switch.
While I was playing with Mint, my big guy was surfing away in Firefox, and hasn't yet missed a beat on working in a new OS. The quality inspection is ongoing; little brother still plays some games on CD and when he wants to try that we'll have to take it to the next level. Which will give me another post.
This week on Linux Monday, let's look at two Ubuntu-based distributions that are designed to make things easy. One's for kids, and one does a little more of the setup work for you.
We start with the cool as in Qimo, which presumably is pronounced as in es-Qimo, based on the friendly Inuit-looking fellow on the default wallpaper.
Qimo is based on Xubuntu, the Ubuntu variant with the low-impact xfce desktop and a Mac-style dock. Basically Qimo is Xubuntu with a few extra kid games. The xfce choice is appropriate; presumably the distributors get that kids often get the older, hand-me-down machines. Qimo's site is still really new, with the FAQ not filled in. I first heard of it last week but knew right away I had to give it the real test with my 8 (almost 9) and 6 year old tech advisers.
Operating Systems as Airlines, or, How I Screwed Up Last Week Talking About The Command Line
There's several variations of this joke but here's the idea: imagine operating systems are airlines.
Mac Airlines
All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don't need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.
Windows Air
The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.
Windows XP Air
You turn up at the airport,which is under contract to only allow XP Air planes. All the aircraft are identical, brightly colored and three times as big as they need to be. The signs are huge and all point the same way. Whichever way you go, someone pops up dressed in a cloak and pointed hat insisting you follow him. Your luggage and clothes are taken off you and replaced with an XP Air suit and suitcase identical to everyone around you as this is included in the exorbitant ticket cost. The aircraft will not take off until you have signed a contract. The inflight entertainment promised turns out to be the same Mickey Mouse cartoon repeated over and over again. You have to phone your travel agent before you can have a meal or drink. You are searched regularly throughout the flight. If you go to the toilet twice or more you get charged for a new ticket. No matter what destination you booked you will always end up crash landing at Whistler in Canada.
Windows Vista Airlines
You enter a good looking terminal with the largest planes you have ever seen. Every 10 feet a security officer appears and asks you if you are "sure" you want to continue walking to your plane and if you would like to cancel. Not sure what cancel would do, you continue walking and ask the agent at the desk why the planes are so big. After the security officer making sure you want to ask the question and you want to hear the answer, the agent replies that they are bigger because it makes customers feel better, but the planes are designed to fly twice as slow. Adding the size helped achieve the slow fly goal.
Once on the plane, every passenger has to be asked individually by the flight attendants if they are sure they want to take this flight. Then it is company policy that the captain asks the passengers collectively the same thing. After answering yes to so many questions, you are punched in the face by some stranger who when he asked "Are you sure you want me to punch you in the face? Cancel or Allow?" you instinctively say "Allow".
After takeoff, the pilots realize that the landing gear driver wasn't updated to work with the new plane. Therefore it is always stuck in the down position. This forces the plane to fly even slower, but the pilots are used to it and continue to fly the planes, hoping that soon the landing gear manufacturer will give out a landing gear driver update.
You arrive at your destination wishing you had used your reward miles with XP airlines rather than trying out this new carrier. A close friend, after hearing your story, mentions that Linux Air is a much better alternative and helps.
Linux Air
Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself.
When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?!?"
There's several variations of this joke but here's the idea: imagine operating systems are airlines.
Mac Airlines
All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don't need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.
Windows Air
The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.
Windows XP Air
You turn up at the airport,which is under contract to only allow XP Air planes. All the aircraft are identical, brightly colored and three times as big as they need to be. The signs are huge and all point the same way. Whichever way you go, someone pops up dressed in a cloak and pointed hat insisting you follow him. Your luggage and clothes are taken off you and replaced with an XP Air suit and suitcase identical to everyone around you as this is included in the exorbitant ticket cost. The aircraft will not take off until you have signed a contract. The inflight entertainment promised turns out to be the same Mickey Mouse cartoon repeated over and over again. You have to phone your travel agent before you can have a meal or drink. You are searched regularly throughout the flight. If you go to the toilet twice or more you get charged for a new ticket. No matter what destination you booked you will always end up crash landing at Whistler in Canada.
Windows Vista Airlines
You enter a good looking terminal with the largest planes you have ever seen. Every 10 feet a security officer appears and asks you if you are "sure" you want to continue walking to your plane and if you would like to cancel. Not sure what cancel would do, you continue walking and ask the agent at the desk why the planes are so big. After the security officer making sure you want to ask the question and you want to hear the answer, the agent replies that they are bigger because it makes customers feel better, but the planes are designed to fly twice as slow. Adding the size helped achieve the slow fly goal.
Once on the plane, every passenger has to be asked individually by the flight attendants if they are sure they want to take this flight. Then it is company policy that the captain asks the passengers collectively the same thing. After answering yes to so many questions, you are punched in the face by some stranger who when he asked "Are you sure you want me to punch you in the face? Cancel or Allow?" you instinctively say "Allow".
After takeoff, the pilots realize that the landing gear driver wasn't updated to work with the new plane. Therefore it is always stuck in the down position. This forces the plane to fly even slower, but the pilots are used to it and continue to fly the planes, hoping that soon the landing gear manufacturer will give out a landing gear driver update.
You arrive at your destination wishing you had used your reward miles with XP airlines rather than trying out this new carrier. A close friend, after hearing your story, mentions that Linux Air is a much better alternative and helps.
Linux Air
Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself.
When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?!?"
The boys scrapped over my laptop when I popped it up on the live CD. They gravitated right to the dock and to Tux Paint, a kid-friendly version of the old Windows classic. In no time they were drawing up a storm. They also found a keyboard-learning game (type the right letter and Tux catches a fish -- there's lots of penguin branding here.
In between turns I quality inspected (that's a family in-joke; when I help myself to their candy I say, "I have to quality inspect this to make sure it's safe for kids") and all the apps were where I expected. Then the boys played a Concentration-style memory game.
My big guy Hayden has been very frustrated with his Windows install (in fairness, it was the slowest machine in the house and the hard drive was probably too small; we were putting the programs on a 40 gig drive but Windows itself was living, barely, on an 8 gig drive.) He literally begged to have "kid Linux" installed. I pulled out a 1.4Ghz Celeron with a 40 gig hard drive and (after a couple boots; had to change the settings to boot from CD first) started the install: nothing new here. Just a straight Ubuntu install. The boys got a brief geography lesson as we set the system time("No, Iowa City's not on the map, what's the nearest big city?" "Chicago!" "Right!") and soon our Inuit friend was looking at us again from a fully installed system.
I had a little work to do yet before it was fully ready. Popular kid web sites (basically the Disney/Nick universe) are big on Flash games, and my big guy finds all sorts of Pokemon and Star Wars videos on YouTube. Qimo follows Ubuntu's philosophy of not including certain popular audio and video codecs (that stands for coder-decoder) in the default installation for various copyright reasons. This friendly post tells you what you need to do to get all that stuff, and more, up and flying.
(I also installed the gnome-games package which is included by default in regular Ubuntu but not in Qimo. My little guy Ethan likes the Minesweeper clone.)
But if the "you had to do what with the seat?!?" punchline in the sidebar is you, you might want to start with Linux Mint.
I checked out Linux Mint for the first time last night. I'd read about it before; it's basically Ubuntu with all those codecs installed for you. I was surprised at just HOW much like Ubuntu it was. The default desktop was GNOME (other version are available but I'm basically a GNOME guy), the theme was a little different (none of Ubuntu's default 70s browns and oranges), the menu bar defaulted to the bottom and not the top, and of course my .mp3s and video worked out of the box.
I only had one problem: my audio worked on my built-in speakers but not on my externals plugged into the headphone jack. I had the same problem in Ubuntu when I upgraded from 8.04 to 8.10, and I can't remember just how I fixed it.
Which brings me to my main conclusion about Linux Mint. If you're a complete newbie, starting 100% from scratch, Mint might be the way to go. But if you're in Ubuntu, and have spent any time setting stuff up Your Own Way at all like I have, there's not a compelling reason to switch.
While I was playing with Mint, my big guy was surfing away in Firefox, and hasn't yet missed a beat on working in a new OS. The quality inspection is ongoing; little brother still plays some games on CD and when he wants to try that we'll have to take it to the next level. Which will give me another post.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Software as a Subversive Activity, Part 14: The Directory
Linux Monday: Directory for Beginners
One of the things that throws people when they're first looking at Linux is that they can't find their C:\ drive. Linux looks at files a little differently than Windows, but it's not too complicated and you shouldn't have to look too deep to find stuff.
You won't see drive letters in Linux. Everything is a directory within a single file system: your hard drive, your flash drive, your CD drive—all of it. Think of the file system as if it's My Computer, and you'll be pretty close.
You can look at your file system structure at the command prompt or with your distribution's file manager. Let's use the command line because that's the same across distributions (and easier to cut and paste).
Open the command line and type cd /
john@john-firebolt:~$ cd /
This navigates you to the root directory. Sometimes it's actually called root, but usually it's just the slash. The root directory holds as few files as possible. Let's peek with a ls command::
john@john-firebolt:/$ ls
bin dev initrd lib mnt root sys var
boot etc initrd.img lost+found opt sbin tmp vmlinuz
cdrom home initrd.img.old media proc srv usr vmlinuz.old
john@john-firebolt:/$
Only the listings in bold are files; the rest are directories. Linux keeps as few things as possible in the root directory.
Most of your stuff is going to be in the home directory. If you're moving from Windows, think of this as My Documents (or, more accurately, Documents and Settings\Users)There will be a subdirectory under home for each user.:
john@john-firebolt:/$ cd home
john@john-firebolt:/home$ ls
dumbledore ginny harry hermione john ron voldemort
john@john-firebolt:/home$
The system's administrator or root user has more magical powers than all these wizards put together. Voldemort can't get to my stuff, unless he has my password. (Most hackers are unable to obtain the root password by use of Cruciatus, Imperius, or other Dark Arts, so it's not yet considered a major Linux security flaw.) But let's check in on him:
john@john-firebolt:/home$ cd Voldemort
bash: cd: Voldemort: No such file or directory
john@john-firebolt:/home$
Everything in the file system is case sensitive. Voldemort is different than voldemort. Let's try that again.
john@john-firebolt:/home$ cd voldemort
john@john-firebolt:/home/voldemort$ ls
Desktop Examples Music Public Videos
Documents Firefox_wallpaper.png Pictures Templates
john@john-firebolt:/home/voldemort$
Only the wallpaper is a file (I gave Voldy a nice ugly picture of himself, but he can change that) .Ubuntu will set up several default subdirectories within your home folder: Music, Pictures, etc. Again, we're case sensitive here. I have Pictures and PICTURES directories. (Don't ask.) Ubuntu's file manager program, Nautilus, has some skills in organizing, but just as with My Documents in Windows, some of that is up to you. Voldemort likes order and has a less cluttered directory than Harry or Ron. Or me.
That's fine for the hard drive. But what about your portable gadgets?
Linux connects to external devices through a process called mounting. In the dark ages you had to do this manually at the command line, even for a floppy disk, but a modern distribution will do this for you automatically.
You can mount a device within any directory, though you don't generally need to think about it. Ubuntu uses the directory /media, and some distributions use the directory /mnt
john@john-firebolt:/home$ cd /
john@john-firebolt:/$ cd media
john@john-firebolt:/media$ ls
CAMERA cdrom cdrom0 Sansa View STORE N GO
john@john-firebolt:/media$
You see my various devices show up as subdirectories within the /media directory.. The cdrom directories are included by default. Again, you can navigate all this through Nautilus or another file manager.
So you know where to find your “My Documents” and your drives and gadgets. The rest of the directory structure is fairly standard across Linux, with minor variation. Here's a wallpaper-friendly chart to help you learn through osmosis. If you're in an environment where you're forced into Windows, this is a nice little Stickin It To The Man wallpaper.
The Linux kernel files are in /boot, and /bin has contains the system binary files that load right after the kernel. /sbin is similar to /bin, except access is restricted to the administrator-level user (the "root" user, or someone using the temporary, password-protected root-level powers of the sudo command).
/lib has most of the important system files, sort of like Windows\system32. /usr has most of the application files, you can pretend it's C:\Program Files if you like. Note that in the Linux directory, the slashes go lower left to upper right, like when you're browsing the web. In the Windows directory tree, slashes are upper left to lower right. I can never remember which one is a slash and which is a backslash--hell, I'm doing well to remember left and right in any context other than the political.
/opt has some configuration files for applications. The only thing I have here is some config files for Open Office.
/lost+found is usually empty, but if you have a system crash the system will temporarily store recovered files here. My only system crashes since moving to Linux have been to to 1) power failures or 2) overheating (a problem that plauged by laptop in Windows, too. In Linux I'm able to contol my CPU speed and thus my temperature, more easily.
/etc contains configuration files specific to your system: your network card, graphics, etc. The rest are various sorts of Don't Muck With Them things, the distinctions of which are detailed well in this article.
If you have a CD in the drive, the files will show up BOTH in the /cdrom directory and in the /media/cdrom, which seems a little redundant and repetitive, but is harmless. And there I leave you for the week, one step closer to being a Linux wizard instead of a Microsoft Muggle.
One of the things that throws people when they're first looking at Linux is that they can't find their C:\ drive. Linux looks at files a little differently than Windows, but it's not too complicated and you shouldn't have to look too deep to find stuff.
You won't see drive letters in Linux. Everything is a directory within a single file system: your hard drive, your flash drive, your CD drive—all of it. Think of the file system as if it's My Computer, and you'll be pretty close.
You can look at your file system structure at the command prompt or with your distribution's file manager. Let's use the command line because that's the same across distributions (and easier to cut and paste).
Open the command line and type cd /
john@john-firebolt:~$ cd /
This navigates you to the root directory. Sometimes it's actually called root, but usually it's just the slash. The root directory holds as few files as possible. Let's peek with a ls command::
john@john-firebolt:/$ ls
bin dev initrd lib mnt root sys var
boot etc initrd.img lost+found opt sbin tmp vmlinuz
cdrom home initrd.img.old media proc srv usr vmlinuz.old
john@john-firebolt:/$
Only the listings in bold are files; the rest are directories. Linux keeps as few things as possible in the root directory.
Most of your stuff is going to be in the home directory. If you're moving from Windows, think of this as My Documents (or, more accurately, Documents and Settings\Users)There will be a subdirectory under home for each user.:
john@john-firebolt:/$ cd home
john@john-firebolt:/home$ ls
dumbledore ginny harry hermione john ron voldemort
john@john-firebolt:/home$
The system's administrator or root user has more magical powers than all these wizards put together. Voldemort can't get to my stuff, unless he has my password. (Most hackers are unable to obtain the root password by use of Cruciatus, Imperius, or other Dark Arts, so it's not yet considered a major Linux security flaw.) But let's check in on him:john@john-firebolt:/home$ cd Voldemort
bash: cd: Voldemort: No such file or directory
john@john-firebolt:/home$
Everything in the file system is case sensitive. Voldemort is different than voldemort. Let's try that again.
john@john-firebolt:/home$ cd voldemort
john@john-firebolt:/home/voldemort$ ls
Desktop Examples Music Public Videos
Documents Firefox_wallpaper.png Pictures Templates
john@john-firebolt:/home/voldemort$
Only the wallpaper is a file (I gave Voldy a nice ugly picture of himself, but he can change that) .Ubuntu will set up several default subdirectories within your home folder: Music, Pictures, etc. Again, we're case sensitive here. I have Pictures and PICTURES directories. (Don't ask.) Ubuntu's file manager program, Nautilus, has some skills in organizing, but just as with My Documents in Windows, some of that is up to you. Voldemort likes order and has a less cluttered directory than Harry or Ron. Or me.
That's fine for the hard drive. But what about your portable gadgets?
Linux connects to external devices through a process called mounting. In the dark ages you had to do this manually at the command line, even for a floppy disk, but a modern distribution will do this for you automatically.
You can mount a device within any directory, though you don't generally need to think about it. Ubuntu uses the directory /media, and some distributions use the directory /mnt
john@john-firebolt:/home$ cd /
john@john-firebolt:/$ cd media
john@john-firebolt:/media$ ls
CAMERA cdrom cdrom0 Sansa View STORE N GO
john@john-firebolt:/media$
You see my various devices show up as subdirectories within the /media directory.. The cdrom directories are included by default. Again, you can navigate all this through Nautilus or another file manager.
So you know where to find your “My Documents” and your drives and gadgets. The rest of the directory structure is fairly standard across Linux, with minor variation. Here's a wallpaper-friendly chart to help you learn through osmosis. If you're in an environment where you're forced into Windows, this is a nice little Stickin It To The Man wallpaper.
The Linux kernel files are in /boot, and /bin has contains the system binary files that load right after the kernel. /sbin is similar to /bin, except access is restricted to the administrator-level user (the "root" user, or someone using the temporary, password-protected root-level powers of the sudo command).
/lib has most of the important system files, sort of like Windows\system32. /usr has most of the application files, you can pretend it's C:\Program Files if you like. Note that in the Linux directory, the slashes go lower left to upper right, like when you're browsing the web. In the Windows directory tree, slashes are upper left to lower right. I can never remember which one is a slash and which is a backslash--hell, I'm doing well to remember left and right in any context other than the political.
/opt has some configuration files for applications. The only thing I have here is some config files for Open Office.
/lost+found is usually empty, but if you have a system crash the system will temporarily store recovered files here. My only system crashes since moving to Linux have been to to 1) power failures or 2) overheating (a problem that plauged by laptop in Windows, too. In Linux I'm able to contol my CPU speed and thus my temperature, more easily.
/etc contains configuration files specific to your system: your network card, graphics, etc. The rest are various sorts of Don't Muck With Them things, the distinctions of which are detailed well in this article.
If you have a CD in the drive, the files will show up BOTH in the /cdrom directory and in the /media/cdrom, which seems a little redundant and repetitive, but is harmless. And there I leave you for the week, one step closer to being a Linux wizard instead of a Microsoft Muggle.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Software as a Subversive Activity, Part 13: The Linux Repository
Installing software on Linux Monday: The repository is your new best friend
Our word for the day this fine Linux President's Day Monday is “repository.” I admit, it was one of those alien words that buffaloed me when I first started learning. Linux geeks, like any group of insiders, throw around terms that are incomprehensible to outsiders, but it turns out the concept is really easy. A repository is simply an online software library that's built into the operating system.
We've all learned how to install Windows software. You either buy an expensive CD or you go out to the web to find and download a file. Either way, you follow the prompts, wait, wait some more, and then usually get prompted to reboot.
In the early days of Linux, software installation was trickier, with lots of text command voodoo and even compiling code. That reputation is one of the things that scares people away. But modern distributions have for the most part made this unnecessary.
For one thing, there isn't as much need to install programs in the first place. With Windows you install the operating system, or get the machine with Windows pre-installed, and you can't do much. You have to install the OS and then install the applications. In Linux, most distributions have applications like office suites and media players bundled in, so you can start crunching your spreadsheet right away.
But if you do need some additional software, the repository is waiting for you.
The übergeeks in charge of each distribution manage the repository on their end. One of the criticism of open source world, in fact, is that there's not One Big Repository. But Linux is not one size fits all like Windows or (especially!) Mac, and different distributions have different philosophies about how and how often they update the repositories. Some repositories are very strict on including only free and open source software, while others make exceptions for frequently needed drivers. The repository is free, but some distributors will sell you a disk(s) with the whole thing on it/them for a nominal price.
Some distributions make it a priority to have the latest versions of programs, others prefer versions that are a little older but more thoroughly tested. For example, there was a lot of discussion in the Linux community last fall when Ubuntu decided to stay with version 2.4 of Open Office for their October release of version 8.10 (“Intrepid Ibex”; Ubuntu names each upgrade after alliterative animals) rather than upgrade to the relatively new Open Office 3.0. And the current buzz is that the next update (“Jaunty Jackalope”) won't have the newest version of the Linux kernel.
You talk to the repository on your end through a program called a package manager. Steven Vaughn-Nichols explains it well:
In Ubuntu, the package manager is called Synaptic, and it's easily accessible through the menu: System> Administration>Synaptic Package Manager.
You'll be prompted for your password before you make any actual changes. Synaptic has a search function, so if you know the name of a program you can find it. If you select a program that requires additional software, Synaptic will inform you of these dependencies and select them for you. This means you won't be stuck with an incomplete install that's looking for OBSCURE.DLL like you are in Windows.
Ubuntu takes a middle ground on the free software issue. The prepackaged software includes some non-open source drivers. It doesn't include the “codecs” (short for code-decode) that you need to play popular audio and video files like .mp3s. The lawyers think this would raise legal issues that would interfere with the open source mission.
But the team at Canonical, Ubuntu's distributors, are realistic and know that you're gonna want that stuff, and they make it an easy one-step in the repository. Open up Synaptic and search for ubuntu-restricted-extras. You'll be playing your tunes and watching YouTube in no time.
Beginners who are happy with the distribution as packaged don't even need to look at the package manager. Ubuntu will push the updates toward you. A couple times a week, at about 8 a.m., I see a little icon that tells me an update is available—-a sunburst for a minor tweak, a red arrow if security is involved. Usually I deal with it right then, but if I'm running late for work I can wait. Unlike Windows, Linux doesn't keep bugging me.
Another advantage to the repository system is that it gives you some reassurance. If the distribution managers include a program or upgrade in the repository, it's a sign that they've checked it out for security and compatibility. You're not left hanging on your own. Synaptic also lets you repair and uninstall programs and clean your system.
In open source you also don't have to deal with a couple of special Windows annoyances. You know those “trial versions” that get you started, but then after X number of days want you to pay, or don't let you save? (The worst is that brand-new big-box-boughten computer with the trial version of Microsoft Office, that you can keep after 30 days for just a few hundred bucks.) There's no crippleware, nagware or begware in the open source world.
The other thing you won't find yourself doing is constantly rebooting. Only Linux kernel upgrades require a reboot. (My current no-reboot record is 28 days; I could do better but last week's minimal distribution post had me re-booting almost as much as I did back in Windows.)
If you want to get geeky you can try the command line. In Ubuntu,
and a password will update your whole system.
You can also download a file and do it yourself. Here, for example, is a cheat sheet on installing Open Office 3.0 on Ubuntu. If you decide to get adventurous, blogger Skuunk offers some good advice:
You can take it even further and do it the old fashioned way: get and tweak the source code and compile it yourself. There might be some benefits in customizing your software to your system, but most of the users I know think “customizing” means choosing a wallpaper, which they invariably call a “screensaver.”
Our word for the day this fine Linux President's Day Monday is “repository.” I admit, it was one of those alien words that buffaloed me when I first started learning. Linux geeks, like any group of insiders, throw around terms that are incomprehensible to outsiders, but it turns out the concept is really easy. A repository is simply an online software library that's built into the operating system.
We've all learned how to install Windows software. You either buy an expensive CD or you go out to the web to find and download a file. Either way, you follow the prompts, wait, wait some more, and then usually get prompted to reboot.In the early days of Linux, software installation was trickier, with lots of text command voodoo and even compiling code. That reputation is one of the things that scares people away. But modern distributions have for the most part made this unnecessary.
For one thing, there isn't as much need to install programs in the first place. With Windows you install the operating system, or get the machine with Windows pre-installed, and you can't do much. You have to install the OS and then install the applications. In Linux, most distributions have applications like office suites and media players bundled in, so you can start crunching your spreadsheet right away.
But if you do need some additional software, the repository is waiting for you.
The übergeeks in charge of each distribution manage the repository on their end. One of the criticism of open source world, in fact, is that there's not One Big Repository. But Linux is not one size fits all like Windows or (especially!) Mac, and different distributions have different philosophies about how and how often they update the repositories. Some repositories are very strict on including only free and open source software, while others make exceptions for frequently needed drivers. The repository is free, but some distributors will sell you a disk(s) with the whole thing on it/them for a nominal price.
Some distributions make it a priority to have the latest versions of programs, others prefer versions that are a little older but more thoroughly tested. For example, there was a lot of discussion in the Linux community last fall when Ubuntu decided to stay with version 2.4 of Open Office for their October release of version 8.10 (“Intrepid Ibex”; Ubuntu names each upgrade after alliterative animals) rather than upgrade to the relatively new Open Office 3.0. And the current buzz is that the next update (“Jaunty Jackalope”) won't have the newest version of the Linux kernel.
You talk to the repository on your end through a program called a package manager. Steven Vaughn-Nichols explains it well:
Most Windows users have already seen downloadable software sites like TuCows and Download that resemble Linux's package managers. The difference is that package managers are integrated into Linux, while download library Web sites are stand alone operations.
In Ubuntu, the package manager is called Synaptic, and it's easily accessible through the menu: System> Administration>Synaptic Package Manager.You'll be prompted for your password before you make any actual changes. Synaptic has a search function, so if you know the name of a program you can find it. If you select a program that requires additional software, Synaptic will inform you of these dependencies and select them for you. This means you won't be stuck with an incomplete install that's looking for OBSCURE.DLL like you are in Windows.
Ubuntu takes a middle ground on the free software issue. The prepackaged software includes some non-open source drivers. It doesn't include the “codecs” (short for code-decode) that you need to play popular audio and video files like .mp3s. The lawyers think this would raise legal issues that would interfere with the open source mission.
But the team at Canonical, Ubuntu's distributors, are realistic and know that you're gonna want that stuff, and they make it an easy one-step in the repository. Open up Synaptic and search for ubuntu-restricted-extras. You'll be playing your tunes and watching YouTube in no time.
Beginners who are happy with the distribution as packaged don't even need to look at the package manager. Ubuntu will push the updates toward you. A couple times a week, at about 8 a.m., I see a little icon that tells me an update is available—-a sunburst for a minor tweak, a red arrow if security is involved. Usually I deal with it right then, but if I'm running late for work I can wait. Unlike Windows, Linux doesn't keep bugging me.
Another advantage to the repository system is that it gives you some reassurance. If the distribution managers include a program or upgrade in the repository, it's a sign that they've checked it out for security and compatibility. You're not left hanging on your own. Synaptic also lets you repair and uninstall programs and clean your system.
In open source you also don't have to deal with a couple of special Windows annoyances. You know those “trial versions” that get you started, but then after X number of days want you to pay, or don't let you save? (The worst is that brand-new big-box-boughten computer with the trial version of Microsoft Office, that you can keep after 30 days for just a few hundred bucks.) There's no crippleware, nagware or begware in the open source world.
The other thing you won't find yourself doing is constantly rebooting. Only Linux kernel upgrades require a reboot. (My current no-reboot record is 28 days; I could do better but last week's minimal distribution post had me re-booting almost as much as I did back in Windows.)
If you want to get geeky you can try the command line. In Ubuntu,
sudo apt-get update
and a password will update your whole system.
You can also download a file and do it yourself. Here, for example, is a cheat sheet on installing Open Office 3.0 on Ubuntu. If you decide to get adventurous, blogger Skuunk offers some good advice:
Make sure you have more than one Internet enabled computer in the house before you do anything...
When going online for info on configuring your computer, don't automatically use the first solution you read... if an article tells you to go to your terminal and do anything with sudo, vi, pico, rm or gedit think twice. Also be wary of shell scripts (.sh files).
You can take it even further and do it the old fashioned way: get and tweak the source code and compile it yourself. There might be some benefits in customizing your software to your system, but most of the users I know think “customizing” means choosing a wallpaper, which they invariably call a “screensaver.”
Monday, February 09, 2009
Software as a Subversive Activity, Part 12: Minimalist Distributions
Linux Monday: Pushing the envelope on old gear
Old computers are less than a dime a dozen—-literally. I pick them up for free, either through a wonderful group called Freecycle or literally off the street. I live in a college town and at moving time, that old desktop from freshman year isn't worth packing. So some local geek like me comes along and turns it into a Linux box. (I have yet to have achieve my dream of someone actually paying me to take one away.) Or, if it's really old, I strip it for the usable parts.
We've already seen that Linux can extend the life of your old machine, giving you a usable and functionally modern system on older hardware. But how far can you push that? How little computer does it take to run a modern, GUI operating system?
I decided to take a particularly ancient computer and see what I could do. My self-imposed rules: no money, just the box and whatever I could pull out of the pile of parts. It took me a little longer than I expected, which is why we skipped Linux Monday last week.
Our test case: A vintage 1996 Pentium. Not Pentium 1; that's a retronym like George H.W. Bush. A Pentium, 200 Mhz processor speed, a 4 gig hard drive, and 32 Mb of ram. (I have MP3 files of long Pink Floyd songs that are bigger than 32 meg.) One USB port. The sticker tells me those specs were clearly A Big Deal back then. I fired that baby up and it successfully booted.
Clearly, it's been out of use for a while. It's a trip to the Windows 95 wayback machine. It actually ran pretty smooth in the original configuration, and Windows was almost comprehensible three generations ago.
Number one distribution Ubuntu has a sub-distribution called Xubuntu, which used the lightweight xfce desktop instead of the more demanding Gnome and KDE desktops. I've loaded it on Pentium Iis with no problems.
But on the 32 meg machine, Xubuntu failed. If I had bothered to read first, I would have found:
That's really, really minimal by modern standards. For anything but the oldest of the old, it would be fine. But I'd set the bar as low as I could go, not in the pole vault sense but in the limbo sense. Memory appeared to be my bottleneck.
There's a few specialty Linux distributions geared toward low-low end machines. Puppy Linux, for example, will run on a 166MHz processor and 128MB of memory. Damn Small Linux takes that even lower--a 486 processor and 8 MB of RAM. Given the lower specs, and the fact that I preferred the mild profanity name to the cutesy name, I started with DSL. The download was also damn small, a mere 50 meg. I though for a moment I'd lost my connection, but no, it was done.
A little tweaking of the boot order in the CMOS on the old box so that CD boots first, throw it in the drive, and bam. Damn Small Linux was flying on a 32 meg Pentium 200. DSL has a built-in system stats feature that lands on the desktop by default, and it told me the OS was using 51% of available RAM.
Having thus proven my point, I raided the Box of Old Parts. Most of my endless supply of old PC100 memory didn't get along with the motherboard, but I managed to upgrade all the way to... 64 meg! and also throw away some unlabeled 8 and 16 meg chips. I also swapped out the CD drive because the original was making some nasty grindy noises. And I threw in an Ethernet card because all the machine had was a dial-up modem--not unusual in 1996.
Just for fun I tried my Xubuntu disk again. The CD booted up to the opening interface, and allowed me to choose Install. But a series of error messages climaxed, as expected, in a memory shortage. So back to DSL I went.
Damn Small Linux is meant to be used as a live CD, so I didn't have to wipe the hard drive and lose that museum piece Windows 95 install. With more memory, the desktop responded faster, but DSL didn't recognize the Ethernet card out of the box. It needed some manual configuration. Firefox opened up; DSL also includes a minimalist browser called Dillo. Point proven, and with my wife noting that the pile of old computers is getting bigger, I stripped it for parts, including that hard drive with Windows 95.
I then tried Puppy on an old Celeron that had been running Xubuntu, and was a Windows 98 machine when I got it free. The download was a little bigger – 95 meg – but the interface was a lot more inviting-looking. If you didn't know you were using a minimalist distribution, you wouldn't suspect it. More significantly, it had no trouble recognizing peripherals, including network cards. So I left Puppy running, mounted the hard drive, and started running SETI@Home. In a couple weeks I'll let you know if I gain any alien-detecting speed from running a minimalist distribution.
Can I do as much as I can in Puppy as I can in Ubuntu? No. But the fair comparison is not DSL or Puppy to Ubuntu or Vista... it's DSL to Windows 95. It's a harder comparison than you might think, because we ask so much more now than we did a decade ago. You weren't trying to watch YouTube or synch your iPod or even use a tabbed browser in Windows 95. As the original network card-less state of the hardware showed, even broadband was cutting edge back then.
In open-source software, everything under the hood is transparent. Maybe you don't need to optimize for minimal-spec, but maybe somebody who does had a good idea that you can use. It's the opposite of the Vista approach, expand the demands of the software to match the high end of the hardware.
But why shrink the demands of the software to the bare minimum, below the point of the most obsolete hardware? I had no reason other than writing this and proving my point, in best Linux On A Potato fashion.
But if you think a little, you can probably come up with a use for a minimal resource operating system. You don't need a fully bloated operating system and accompanying expensive license to, for example, display a sign. How about on an aging ATM? As long as old tech works for you want it to do, it's not obsolete. Sometimes there's a hidden plus like longer battery life or better portability, like this journalist who loves his 11 year old notebook. And if you're an innovator, you can find a new use... like, say, the entire netbook market, built around low-spec machines that do just a couple things but do them well.
Old computers are less than a dime a dozen—-literally. I pick them up for free, either through a wonderful group called Freecycle or literally off the street. I live in a college town and at moving time, that old desktop from freshman year isn't worth packing. So some local geek like me comes along and turns it into a Linux box. (I have yet to have achieve my dream of someone actually paying me to take one away.) Or, if it's really old, I strip it for the usable parts.
We've already seen that Linux can extend the life of your old machine, giving you a usable and functionally modern system on older hardware. But how far can you push that? How little computer does it take to run a modern, GUI operating system?
I decided to take a particularly ancient computer and see what I could do. My self-imposed rules: no money, just the box and whatever I could pull out of the pile of parts. It took me a little longer than I expected, which is why we skipped Linux Monday last week.
Our test case: A vintage 1996 Pentium. Not Pentium 1; that's a retronym like George H.W. Bush. A Pentium, 200 Mhz processor speed, a 4 gig hard drive, and 32 Mb of ram. (I have MP3 files of long Pink Floyd songs that are bigger than 32 meg.) One USB port. The sticker tells me those specs were clearly A Big Deal back then. I fired that baby up and it successfully booted.
Clearly, it's been out of use for a while. It's a trip to the Windows 95 wayback machine. It actually ran pretty smooth in the original configuration, and Windows was almost comprehensible three generations ago.
Number one distribution Ubuntu has a sub-distribution called Xubuntu, which used the lightweight xfce desktop instead of the more demanding Gnome and KDE desktops. I've loaded it on Pentium Iis with no problems.
But on the 32 meg machine, Xubuntu failed. If I had bothered to read first, I would have found:
You need 128 MB RAM to run the Live CD or 192 MB RAM to install. The Alternate Install CD only requires you to have 64 MB RAM at install time. To install Xubuntu, you need 1.5 GB of free space on your hard disk. Once installed, Xubuntu can run with 192 MB RAM, but it is strongly recommended to have at least 256 MB RAM.
That's really, really minimal by modern standards. For anything but the oldest of the old, it would be fine. But I'd set the bar as low as I could go, not in the pole vault sense but in the limbo sense. Memory appeared to be my bottleneck.
There's a few specialty Linux distributions geared toward low-low end machines. Puppy Linux, for example, will run on a 166MHz processor and 128MB of memory. Damn Small Linux takes that even lower--a 486 processor and 8 MB of RAM. Given the lower specs, and the fact that I preferred the mild profanity name to the cutesy name, I started with DSL. The download was also damn small, a mere 50 meg. I though for a moment I'd lost my connection, but no, it was done.
A little tweaking of the boot order in the CMOS on the old box so that CD boots first, throw it in the drive, and bam. Damn Small Linux was flying on a 32 meg Pentium 200. DSL has a built-in system stats feature that lands on the desktop by default, and it told me the OS was using 51% of available RAM.Having thus proven my point, I raided the Box of Old Parts. Most of my endless supply of old PC100 memory didn't get along with the motherboard, but I managed to upgrade all the way to... 64 meg! and also throw away some unlabeled 8 and 16 meg chips. I also swapped out the CD drive because the original was making some nasty grindy noises. And I threw in an Ethernet card because all the machine had was a dial-up modem--not unusual in 1996.
Just for fun I tried my Xubuntu disk again. The CD booted up to the opening interface, and allowed me to choose Install. But a series of error messages climaxed, as expected, in a memory shortage. So back to DSL I went.
Damn Small Linux is meant to be used as a live CD, so I didn't have to wipe the hard drive and lose that museum piece Windows 95 install. With more memory, the desktop responded faster, but DSL didn't recognize the Ethernet card out of the box. It needed some manual configuration. Firefox opened up; DSL also includes a minimalist browser called Dillo. Point proven, and with my wife noting that the pile of old computers is getting bigger, I stripped it for parts, including that hard drive with Windows 95.
I then tried Puppy on an old Celeron that had been running Xubuntu, and was a Windows 98 machine when I got it free. The download was a little bigger – 95 meg – but the interface was a lot more inviting-looking. If you didn't know you were using a minimalist distribution, you wouldn't suspect it. More significantly, it had no trouble recognizing peripherals, including network cards. So I left Puppy running, mounted the hard drive, and started running SETI@Home. In a couple weeks I'll let you know if I gain any alien-detecting speed from running a minimalist distribution.
Can I do as much as I can in Puppy as I can in Ubuntu? No. But the fair comparison is not DSL or Puppy to Ubuntu or Vista... it's DSL to Windows 95. It's a harder comparison than you might think, because we ask so much more now than we did a decade ago. You weren't trying to watch YouTube or synch your iPod or even use a tabbed browser in Windows 95. As the original network card-less state of the hardware showed, even broadband was cutting edge back then.
In open-source software, everything under the hood is transparent. Maybe you don't need to optimize for minimal-spec, but maybe somebody who does had a good idea that you can use. It's the opposite of the Vista approach, expand the demands of the software to match the high end of the hardware.
But why shrink the demands of the software to the bare minimum, below the point of the most obsolete hardware? I had no reason other than writing this and proving my point, in best Linux On A Potato fashion.
But if you think a little, you can probably come up with a use for a minimal resource operating system. You don't need a fully bloated operating system and accompanying expensive license to, for example, display a sign. How about on an aging ATM? As long as old tech works for you want it to do, it's not obsolete. Sometimes there's a hidden plus like longer battery life or better portability, like this journalist who loves his 11 year old notebook. And if you're an innovator, you can find a new use... like, say, the entire netbook market, built around low-spec machines that do just a couple things but do them well.
Friday, January 30, 2009
1981 Internet
The future of journalism
Wonder if these reporters still have jobs. They called it, but underestimated...
Oh so much fun here: the hair, the acoustic modems, the green CRT screens.
Wonder if these reporters still have jobs. They called it, but underestimated...
Oh so much fun here: the hair, the acoustic modems, the green CRT screens.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Software as a Subversive Activity, Part 11: Command Lines and Vintage Keyboards
Linux Monday: command lines and vintage keyboards
If you're younger than about 30, you probably don't have much memory of the DOS prompt. And about the third thing you've heard about Linux is "you have to type in commands a lot." (The first two were "it's hard" and "it's free.")
I'm still a little new at it, but by and large my experience has been that using the Linux command line isn't much more necessary than using the Windows Run command: it's an occasional thing, and if you really need it you'll usually be able to find step by step, cut and paste instructions.
The most valuable thing I learned in my abortive grad school experience was how to use a computer. Believe it or not, I, John Deeth, Linux geek and Data Man, was at one time a Luddite, derisive of computers in general, painstakingly rewriting and retyping.
It took exactly one month of grad school, and one rewrite of a paper on a manual typewriter, to get over that hangup. My writing style was scattershot and inspirational, based on my mental tangent of the monent, and my handwritten manuscripts were full of circles and arrows and inserts.
Cut, copy, paste... hey, this computer thing fits like a glove. Pretty soon I had stepped up to tweaking data files for games using edlin and not writing my thesis, that unfinished masterpiece about the Michael Dukakis campaign. But like I said, the most valuable thing I learned in grad school was computers. (More people will read this post than would have read that thesis, anyway.)
The first computer I used was a big ole AT or XT, probably about vintage 1985 (this was in 1988 and we grad students got the hand me downs from the faculty). Two 5 1/4 floppy drives, DOS 3.0, and IBM Writing Assistant. You could about squeeze a 20 page paper into a file, but then you needed an extra file for your title page and bibliography.
That initial experience is part of why the command line aspect of Linux doesn't scare me. I learned at the DOS prompt, and stayed there for nearly a decade, so a command line is just back to basics. (The first computer I owned, I bought used in 1990 and kept for seven years. That's also why, when forced to use Windows, I'm always in Windows Explorer: I spent seven years with the PC Tools file manager and its visual representation of the tree structure.)
Ah, memories of the DOS prompt, that blank slate C:\> that stared at you after bootup, waiting for you to work those vague commands. We forget now, but the original book that started the ubiquitous Dummies series was "DOS for Dummies." Then there was that old eight and three file name limit, like thschap1.bib for "thesis chapter 1 bibliography", and I know people who still use that and have memorized what those short file names mean. (Tangent: One of my favorite memories was a fellow who, when he had to make separate files for executive minutes and committee minutes, named the files minutes.com and minutes.exe, then wondered why he crashed his system when he tried to open them.)
The Linux command line is accessed through a program called a terminal, or a shell. In Ubuntu the default way to get through it is through a program menu: Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal. (I also tweaked my settings so that when I hit the Windows key on my laptop, I get the terminal, just as a little anti-Microsoft thing. Now all I need is a little penguin sticker, or a Ghostbusters red crossed out circle, to put over the Windows logo on the key.) You'll be greeted with zen simplicity:
One of the first DOS commands I learned was dir, which listed the contents of a directory. That works in Linux, as does ls. Another old DOS command that translates is cd to change the directory.
Command names, in DOS and Unix (the progenitor of Linux) were all short like that. When everything is done at the command line, an economy of characters is essential, and if anything Unix/Linux commands are even shorter and more cryptic, yet mnemonic if you use them enough. Here's a few more (there's loads of cheat sheets):
man followed by a command is not a sexist thing; it'll get you instructions (a man-ual, remember the principle of saving keystrokes) of most any command.
The good news is, modern Linux has progressed to the point that you can get a whole system up and flying without ever touching the command line. Sure, that depends in part on your distribution. If you're an untergeek like me, using Ubuntu, you barely need to touch the terminal at all. If you want to be looking at a ~$ prompt a lot, try Slackware or Gentoo.
My favorite just-for-fun command at the moment is uptime, which tells you how long its been since a reboot. Some of my machines are on 15 days at the moment; it would be longer but we had a brief power outage. I've also had a couple kernel updates, which are the only time Linux asks you for a reboot. Not like Windows, where frequently something as basic as installing a program requires a restart.
Still, there's some handy tricks like
which will update all the programs on your whole system. Your system software, your installed apps, everything. Sure, it's a (shudder) command line. But it's way easier than the one program at a time update process you'd need to do in Windows.
is handy, too; it'll get rid of the unnecessary files on your machine
cal must have been a handy little thing back in the pre-GUI dark ages. Three simple characters at the prompt gets you:
(The line breaks work right at the prompt better than they do in my html.)
Doesn't seem like much, but in Windows if I want a calendar, I have to open my clock and pretend I'm changing my system date. And more than once I've screwed up and actually changed it.
And if you're dealing with existential angst. the command line can help:
"I was the walrus, but now I'm John," Lennon sang. whoami seems silly--unless you're a sysadmin juggling multiple accounts.
While I'm getting old school, I'm going to tangent into keyboards. Because if you're rockin' a command line, you need a good keyboard.
In some ways, we've come so far in computing: a 16 gig flash drive in my pocket, more computing power in your wristwatch than they landed the men on the moon with. But in some ways we've slipped.
Modern keyboards are disposable crap. I like old ones, the kind of keyboards I had on those first computers back in my grad student TA office. The keyboard at my desk probably weighs more than the laptop itself, and is half again wider. It's older than Windows so it doesn't have the Windows key.
The old keyboards have a half-inch, five pin connector called a DIN connector. (Aside: Plugs and connectors are always described as "male" and "female" ends. Really crude--but no one ever has to explain further and everyone gets it.) The DIN connector is so obsolete that I have to double-adapter it. The keyboard plugs into a DIN to PS/2 connecter (the quarter-inch or so plug, usually color-coded purple). That connector plugs into a PS/2 to USB connector, since USB is all my year-old laptop has.
The DIN keyboards are a little hard to come by. Resale junk shops are my only recourse, and Goodwill and the consignment places don't put computer gear on the shelves. I've picked up a couple at Salvation Army for a buck each.
Seems like a lot of effort for an affectation or an eccentricity. But the sturdy feel of old keyboards is great for a writer like me. The keys have some oomph to them and make a solid physical clack, which feels great when I'm on a roll or on a rant. Or sudo apt-get update.
Yes, I know I promised more Open Office vs. Micro$oft Office this week. Inspiration took me elsewhere; I'll get to it.)
If you're younger than about 30, you probably don't have much memory of the DOS prompt. And about the third thing you've heard about Linux is "you have to type in commands a lot." (The first two were "it's hard" and "it's free.")
I'm still a little new at it, but by and large my experience has been that using the Linux command line isn't much more necessary than using the Windows Run command: it's an occasional thing, and if you really need it you'll usually be able to find step by step, cut and paste instructions.
The most valuable thing I learned in my abortive grad school experience was how to use a computer. Believe it or not, I, John Deeth, Linux geek and Data Man, was at one time a Luddite, derisive of computers in general, painstakingly rewriting and retyping.
It took exactly one month of grad school, and one rewrite of a paper on a manual typewriter, to get over that hangup. My writing style was scattershot and inspirational, based on my mental tangent of the monent, and my handwritten manuscripts were full of circles and arrows and inserts.
Cut, copy, paste... hey, this computer thing fits like a glove. Pretty soon I had stepped up to tweaking data files for games using edlin and not writing my thesis, that unfinished masterpiece about the Michael Dukakis campaign. But like I said, the most valuable thing I learned in grad school was computers. (More people will read this post than would have read that thesis, anyway.)
The first computer I used was a big ole AT or XT, probably about vintage 1985 (this was in 1988 and we grad students got the hand me downs from the faculty). Two 5 1/4 floppy drives, DOS 3.0, and IBM Writing Assistant. You could about squeeze a 20 page paper into a file, but then you needed an extra file for your title page and bibliography.
That initial experience is part of why the command line aspect of Linux doesn't scare me. I learned at the DOS prompt, and stayed there for nearly a decade, so a command line is just back to basics. (The first computer I owned, I bought used in 1990 and kept for seven years. That's also why, when forced to use Windows, I'm always in Windows Explorer: I spent seven years with the PC Tools file manager and its visual representation of the tree structure.) Ah, memories of the DOS prompt, that blank slate C:\> that stared at you after bootup, waiting for you to work those vague commands. We forget now, but the original book that started the ubiquitous Dummies series was "DOS for Dummies." Then there was that old eight and three file name limit, like thschap1.bib for "thesis chapter 1 bibliography", and I know people who still use that and have memorized what those short file names mean. (Tangent: One of my favorite memories was a fellow who, when he had to make separate files for executive minutes and committee minutes, named the files minutes.com and minutes.exe, then wondered why he crashed his system when he tried to open them.)
The Linux command line is accessed through a program called a terminal, or a shell. In Ubuntu the default way to get through it is through a program menu: Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal. (I also tweaked my settings so that when I hit the Windows key on my laptop, I get the terminal, just as a little anti-Microsoft thing. Now all I need is a little penguin sticker, or a Ghostbusters red crossed out circle, to put over the Windows logo on the key.) You'll be greeted with zen simplicity:
john@john:~$
One of the first DOS commands I learned was dir, which listed the contents of a directory. That works in Linux, as does ls. Another old DOS command that translates is cd to change the directory.
Command names, in DOS and Unix (the progenitor of Linux) were all short like that. When everything is done at the command line, an economy of characters is essential, and if anything Unix/Linux commands are even shorter and more cryptic, yet mnemonic if you use them enough. Here's a few more (there's loads of cheat sheets):
| DOS Command | Linux/UNIX Equivalent |
| DIR | ls |
| COPY | cp |
| TYPE | cat (or less) |
| RENAME | mv |
| ATTRIB | chmod |
| DEL / ERASE | rm |
| RMDIR, RD | rmdir |
| CD | cd |
| CHKDSK | fsck (huh huh, huh) |
| FDISK | fdisk |
| HELP | man |
| MEM | free |
| FC | diff |
| FIND | grep |
| SORT | sort |
| IPCONFIG, WINIPCFG | ifconfig |
| NETSTAT | netstat |
| COMMAND.COM | bash |
| DEBUG | gdb |
| EDLIN | ed |
man followed by a command is not a sexist thing; it'll get you instructions (a man-ual, remember the principle of saving keystrokes) of most any command.
The good news is, modern Linux has progressed to the point that you can get a whole system up and flying without ever touching the command line. Sure, that depends in part on your distribution. If you're an untergeek like me, using Ubuntu, you barely need to touch the terminal at all. If you want to be looking at a ~$ prompt a lot, try Slackware or Gentoo.
My favorite just-for-fun command at the moment is uptime, which tells you how long its been since a reboot. Some of my machines are on 15 days at the moment; it would be longer but we had a brief power outage. I've also had a couple kernel updates, which are the only time Linux asks you for a reboot. Not like Windows, where frequently something as basic as installing a program requires a restart.
Still, there's some handy tricks like
sudo apt-get update
which will update all the programs on your whole system. Your system software, your installed apps, everything. Sure, it's a (shudder) command line. But it's way easier than the one program at a time update process you'd need to do in Windows.
sudo apt-get clean
is handy, too; it'll get rid of the unnecessary files on your machine
cal must have been a handy little thing back in the pre-GUI dark ages. Three simple characters at the prompt gets you:
john@john:~$ cal
January 2009
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
john@john:~$
(The line breaks work right at the prompt better than they do in my html.)
Doesn't seem like much, but in Windows if I want a calendar, I have to open my clock and pretend I'm changing my system date. And more than once I've screwed up and actually changed it.
And if you're dealing with existential angst. the command line can help:
john@john-firebolt:~$ whoami
john
john@john:~$
"I was the walrus, but now I'm John," Lennon sang. whoami seems silly--unless you're a sysadmin juggling multiple accounts.
While I'm getting old school, I'm going to tangent into keyboards. Because if you're rockin' a command line, you need a good keyboard.
In some ways, we've come so far in computing: a 16 gig flash drive in my pocket, more computing power in your wristwatch than they landed the men on the moon with. But in some ways we've slipped.
Modern keyboards are disposable crap. I like old ones, the kind of keyboards I had on those first computers back in my grad student TA office. The keyboard at my desk probably weighs more than the laptop itself, and is half again wider. It's older than Windows so it doesn't have the Windows key.The old keyboards have a half-inch, five pin connector called a DIN connector. (Aside: Plugs and connectors are always described as "male" and "female" ends. Really crude--but no one ever has to explain further and everyone gets it.) The DIN connector is so obsolete that I have to double-adapter it. The keyboard plugs into a DIN to PS/2 connecter (the quarter-inch or so plug, usually color-coded purple). That connector plugs into a PS/2 to USB connector, since USB is all my year-old laptop has.
The DIN keyboards are a little hard to come by. Resale junk shops are my only recourse, and Goodwill and the consignment places don't put computer gear on the shelves. I've picked up a couple at Salvation Army for a buck each.
Seems like a lot of effort for an affectation or an eccentricity. But the sturdy feel of old keyboards is great for a writer like me. The keys have some oomph to them and make a solid physical clack, which feels great when I'm on a roll or on a rant. Or sudo apt-get update.
Yes, I know I promised more Open Office vs. Micro$oft Office this week. Inspiration took me elsewhere; I'll get to it.)
Monday, January 19, 2009
Software as a Subversive Activity, Part 10: An Open Office Test Drive
Linux Monday: An Open Office Test Drive
For the next couple of Linux Monday posts, I'll be testing out my legacy Microsoft Office files in Open Office, Linux world's main alternative. This is, by necessity, a one-way test. Files in Microsoft Office formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt) can be opened in Open Office; the open source community recognizes the need. But Microsoft doesn't want to admit that there are alternatives, and Open Office .odt format files won't open in Microsoft Office.
If you're starting from scratch, it's a great system. But if you've already got files that you've built over the years, you may see some changes. And unfortunately, those aren't all good news.
You can do most of your own Open Office test driving within Windows (back your stuff up first). The Windows install works pretty much like any other Windows install. It's also packaged with several Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, so you can try it from a live CD.
PowerPoint vs. Open Office Impress
There's way way way too many bad PowerPoint presentations out there, but that's about users not knowing how to effectively use visual aids for public speaking, rather than an inherent weakness of the software.
I checked out a 50-slide presentation with text, graphs, and photos, and Impress was almost indistinguishable from Power Point. My typical MO is to switch to slide show mode and use the space bar to advance, and that was identical.
I also started a new presentation from scratch: a very large slide show of photos, with occasional text captions. (Locals: You can catch it tomorrow night at the Johnson County Dems' inauguration party. 6 PM, the Mill.) It started out as a smooth experience; the tools and menus were intuitive and similar and I never had to resort to Help.
But once the file size got up over about 200 Mb, it opened very, very slowly, and I finished some of my editing in Power Point. I found out that photo sizing worked more smoothly in Open Office, as it defaulted my photos to the sixe of the slide while in Power Point I had to manually resize my big ones. Power Point also made the fonts look flaky when I first opened the show, but then they seemed to fix themselves.
After burning to CDs (we're selling copies as a fundraiser) I was able to open and display the show in the intended fashion in both operating systems. Not bad overall. Maybe I was pushing the extremes with a 300 Mb presentation of 300 photos, but that was the use I needed. I'd have to play with it more to see if that's a consistent problem.
Excel vs. Open Office Calc
In government accounting, we live in Excel. I've used it for number crunching, of course, but also for visual displays, web publishing, mail merges, and as a lite pseudo-database.
I swap my simple personal checkbook back and forth between Excel and Open Office's Calc constantly with no ill effects. The look and feel are almost the same. Rows are still numbers, columns are still letters, the toolbars are intuitive. My multiple tabs for checking, car loan, and credit card are all there. Ctrl-c to cut and ctrl-v to paste have worked everywhere I've tried them in Linux, except for the terminal, but a couple of my pet keyboard shortcuts don't work like ctrl-” to copy the cell above and ctrl-: for current date.
Moving up the food chain and into more complex sheets, my formulas and linked cells were good. I use conditional formatting a lot. If, for example, X is greater than Y, I can make the text for X bold and colored. When I opened an Excel sheet, my conditional formatting was preserved. The tools for manipulating the condition formulas are similar, but figuring out how to set the formats themselves was confusing.
A lot of people use Excel as a .dbf file reader. My first attempt in Calc, with a 90,000 record file, locked me up. On the second try, my interface went away and I thought I'd failed, but about 10 minutes later the data appeared. In the process I learned that Calc has the same 65,536 row limit as Excel. The same limit appeared when I opened a .csv comma-separated file in Calc, but that opened more smoothly than the .dbf.
When I ran an Excel file that was designed to publish one tab as a web page, Calc included other tabs of the workbook that were meant to stay under the hood and behind the scenes.
My conversion issues were the greatest with macros and graphs. Some of my graphs converted fine. Others were accurate but had layout changes. One line graph, tracking a raw total across time, flipped itself around so that the newest date was on the left instead of the right. And a percentage across time line graph was unrecognizable. The group labels in the legends all changed, too. On the other had, a pie chart translated perfectly.
Only my simplest Excel macro, with one step to refresh data, worked, and even then the Easy button I made for it didn't work and I had to use the macro menu. For more complex macros, the button started the macro, but then the macro itself crashed.
With enough time and effort, I'm sure I could figure all these things out. But, thinking like a lazy bureaucrat for a moment to show you what we're up against: if I don't change, I don't have to.
Or do I?
You're Not Safe Even If You Stay In Microsoft World
I hate to be the bearer of this not perfect news. But this is part of what open source advocates are faced with. Open source is a bold step for an organization or even an individual. The payoff is in the future, but the ripple effect through the legacy is now, and that's a lot of work for both the IT people and the end users.
But even if you stay with the familiar, change may be forced on you. I've been wrestling for way too long at work, with little success, with a set of Word Macros. I wrote the early version 15 or so years ago in Word for Windows 3.1 or something, and they survived up through Office 97. But in Office 2003, they fail, and attempts to revise have been futile. I expect that eventually they'll need a from-scratch rewrite.
Which begs the question that may prove most persuasive: if you're rewriting the legacy from scratch anyway, what's the point of staying in Microsoft World?
Next Week: More MS Office apps, more tests.
For the next couple of Linux Monday posts, I'll be testing out my legacy Microsoft Office files in Open Office, Linux world's main alternative. This is, by necessity, a one-way test. Files in Microsoft Office formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt) can be opened in Open Office; the open source community recognizes the need. But Microsoft doesn't want to admit that there are alternatives, and Open Office .odt format files won't open in Microsoft Office.
If you're starting from scratch, it's a great system. But if you've already got files that you've built over the years, you may see some changes. And unfortunately, those aren't all good news.You can do most of your own Open Office test driving within Windows (back your stuff up first). The Windows install works pretty much like any other Windows install. It's also packaged with several Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, so you can try it from a live CD.
PowerPoint vs. Open Office Impress
There's way way way too many bad PowerPoint presentations out there, but that's about users not knowing how to effectively use visual aids for public speaking, rather than an inherent weakness of the software.
I checked out a 50-slide presentation with text, graphs, and photos, and Impress was almost indistinguishable from Power Point. My typical MO is to switch to slide show mode and use the space bar to advance, and that was identical.
I also started a new presentation from scratch: a very large slide show of photos, with occasional text captions. (Locals: You can catch it tomorrow night at the Johnson County Dems' inauguration party. 6 PM, the Mill.) It started out as a smooth experience; the tools and menus were intuitive and similar and I never had to resort to Help.
But once the file size got up over about 200 Mb, it opened very, very slowly, and I finished some of my editing in Power Point. I found out that photo sizing worked more smoothly in Open Office, as it defaulted my photos to the sixe of the slide while in Power Point I had to manually resize my big ones. Power Point also made the fonts look flaky when I first opened the show, but then they seemed to fix themselves.
After burning to CDs (we're selling copies as a fundraiser) I was able to open and display the show in the intended fashion in both operating systems. Not bad overall. Maybe I was pushing the extremes with a 300 Mb presentation of 300 photos, but that was the use I needed. I'd have to play with it more to see if that's a consistent problem.
Excel vs. Open Office Calc
In government accounting, we live in Excel. I've used it for number crunching, of course, but also for visual displays, web publishing, mail merges, and as a lite pseudo-database.
I swap my simple personal checkbook back and forth between Excel and Open Office's Calc constantly with no ill effects. The look and feel are almost the same. Rows are still numbers, columns are still letters, the toolbars are intuitive. My multiple tabs for checking, car loan, and credit card are all there. Ctrl-c to cut and ctrl-v to paste have worked everywhere I've tried them in Linux, except for the terminal, but a couple of my pet keyboard shortcuts don't work like ctrl-” to copy the cell above and ctrl-: for current date.
Moving up the food chain and into more complex sheets, my formulas and linked cells were good. I use conditional formatting a lot. If, for example, X is greater than Y, I can make the text for X bold and colored. When I opened an Excel sheet, my conditional formatting was preserved. The tools for manipulating the condition formulas are similar, but figuring out how to set the formats themselves was confusing.
A lot of people use Excel as a .dbf file reader. My first attempt in Calc, with a 90,000 record file, locked me up. On the second try, my interface went away and I thought I'd failed, but about 10 minutes later the data appeared. In the process I learned that Calc has the same 65,536 row limit as Excel. The same limit appeared when I opened a .csv comma-separated file in Calc, but that opened more smoothly than the .dbf.
When I ran an Excel file that was designed to publish one tab as a web page, Calc included other tabs of the workbook that were meant to stay under the hood and behind the scenes.
My conversion issues were the greatest with macros and graphs. Some of my graphs converted fine. Others were accurate but had layout changes. One line graph, tracking a raw total across time, flipped itself around so that the newest date was on the left instead of the right. And a percentage across time line graph was unrecognizable. The group labels in the legends all changed, too. On the other had, a pie chart translated perfectly.
Only my simplest Excel macro, with one step to refresh data, worked, and even then the Easy button I made for it didn't work and I had to use the macro menu. For more complex macros, the button started the macro, but then the macro itself crashed.
With enough time and effort, I'm sure I could figure all these things out. But, thinking like a lazy bureaucrat for a moment to show you what we're up against: if I don't change, I don't have to.
Or do I?
You're Not Safe Even If You Stay In Microsoft World
I hate to be the bearer of this not perfect news. But this is part of what open source advocates are faced with. Open source is a bold step for an organization or even an individual. The payoff is in the future, but the ripple effect through the legacy is now, and that's a lot of work for both the IT people and the end users.
But even if you stay with the familiar, change may be forced on you. I've been wrestling for way too long at work, with little success, with a set of Word Macros. I wrote the early version 15 or so years ago in Word for Windows 3.1 or something, and they survived up through Office 97. But in Office 2003, they fail, and attempts to revise have been futile. I expect that eventually they'll need a from-scratch rewrite.
Which begs the question that may prove most persuasive: if you're rewriting the legacy from scratch anyway, what's the point of staying in Microsoft World?
Next Week: More MS Office apps, more tests.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Software as a Subversive Activity, Part 9: Linux and the Third World
Open Sourcing the Third World: Software as a Subversive Activity, Part 9
The government of Vietnam announced last week that it will be converting all its government computers to open source software by the end of 2010, with conversion to begin almost immediately.
So apparently open source software really is communism. But übercapitalist Bill Gates can't really complain; the Vietnamese government cites a crackdown on illegal copies of Windows as one reason for the switch, and we all know Bill wants you to be assured of that Windows Genuine Advantage, right?
When most of us think of computers and the Third World, we think of that guy in Nigeria who'll most respectfully split his $10 million inheritance with us, if only we'll kindly send him our bank account number right now. (Maybe he'll pay us in Zimbabwe money; that 100 billion dollars would meet even Dr. Evil's demands.) But seriously, as countries develop, they use more energy, and anything we can do to keep that down is great.
Last week we saw how Linux is greener than Windows, using less power and packaging and extending the life of old machines. That's got big implications for the Third World. And so does the lower cost ($0 Zimbabwe or American) of open source. If the West won't price software appropriately, the Third World has other options. A global look at search popularity shows that interest in Linux is highest in developing Asia and the former Communist bloc: India, Cuba and Russia, the Czech Republic and Indonesia.
The West sucked the wealth out of Africa and Asia in the colonial era, and they're still recovering. Sure, in these tough times we want to keep our jobs at home. But the right way to do that is to raise standards of living, and wages, in the rest of the world, so that shipping the jobs overseas isn't cost effective anymore. We can help keep our jobs here by leaving their money there. Bill Gates is the second richest man in the world; Should a struggling entrepreneur or agency in Ougadougou really have to ship a big chunk of change off to Microsoft, or upgrade that sturdy and functional old computer because it won't run Vista?
Nigerian students with OLPC laptops, learning to do much more than send spam.
Getting computers to the Third World also has back-home benefits. The netbook niche was inspired in part by an initiative in getting computers to the developing world. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project designed and developed a low-power, small screen computer that can be built for about $100. Initially, the only way for a First World customer to get one was to buy two: one for themselves and one for a kid. Linux was a key keeping the cost down.
The OLPC project has continued, bringing Linux to all sorts of Third World countries like Alabama. But there have been stumbles, in part because Microsoft wanted a piece of the action. Legions of Linux geek kids in the developing world means fewer future Microsoft customers.
Another stumbling block to Linux adoption in the third world has been the slow pace in the first world:
As I started this series I noted that my interest in Linux was first motivated less by technology and more by philosophy and ideology. Thus, by extension, one way you can encourage the developing world to go open source is by doing it yourself.
You'll think of the rest of the world immediately if you check out Ubuntu, the Linux distribution I use. Global accessibility is one of the big goals of Ubuntu developer Mark Shuttleworth, a native of South Africa. The first step of installing, or checking out Ubuntu from a live CD, is choosing your language. Like Press 1 for English on the voice mail, only with lots more options, 64 to be exact. Rep. Steve King (Know Nothing-IA) would first have fits and then try to get it banned under our English Only law. Don't get scared, the default is the world's default second language, English. Sure, Windows supports a lot of languages too. But the Ubuntu install process literally makes you think of the rest of the world as the very first thing.
“Ubuntu” is a South African word with as many definitions as shalom or aloha. Nelson Mandela describes it thus:
That's the open source software community in its ideal form. Or, as Barack Obama might say it, “I am my brother's keeper.”
The government of Vietnam announced last week that it will be converting all its government computers to open source software by the end of 2010, with conversion to begin almost immediately.
So apparently open source software really is communism. But übercapitalist Bill Gates can't really complain; the Vietnamese government cites a crackdown on illegal copies of Windows as one reason for the switch, and we all know Bill wants you to be assured of that Windows Genuine Advantage, right?
When most of us think of computers and the Third World, we think of that guy in Nigeria who'll most respectfully split his $10 million inheritance with us, if only we'll kindly send him our bank account number right now. (Maybe he'll pay us in Zimbabwe money; that 100 billion dollars would meet even Dr. Evil's demands.) But seriously, as countries develop, they use more energy, and anything we can do to keep that down is great.Last week we saw how Linux is greener than Windows, using less power and packaging and extending the life of old machines. That's got big implications for the Third World. And so does the lower cost ($0 Zimbabwe or American) of open source. If the West won't price software appropriately, the Third World has other options. A global look at search popularity shows that interest in Linux is highest in developing Asia and the former Communist bloc: India, Cuba and Russia, the Czech Republic and Indonesia.
The West sucked the wealth out of Africa and Asia in the colonial era, and they're still recovering. Sure, in these tough times we want to keep our jobs at home. But the right way to do that is to raise standards of living, and wages, in the rest of the world, so that shipping the jobs overseas isn't cost effective anymore. We can help keep our jobs here by leaving their money there. Bill Gates is the second richest man in the world; Should a struggling entrepreneur or agency in Ougadougou really have to ship a big chunk of change off to Microsoft, or upgrade that sturdy and functional old computer because it won't run Vista?
Nigerian students with OLPC laptops, learning to do much more than send spam.
Getting computers to the Third World also has back-home benefits. The netbook niche was inspired in part by an initiative in getting computers to the developing world. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project designed and developed a low-power, small screen computer that can be built for about $100. Initially, the only way for a First World customer to get one was to buy two: one for themselves and one for a kid. Linux was a key keeping the cost down.
The OLPC project has continued, bringing Linux to all sorts of Third World countries like Alabama. But there have been stumbles, in part because Microsoft wanted a piece of the action. Legions of Linux geek kids in the developing world means fewer future Microsoft customers.
Another stumbling block to Linux adoption in the third world has been the slow pace in the first world:
At first glance, Free and Open Source software should be perfect for places like Mali. The local economy is poor, and average salaries make proprietary software an unimaginable expense for most people there. Yet the place is overrun with copies of Microsoft Windows. The outcome of this rampant illegal software copying is that Windows is seen as “the first world standard” and any attempt to push a cheaper alternative is strongly resisted. They consider it trying to cheat local people out of getting the same quality of software that is used in the developed world, even though it’s a legal way of getting quality software for free.
As I started this series I noted that my interest in Linux was first motivated less by technology and more by philosophy and ideology. Thus, by extension, one way you can encourage the developing world to go open source is by doing it yourself.
You'll think of the rest of the world immediately if you check out Ubuntu, the Linux distribution I use. Global accessibility is one of the big goals of Ubuntu developer Mark Shuttleworth, a native of South Africa. The first step of installing, or checking out Ubuntu from a live CD, is choosing your language. Like Press 1 for English on the voice mail, only with lots more options, 64 to be exact. Rep. Steve King (Know Nothing-IA) would first have fits and then try to get it banned under our English Only law. Don't get scared, the default is the world's default second language, English. Sure, Windows supports a lot of languages too. But the Ubuntu install process literally makes you think of the rest of the world as the very first thing.
“Ubuntu” is a South African word with as many definitions as shalom or aloha. Nelson Mandela describes it thus:
A traveller through a country would stop at a village and he didn't have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not address themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?
That's the open source software community in its ideal form. Or, as Barack Obama might say it, “I am my brother's keeper.”
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