I haven't hooked up my OpenBSD 4.2 drive and booted it for about a week. The last time I left the box, I was playing around with Apache, and I thought all was well.

Today I hook up the drive and boot OpenBSD.

First of all, instead of a console login, I get an XDM login. That's strange. I don't remember XDM ever showing up before.

Then Internet networking doesn't work. I check all the networking settings. Everything is correct.

I can ping IP addresses on the local network, but nothing is working outside of that. Pinging google.com yields nothing. Since I can get local machines, I know it's not a bad cable.

Back to the OpenBSD FAQ. Instead of doing ifconfig, I check all the files that hold network configuration info. Nothing.

To start networking manually, the FAQ says to do this:

# sh /etc/netstart

An error message comes up. There's an error of some kind in /etc/rc.conf.

Now I know what happened. To start Apache automatically at boot, a line must be edited in /etc/rc.conf. I was trying it, and I must've screwed something up. As root, I edit the file. Sure enough, I had erroneously dropped a linefeed in the middle of the comment line to turn Apache on at boot.

I fixed the line, saved /etc/rc.conf and tried to start networking again from the command line.

It didn't work.

I rebooted.

This time, I got my usual console login. I started X manually. And Internet networking worked.

I also configured an anonymous FTP server. I had to manually change the permissions of the directory and files to root, but everything worked as advertised.

That's the strength of OpenBSD, as well as FreeBSD and NetBSD: the documentation is readable, comprehensive and up to date.

Over the past two days, I did a Debian Etch install in order to compare how all of this server configuration goes in Linux as opposed to OpenBSD.

And this is where the lack of documentation (even the man pages aren't all that up-to-date). At least the apache2 man page for Debian told me about the apache2 command. When httpd and apachectl start did nothing, I was in a bit of a quandary. Luckily I figured out that apache2 start and apache2ctl start would both work. Oh yeah, and the config files aren't where the Debian man page says they are. Instead of being in /usr/local/apache2/conf, they're in /etc/apache2.

I did figure out how to change the default directory for Apache in Debian (editing /etc/apache2/sites-available/default does it).

Part of the problem was that I started with Apache version 1.3 in OpenBSD (which doesn't include Apache 2 for licensing reasons) and had Apache 2.3 in Debian. And sure I don't know quite what I'm doing, but this is all on a local network, not the wide-open Internet, so I'm a bit more free to experiment.

All this underscores the value of good documentation. And when it comes to some distros -- Ubuntu, Red Hat and Suse -- there are doorstop-thick books available. And the good ones are worth their weight in any precious metal you care to name. Luckily the BSDs have great online FAQs to help get you started. And since integration between the kernel, userland and other packages is so tight in the BSDs, and the need for documentation is that much greater, I'm damn glad it's there.

Not that Linux doesn't need something similar, but I don't see any Linux distribution short of Gentoo providing documentation this comprehensive and finely tuned to its users.

Can anybody prove me wrong? I truly, sincerely hope so.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I just read that Debian is removing Flash from its repository:

Flashplugin-nonfree has been removed (see below), as this is closed source and we don't get security support for it. For security reasons, we recommend to immediately remove any version of flashplugin-nonfree and any remaining files of the Adobe Flash Player. Tested updates will be made available via backports.org.

Since adding Flash from the repository never seemed to work for me in Debian -- I always have to get it through the browser dialogs -- it's kind of a moot point. I haven't yet investigated Gnash -- the free, open-source Flash clone -- but I'd sure like to do so. Flash is a resource hog, and I wish it would go away, but that's probably not going to happen. I just hope that Gnash or some other open-source alternative can replace it -- and quickly.

Back to Debian: The Flash news is part of Debian's main announcement that there's a new netinstall image for Etch:

The Debian project is pleased to announce the third update of its stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codename etch). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustment to serious problems.

Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away 4.0 CDs or DVDs but only to update against ftp.debian.org after an installation, in order to incorporate those late changes.

Those who frequently install updates from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update.

So you don't really need it, unless you don't already have it, in which case you need it.

I've been running Debian Lenny (testing) on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), and it's making significant progress -- it works way better than it did a month ago. I'm dual-booting with PCLinuxOS 2007 at the moment.

The older, weaker $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt) is still running Debian Etch (Stable), with the Xfce build's software, but now set to use Fluxbox as the window manager.

I can't decide whether or not to install Etch again on the Gateway just to see if any other bugs were fixed. For me, Lenny has resolved most of my issues, and I'll be happy to stick with it as it goes Stable.

And while I'm considering building an experimental server with OpenBSD, I might make it easy on myself and use Debian Etch instead.

My advice: If you're worried that either Debian or Slackware is too hard to figure out, don't be so worried. The not-so-hidden secret out there is that Ubuntu isn't that much easier. If you've got Ubuntu figured out even a little, you can handle Debian (and it's a bit faster, with more in the default install, besides). Slackware, you can probably figure out with a little hand-holding. Adding software and doing updates isn't as easy as in Debian/Ubuntu, but it's still fairly easy -- and you'll definitely learn something; actually quite a few somethings.

The flexibility of Debian is legendary. With one little netinstall CD, you can roll out a GNOME, KDE or Xfce desktop, a minimal console-only system (from which you can build what you want), plus any number of server configurations.

Slackware is also very flexible, but in a different way. It can't compete with Debian's 20,000+ packages, but there's a lot in the full Slack install. A full KDE desktop (with Xfce and Fluxbox, too). And if you want to spend a lot of time on the install process, you can pick and choose each individual package before committing to the final install.

Both put a lot of power in the hands of the user. And you do want power, don't you?

Flash update: Sander Marechal provided this very illuminating bug report (in this LXer thread) about the discussion in the Debian community over whether or not (and if so, then how) to include Flash in Debian.

At this point, it looks like the flashplugin-nonfree will be available to Debian users via Backports.org.

In the bug report, Ramond Wan says:

As a Debian user, but someone who isn't related to how Debian is run...I think you are correct and more importantly, what makes you think that Debian isn't political? Every time I visit a web site with Iceweasel and the server pops up an annoying message saying that Firefox is supported but not my browser, I sense only a part of the overall politics in Debian. In this case, I blame the server developers, too, for having such a message (how about if I used lynx?).

Anyway, there is a lot of politics within Debian and it stems from them
drawing a line that forms the basis of what Debian is (i.e., "free").
If they start making exceptions, then that line has no meaning.
Backports is a patch that helps make it easy for many of us. We give up
some things to be able to use Debian (rather than one of the many other
Linux distributions).

Carlo Wood says:

I'm sorry, but it doesn't seem to make much sense to let the debian users of stable and testing suffer like this. It's not like Adobe is going to be like "Oh My God!" and change their ways. They clearly don't give a damn.

I can't help but sense a political reason not to
support flash, just because it's "non-free", the
maintainers of debian WANT it to be broken, almost,
and certainly don't look hard for a way to give
their users an easy way to use flash. Just as long
as the result is that the users blame Adobe, and
not debian, it's ok - regardless of how much the
users suffer because of it.

And Timo Jyrinki says:

YouTube already works with Gnash the free Flash player, so that in particular should not be a problem. Many other sites are not yet working, but Gnash could be possibly defined as working "well enough" in time for the Lenny. At least I'm using it exclusively anyway, and I'm just using the 0.8.1 version, which lacks development for the last four months. But I don't find it problematic to skip sites that don't work with Gnash, so I'm not an average user.

In summary, Gnash works rather well for Flash 7 sites, but quite a large
portion of sites has moved to Flash 8 and 9 which are only a
work-in-progress with regards to Gnash, and most do not work properly.
Time will tell how fast Gnash will progress.

And here's what I say: I'm ambivalent about Flash. Some sites -- yes, even some that I personally help maintain -- use way too much Flash. You can barely navigate a site when you have two to four Flash apps running on a given page. The people who are all hot to use this much Flash obviously don't spend much, if any time using their own sites.

As far as video goes, Flash just seems easier than the alternatives. I know that QuickTime, for instance, runs like an old, three-legged dog on non-Apple hardware. It's just a lousy app.

So as far as video goes, I'd love to see some alternatives to Flash, especially open-source alternatives.

But as I say above, it may be a security issue, but on Debian I've always just gotten the Flash plugin straight from Mozilla through the browser itself.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

What version of Linux has been at the top of the Distrowatch rankings for months now that I've never tried until today? PCLinuxOS.

Everybody I know who has runs PCLinuxOS has good things to say about it. Scott Ruecker of LXer and the Los Angeles Daily News' own City Hall reporter Rick Orlov are among those who have used and liked it.

I couldn't boot the CD on my test machine (VIA C3-based converted thin client), but on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) it's booting just fine.

To start with the live CD, I selected the "copy2ram" option because I have 1 GB to play with on this machine. It takes quite a while to copy the system files to RAM, but once that's done, the system should run very fast.

The 2007 version of PCLinuxOS has received continual updates and is a sort of rolling release -- the coders behind it don't create new ISO images on a continual basis like we get from Ubuntu, for instance. Once you install PCLinuxOS, it's easy to bring it up to day. Actually, I prefer it this way. I'd rather do a bunch of updates than continually burn new CDs.

Continue reading "Review: PCLinuxOS 2007, GNOME and MiniMe" »

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Getting my feet wet in OpenBSD has gotten me thinking about how different operating systems handle software updates -- and how important security patches and bug fixes really are.

I'm thinking most of you will say they're very important. If you have a Debian-based Linux system, for instance, there are updates available almost every day, both security- and bug-related.

Live CDs are different. Knopix 5.1.1 has been around a very long time -- over a year at this point -- and plenty of people are using it, even though it's had no update of any kind in that period of time. But live-CD distros like Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux have a new release every two or three months, and while the developers don't patch every single conceivable thing, I imagine that quite a bit of upgrading is done over the course of, let's say, six months.

OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD all offer apps in the form of ports, which are source files that you download and compile on your own machine, as well as precompiled binary packages for a variety of architectures (i386, powerpc, sparc, etc.). And the method for updating these ports and packages is something I'm still investigating.

m no expert yet, but I think the bulk of the updating for these BSD systems is done with ports through a CVS server. Taking OpenBSD as an example -- especially because that's what I'm running at the moment -- there are precompiled binaries for OpenBSD 4.2 that haven't changed since the version's release. So if you point to the packages created for OpenBSD 4.2 in your PKG_PATH, you get Firefox 2.0.0.6.

But if you look in snapshots, OpenBSD has a 2.0.0.12 package for Firefox on i386 that was uploaded two days ago.

(A quick check of the NetBSD repository for binary packages yielded Firefox 2.0.0.11, as well as preliminary versions of Firefox 3, for NetBSD 4.0.

So is it better to stick with the 4.2 packages, or to use the newer "snapshot" packages?

I'll give myself the answer: RTFM. While much is the same in the various BSD projects when compared to the hundreds of Linuxes out there, much is different -- and in the service of user choice.

But when it comes to getting the latest versions of ... well, everything, thus far I haven't yet figured out if there's a prebuilt script for updating binary packages en masse in OpenBSD and NetBSD. I know that FreeBSD has an app called freebsd-update that accomplishes this task, and I'm anxious to try it, but I'd like to know if I'm missing a similar utility in NetBSD and OpenBSD, or if the absence of this sort of tool is intentional.

My question: Am I compromising my OpenBSD system by running older precompiled binary apps? Does it really matter?

I'm conditioned by using Debian, Ubuntu and Slackware to expect updates on a continual basis and I wonder if I need to have the same level of vigilance with the BSDs. And should I be using ports instead of packages? While I'm on the subject, here's a way to keep up with new ports for OpenBSD. And here's the listing for Firefox.

Helpful site for OpenBSD: From OpenBSDSupport.org comes this page on how to replace Windows with OpenBSD. While it's based on OpenBSD 3.7 instead of the current 4.2, and that makes some of the information out of date, there are more than a few tips that can be applied to the newer version.

Plugging into OpenBSD: I've just signed up for a bunch of OpenBSD mailing lists, but there's also the OpenBSD Journal to help you keep up with what's going on.

Summing up: So far I'm having a lot of fun looking into the BSD operating systems. I met networking and security instructor, as well as prolific author Dru Lavigne at SCALE 6X, and she's going to send me a copy of her new book, "The Best of FreeBSD Basics," which means I'll be doing some work in FreeBSD in order to evaluate the book. In case you want your own copy, here it is on Amazon.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google "linux vs. bsd," and this comes up. Written by BSD user Matthew D. Fuller, there's a lot of information to absorb.

Here he is on "Chaos vs. Order":

One common generality is that the Linux methodology is the living incarnation of chaos, whereas the BSD methodology is far more about control. To a large extent, it's true. Linux grew out of a spare-time hacking background, while BSD grew out of a controlled engineering background. Of course, there's plenty of weekend tinkers writing BSD code, and plenty of full-time professional programmers sloughing away at various parts of Linux. But the feel of the systems still does reflect that sort of schism.

We've already discussed the construction methodology; BSD builds up a core system which is uniform, whereas Linux distributions takes pre-existing pieces and pretty much puts them together helter-skelter. Naturally, the BSD method is far more amenable to keeping things ordered, while the Linux method practically necessitates utter chaos. That's not to say that chaos is inherently bad, or order inherently good. They're just different environments.

Linux will also generally chase new versions of other programs much more closely, adopting particularly more major changes like Apache 2 much sooner than BSD will move that way. Now, the stricter separation of "base" vs "ports" in BSD, as well as the structure of the ports tree itself, make it easier to have multiple parallel versions of packages in BSD. Sometimes, it's even possible and easy to have multiple versions installed at the same time. Linux, by not having that sort of separation, makes it very difficult to have parallel versions, and instead almost requires a single "blessed" one.

And the primacy of source-compiling in packages also makes it easier to handle multiple versions. For instance, PHP must be compiled differently depending on whether you're using Apache 1.3 or Apache 2. With from-source packages like ports, I can define an environmental variable when I compile and install PHP to tell it whether to use Apache 1.3 or Apache 2. With binary packages, you'd have to have 2 separate packages available, which will lead to confusion sooner or later.

Followed by "Right vs. Wrong":

The difference can also be seen in the way core code is integrated. BSD tends to always shy away from hackish solutions when there's even a hint of a proper solution in the wings. The theory is that it's far easier to wait for the clean answer, than to integrate the dirty answer now, for several reasons. For one thing, if you integrate the dirty answer, that reduces the incentive to implement a better one. For another, once you dirty up the architecture to integrate something it'll never get cleaned up again. You know it as well as I do. Oh, sure, you'll say it's temporary. But you know there's nothing quite as permanent as a temporary stop-gap. And things grow. The only way to avoid giving a mile is to refuse to give the first inch. It's just like taxes; when was the last time you saw a temporary tax that ever went away?

You also see it in what is there. Traditionally (though not universally), Linux integrates support for a piece of hardware before BSD does. But when BSD integrates it, it works. It's solid. It's stable. Linux drivers tend to have a lot more variance, because they'll be brought in earlier. In many ways, this mirrors the add-on case above, but in reverse. BSD has a very tightly controlled base system, and can be very free with setting up add-on software, since it's all added on by the user independently. Linux has a very loose and fluid coupling between the kernel and the userland, but the userland as a whole, due to not having a base/addon separation, requires a lot more work to keep consistent, which places a much higher requirement for a central "blessing" of various versions of packages. The extensive use of binary, rather than source distribution just makes it that much more so.

There are plenty of other "BSD vs. Linux" items out there, but this is the most detailed and well-reasoned of those that I've seen.

My process goes something like this: If you're starting with the hardware, test everything and see what runs best, what you like best and what fits the task the best. It might be Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, Slackware, even Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux. It could also be FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD.

I'm reluctant to give up on the Linux distributions I've come to know over the past year and then some, but in the BSD projects I see an opportunity to learn something new and do things a little differently. And since that's the spirit in which I began use of open-source operating systems and software, it's just part of the continuum of what I'm doing, the path I'm on, if you would be so kind as to indulge such thoughts.

That there's more than one or two -- or more than a hundred -- ways to skin the proverbial cat is a very good thing.

Debian tip: Here's a way to speed up booting of Debian when you're not connected to a network:

If you ever wondered, why exim4 needs so long to start when you have no net access, though you were sure that configured as satellite for a smarthost it should have nothing to lookup as the smarthost in in /etc/hosts, you might just have forgotten to put a

disable_ipv6 = true

in your exim4.conf. (I'm not sure, but that might also help
to actually deliver mail to hosts which also have ipv6 addresses
on servers with outgoing smtp when you forgot to blacklist the
ipv6 module).

Thanks, Bernhard R. Link, who works on Debian, for the tip. And read all of the Debian developer/bloggers at Planet Debian. Ubuntu does the same thing here.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS will be upgradeable to 8.04 LTS: I've made no secret of my admiration for the 6.06 LTS version of Ubuntu, even though it's over a year and a half old. I like the way it runs, I've never had a problem with it ... and I like the fact that it will have support for three years of life on the desktop, even more on the server (until June 2009 on the desktop, June 2011 on the server).

But now that a new LTS is about to be released -- April's Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (if you haven't yet figured it out, the 8 is for 2008, the 04 for FebruaryApril) -- it's a good time to give it a try. If it works well on one box or another, Ubuntu 8.04 might be a good OS to install and stick with for a year, two or three. Now I've learned that there will be an upgrade path from 6.06 to 8.04.

I recommend a separate /home partition so a full reinstall can be done easily (but don't do it without a backup of /home), and I will probably do a full install instead of an upgrade, but it's nice to know that 6.06-8.04 can be done without a full reinstall.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

You think? That's one of the stories out there right now. Makes sense to me: Amazon could definitely use Yahoo as both partner and source of revenue. Amazon could also conceivably tap Yahoo's pool of developers to help bolster the Amazon cloud computing initiative.

And tamping down any mojo that Microsoft might gain in the SAAS (software as a service) and overall cloud computing sector only helps Amazon's own foray into what many people think is the future of computing (though others think it's much ado about little).

Clearly it's good business for Microsoft to buy Yahoo and entrench itself as a firm No. 2 in search advertising. And ... while I'm touting the alleged skills of Yahoo's developers, Yahoo itself is way behind Google when it comes to Web-based applications. Yahoo has nothing like Google Docs and Spreadsheets, nor does it seem to have a Google-like plan to leverage Docs, Gmail and network storage as a fee-based service for the enterprise.

I still think Yahoo Mail has an edge over Gmail, excepting the fact that Gmail can run a totally secure session (which, nevertheless can be hacked into through unencrypted cookies) and Yahoo Mail cannot, but to me Yahoo Mail keeps that edge with usability and functionality ... but ... Gmail offers free POP mail, Yahoo charges for it, and Gmail is also rolling out IMAP, with no similar plan for Yahoo that I know about.

On the other hand, the latest rendition of Yahoo Mail, if run on fast-enough hardware, does an admirable job of mimicking a stand-alone e-mail client. It's the kind of app that makes me think Yahoo can develop a credible alternative to Google Docs if they wanted to do so.

Anyhow, back to business. One of the perils of being a publicly traded company without huge mounds of cash on hand is that somebody like Microsoft can swoop in and buy you when your stock is tanking.

Yahoo is a valuable brand with good core technologies. Given the time, they can manage their way out of this mess. But in today's world, time is scarce.

There are two kinds of tech companies out there: those who would love to be bought by Microsoft, and those who loathe it. OK, there's a third kind: those likely to be threatened with legal action by Microsoft, but I'm getting off-track here.

Remember this, Yahooligans: The Web isn't set in stone. If Yahoo is assimilated, you can always cash out and start something newer and better.

As for Microsoft, the company has never been shy about acquiring the technology and market share it needs in order to survive and grow. They've got the money, so this acquisition is a no-brainer for them. The clash-of-culture thing could be a problem, but for most people, if the checks keep coming (and they don't make people move to Seattle) and they see some kind of mission in their work, many will keep going. If it doesn't go so well, Microsoft parts with cash to crush the No. 2 player in search advertising and effectively assumes that mantle itself.

But letting anybody else -- especially someone with the scale and ambition of Amazon -- get Yahoo, that would only hurt Microsoft's search-ad, networked-application and plain-craven-moneymaking mojo. What's a big load of cash good for when you can't use it to crush your rivals?

Unless Yahoo can somehow find someone, somewhere with a bigger load of ready money or pricey stock, it looks like Redmond will win this round.

And whether the merger succeeds or fails, if it happens at all, it's huge-upside time for the folks in Redmond.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why a desktop installation of OpenBSD?

It's a legitimate question. According to Distrowatch, among the three main BSD projects (they don't like to be called "distros"), FreeBSD is way out in front -- and is the base for PC-BSD and DesktopBSD -- followed by OpenBSD and NetBSD.

And even though there are two desktop-focused versions of FreeBSD, and it's possible to turn all three of the major BSD projects into a desktop-worthy system, the question remains: Why not just stick with Linux, with its usually superior hardware detection, vastly larger community of users (who in theory and often in practice can provide all the help you need to get a system up and running) and much larger choice of distributions?

For one thing, Linux isn't alone on the desktop, nor should it be. Apple has a hugely popular desktop operating system based in part on code from BSD. And another operating system derived from Unix -- OpenSolaris -- is also inching onto the desktop with its Indiana project.

I think the competition is enormously healthy for free, open-source software, and I support that competition and choice wholeheartedly.

And using OpenBSD to build up a desktop system is just plain fun. It's more of a challenge, and all the configuration that I've done and am doing just teaches me more about what makes operating systems tick, even in my technologically feeble state.

I'm no coder. I've never programmed anything. I just mess around with hardware and software and then write about it.

I'm pretty much compelled to do all the things I've done over the past year and a half. It hasn't gotten boring.

And while I'm not going to move away from Linux, if the hardware and software cooperate -- as they have on this test machine -- I see no reason not to spend some considerable time running OpenBSD and seeing what I can do with it.

Again, my thanks go to all the people behind OpenBSD as well as the bloggers whose experience has paved the way for me to consider running the operating system and then to install and begin configuring it.

Going forward, I hope all of the major BSD projects -- FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD -- will continue to grow, keeping their documentation of the same ultra-high quality and enabling users to get more and more hardware working to the point where both server and desktop users have a greater number of choices than ever with which to get things done.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Linus Torvalds, father of the open-source Linux operating system, says that in some ways Apple's OS X is "actually worse than Windows. He saved the phrase "utter crap" for OS X's filesystem. He says:

"An operating system should be completely invisible," he said. "To Microsoft and Apple (it is) a way to control the whole environment ... to force people to upgrade their applications and hardware."

I'm no Linus, but that seems a bit harsh. Even so, there's a new OS X filesystem on the horizon, I've heard.

Back in the Linux realm, Torvalds says he admires the One Laptop Per Child initiative as well as the low-cost -power and -size ASUS eee-PC laptop.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've blogged before on how Gmail has an advantage over Yahoo Mail -- and most other Web-based e-mail services -- because you can choose to run a totally secure session (by entering the URL https://gmail.com instead of plain ol' http://gmail.com) and feel safe when reading and writing e-mail over public WiFi connections.

Seems it isn't so. According the Zero Day blog at ZDNet, somebody monitoring the radio traffic of your wireless connection can figure out your password through the use of unencrypted cookies with a technique called "sidejacking":

Sidejacking is a term (Robert) Graham uses to describe his session hijacking hack that can compromise nearly all Web 2.0 applications that rely on saved cookie information to seamlessly log people back in to an account without the need to reenter the password. By listening to and storing radio signals from the airwaves with any laptop, an attacker can harvest cookies from multiple users and go in to their Web 2.0 application. Even though the password wasn’t actually cracked or stolen, possession of the cookies acts as a temporary key to gain access to Web 2.0 applications such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo. The attacker can even find out what books you ordered on Amazon, where you live from Google maps, acquire digital certificates with your email account in the subject line, and much more.

Gmail in SSL https mode was thought to be safe because it encrypted everything, but it turns out that Gmail’s JavaScript code will fall back to non-encrypted http mode if https isn’t available. This is actually a very common scenario anytime a laptop connects to a hotspot before the user signs in where the laptop will attempt to connect to Gmail if the application is opened but it won’t be able to connect to anything. At that point in time Gmail’s JavaScripts will attempt to communicate via unencrypted http mode and it’s game over if someone is capturing the data.

What’s really sad is the fact that Google Gmail is one of the “better” Web 2.0 applications out there and it still can’t get security right even when a user actually chooses to use SSL mode. Other applications like Microsoft’s MSN/Hotmail and Yahoo don’t even have SSL modes. The fact that they use SSL mode for first time authentication and sign-in is irrelevant because they all drop down to unencrypted mode right after the user authenticates.

I don't use my DSL Extreme Web mail as often as I should. It has a secure connection the whole time, and it's primitive enough -- I hope -- not to have these same vulnerabilities. Fastmail.fm, on which I also have a free account, will also do a secure session if you choose "secure login" when signing on.

I'm far from a security expert, but it seems to me that we'd be in better shape if we had the option of running a Web browser in secure-server mode all the time.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been toying with removing Debian Etch from the $15 Laptop -- the 1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt with a 233 MHz Pentium II MMX processor and 64 MB of RAM. When most computer users -- even those partial to Linux -- talk about "old" hardware, they mean either things in the 1 GHz range, even 3 GHz single-core CPU computers with 512 MB of RAM.

For me, a 1.2 GHz Celeron laptop with 1 GB of RAM is good enough to run just about any Linux distribution out there. And my main Windows machine at the office -- a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM is way more than adequate for desktop use.

As far as the 233 MHz Compaq laptop goes, I'm probably going to bump up the RAM from the current 64 MB to the maximum of 144 MB, but that's pretty much besides the point.

When I first got this laptop (yep, it cost me $15, though I had to shell out $10 for the CD-ROM drive on eBay) I ran into a lot of luck, because it wasonly supposed to have 32 MB of RAM but had double that. It wasn't supposed to have a hard drive, but not only was the hard-drive casing intact, but there was a 3 GB drive inside it. It was loaded with Windows 98 but wouldn't boot. Once I had the CD drive (the incoluded floppy drive doesn't work, and I could get another one for $10, but I really don't need it), I was able to run Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux from live CDs.

At first I loaded Windows 2000 just to see how it ran. Win 2K ran alright, but I'm not in this to run Windows. I had pretty good luck with both Puppy and DSL, but Damn Small Linux is really the more suited of the two for a computer with 64 MB of RAM.

Anyhow, I eventually wanted to try Debian Etch on the Compaq. I've done at least four installs of Debian on this computer, but my first began was the "standard" install, which means no X. After that, I added X and Fluxbox, plus all the apps I though I'd need. ROX-filer, AbiWord, Leafpad, Dillo, Lynx, Elinks, Sylpheed (which didn't work), MtPaint for image editing, and eventually even Iceweasel (aka Debian's renamed Firefox).

I was able to actually get work done on the laptop, which can connect to the outside world only through the Orinoco WaveLAN Silver 802.11b wireless PCMCIA card I had previously bought for This Old Mac (aka my 1996 Powerbook 1400cs). And since the PCMCIA slot in the much-better $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) is inoperable ("busted" is the technical term), the wireless card has remained in the Compaq, which has no Ethernet port or USB capability (though it does have a serial port, parallel printer port, built-in telephone modem and a power supply fully enclosed in the case -- yes, a 120-volt power cord plugs right into the back). They made these Compaq's well -- this one still runs great.

Anyhow, my "roll-your-own-X" Debian install did OK. The display was a bit slow in Abiword, but I had everything running fairly well. Just not well enough.

Since then, I spent quite a bit of time testing DSL 4.0 on the Compaq. Damn Small Linux runs great on this thing, that much I can tell you. And I even ran Puppy 2.13 for a couple of days this week.

But I always had Debian on the hard drive. Just not the original Debian. I had wiped the drive and experimented with Debian Etch and the Xfce desktop install (desktop=xfce as a boot parameter in the installer) as well as Slackware 12.0 without KDE (Xfce and Fluxbox).

Well, Slackware without KDE means you don't even get an office suite, and I still had barely any disk space on the 3 GB drive. (I know, I just need to get a bigger drive ... I know.)

So I went back to Debian Etch, again the Xfce desktop. Surprisingly, this install includes the full OpenOffice suite and I still have about a full GB of space left on the hard drive. I have a separate /home partition with 800 MB in it, and a root partition with 2 GB, with about 150 MB left. The rest of the space is swap -- about 120 MB.

And while on the Gateway laptop (1.2 GHz Celeron CPU) I cannot detect a performance difference between the Xfce and Fluxbox window managers, on this 233 MHz CPU, there's quite a difference. I was about to give up on Etch altogether when I decided to again install AbiWord (I tried Ted ... again ... but the RTF word processor still doesn't work, at least in any Etch install I've had), as well as Fluxbox.

Fluxbox makes it a lot snappier. I still have all the Xfce apps, including Thunar, Mousepad and the great Xfmedia.

In fact, I finally got sound working tonight. I don't think it'll survive a reoot, so I'll have to run this line on startup, but for today it did work:

# modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 mpu_io=0x330

I can't run alsamixer, but I can play an MP3 in Xfmedia, and it sounds great even on the built-in speakers on this 9-year-old laptop.

I didn't think I could get sound working in Debian Etch, but since I did, Etch will definitely live to fight another day on this laptop.

Before I close out this entry, let men emphasize that the Xfce install of Debian is a quirky distro, to be sure. It's nowhere near as complete as Ubuntu's Xfce variant, Xubuntu.

Etch in its Xfce incarnation includes the full OpenOffice suite, but not Abiword or Gnumeric (which would be good substitutes). There's no Synaptic or Update Manager, so I've been doing what Debian aficionados always tell me to do: use Aptitude. I was running aptitude in a terminal for awhile, but it's much easier to just run it at the command line:

# aptitude update
# aptitude upgrade
# aptitude install abiword

Yep, just like apt-get and apt-get install, but Aptitude is supposed to do an even better job with dependencies and it keeps track of your changes to the system, should there be any problem.

I also need to do a dist-upgrade -- without moving away from Debian Etch -- to get a couple of packages that have been held back, including a new kernel image, but I'm holding off until I repartition the drive somewhat to put more space in the root partition (taking it away from /home):

# aptitude dist-upgrade

Final note: The fact that Debian Etch -- a modern, up-to-date Linux distribution -- can run so well in 233 MHz of CPU and 64 MB of RAM is something truly to behold. Again, my thanks to everybody at the Debian Project, past and present, for all they've done for the rest of us.

Post-final note: If Debian continues to perform so well, I just might blog the SCALE 6x convention with this 1999-vintage laptop.

Positively the last note: Iin case I only mentioned it once above, Fluxbox is really flying on this setup ... but the ROX-filer is only a bit faster than Thunar. And since the 1999 Compaq with Debian Etch and Movable Type 4.0 are playing nicely, I think this laptop is definitely going to SCALE 6x ... unless I succeed in getting wireless working over USB on the $0 Laptop (more to come on that).

Sorry, just one more note: Look for a SCALE 6x feature on Click in the days ahead.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I've complained numerous times in the past about the Ted word processor being broken in Debian. On my many Debian installs, I could neither create a new file in Ted nor open an old one.

But on my Gateway Solo 1450 (the $0 Laptop), after doing my big Debian Lenny update yesterday -- which fixed an annoying Nautilus bug by updating to Nautilus 2.20 -- I decided to give Ted another try.

It works.

I can create new files in Ted and open old ones. I tried Ted again on my Compaq Armada 7700dmt (the $15 Laptop), now a Debian Etch machine (with Xfce and, since last night, Fluxbox) that could really benefit from Ted working. No go.

I figured that it was maybe a Lenny-only thing -- some other dependent package got updated and magically made Ted work. Here's Ted's bug status in Debian. I remember trying this "transcoded fonts" solution and having it not work.

So this morning, on my desktop Debian Lenny install, I tried Ted again, and it didn't work. I even installed the transcoded fonts. Nothing.

Yes, I have three Debian installs (two Lenny, one Etch), and Ted works on one (Lenny) of them. That's better than Ted working on none ... but.

I'm wondering if I should even be running Debian on this 233 MHz Pentium II MMX, 64 MB RAM, 3 GB hard-drive laptop. The Compaq performs OK with Puppy Linux and a bit better with Damn Small Linux. And while on my faster, 1.2 GHz laptop I detect almost no difference in response time between Xfce and Fluxbox, on the 233 MHz box, Fluxbox is much snappier, so I take back my previous assertion that Fluxbox doesn't give you much of a performance edge. When you're running really old hardware, Fluxbox can really help.

The problem: I want to have a "full" command-line system in addition to X, and that's harder to do in Puppy or DSL. And I like the fact that Debian and Slackware stay on top of security issues and frequently issue patched packages. And Debian (or Slackware, for that matter) makes it relatively easy to install any console app I want. However, I put a lot of stock in doing as little modification as possible; in my experience, things can get mucked up pretty quickly. And while both Puppy and DSL offer command-line features, neither is a full, modern, updated Debian or Slackware.

And just to provide a little background, Debian, Slackware, Puppy and Damn Small installed just fine on this old Compaq. I can't say the same for Xubuntu, which I did try.

And while I'm mentioning Xubuntu and Debian with Xfce in the same post, let me just say that of the two, Xubuntu is way more ready for prime time. Debian's default Xfce install is missing too many things; I stick by my assertion that Debian is great with the default GNOME, less so in the Xfce and KDE installs that you can do with the Xfce and KDE Debian disks (or desktop= boot parameter in the netinstaller).

Back to the Compaq. Both Puppy and DSL are way better at recognizing and configuring the hardware of this old Compaq laptop. At this point, I'm considering running both Puppy and DSL as live CDs with no OS on the puny hard drive, which would only be used for swap and storage (I could even replace the spinning hard drive with a Compact Flash chip or disk-on-module).

I hate to give up running Debian or Slackware on this laptop -- I've tried both. But when I try to build up the apps on my own, I can never do as well as Puppy and Damn Small Linux -- both of which I've used extensively over the past year and which I value very highly. The people behind Puppy and DSL really know what they're doing.

And while I'm grateful to get Ted running on my Lenny laptop (where I don't really need it), can't Debian just make Ted work everywhere, all the time? Like I've said before, there's probably a good reason that Ubuntu doesn't have Ted in its repository, and I'd say the package not working is a pretty good reason.

I haven't even complained about Ted not showing up where it should in the menus and my not being able to figure out how to put Ted where I want it in GNOME (yes, I used alacarte (here's the Debian bug situation), and no, it didn't let me add menu items (another Lenny bug, perhaps?) -- it almost makes me want to run straight toward Xfce and Fluxbox ... or Ubuntu).

Moral: Debian giveth and taketh away, but it remains damn good.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let's get to it: I have one Web site that I work on infrequently that requires Internet Explorer, but since I barely have to do anything on it, I am free to use IE, or not.

And I waited at least a year to "upgrade" my IE6 to IE7 on the XP box at work. Yeah, it's an upgrade because now IE has tabbed browsing -- a feature Firefox has had for years, and which IE probably would've never added had FF not had it first.

I like IE6 because it was a fast program -- it opened fast and did the rest of its thing fast. And I could use it as an FTP client.

Now that I have IE7, sure there is tabbed browsing, and it looks a little better, but it's way slower than Firefox, and I pretty much only fire up IE for ONE Web site because it's at the top of my IE favorites and the bottom of my FF favorites.

IE loads more slowly, the favorites come up slower -- basically it gets beat by FF in performance by every measure. (I'm running a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM.)

And I can run Firefox in Windows, Linux, BSD and Mac OS X ... and I do (though I'm partial to the Mozilla-derived Epiphany in the GNOME desktop, as well as the Seamonkey browser/e-mail client/HTML editor suite -- also based on Mozilla).

Truth be told, if it really bothered me, I'd try to roll the box back to IE6, if that indeed can be done. Since IE7 installs over your IE6, I think it might be a problem to "go back."

Note: While I can't get the same FTP functionality out of IE7, I have a Windows workaround: Open up My Computer from the Start menu, and type your FTP address in the search bar. The window functions pretty much like IE6 -- it's the same "Explorer"-like interface Windows uses to let you examine your own files, and it does FTP just like IE6. Thanks, Microsoft!

I used to think IE was the best browser for OS X, too -- that final version of IE5 for the Mac was a masterful, innovative application, and I'm sorry Microsoft abandoned it. Safari doesn't have enough critical mass to cut it -- many Web sites don't look so hot in it -- so Firefox is pretty much the browser of record for the Mac, too.

And Mozilla is making hand-over-fist money by getting a cut of the Google searches made through the browser. All it means is more money that Microsoft isn't making.

Hope you're happy, Microsoft!

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in the BBS days, I actually did pay for a shareware program. I used a couple of related programs that allowed for the reading of and writing to QWK packets, which enabled me to download my Internet mail and USENET messages, read them offline, do my replies, new messages and the like, and assemble them for upload. I can't remember the name of the programs, but I actually paid something like $15 for their use, for which I actually received a couple of 5 1/4-inch floppies in the mail.

Now I prefer FOSS -- free, open-source software -- for everything, and in Linux it's easy to get a distribution with thousands of packages -- all free to use and modify as any of us sees fit.

But back in the worlds of Windows and OS X, there are quite a few FOSS programs, but more that are released under the old terms of "shareware" and "freeware." Not being entirely free at all. Some ask for donations, others say that for "commercial" use, you should pay X amount.

The two I use most in Windows:

IrfanView, which is free for personal use, with a donation requested for businesses. I think the amount requested is $10.

EditPadLite can be used "only for private purposes that do not generate any income and by registered not-for-profit organizations ..." There is the non-free program EditPad Pro for "profitable" usage, which costs "only $49.95."

I'll make my confession now: I use both programs for "business use," though I'm never quite sure if such use is, indeed, generating any profit (even though that is way beside the point).

As I say, even though I prefer FOSS, I'm inclined to pay the $10 toll for Irfanview. It's worth way more, seeing as I can't find even one application that can do what it does as well and as fast.

The $49.95 for EditPad Pro? That's too rich for my blood.

Sure I could get my frugal employer to pay, but as they say, I've got other fish to fry ... I should probably just find a FOSS editor that works with Windows and be on my merry-friggin-way.

I do have Gvim installed ... but that seems like too much trouble.

I like using Geany in Linux, and there's a build of that for PC. Maybe I'll give that a try.

But again, I ask: Have you ever paid for shareware?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS -- the distribution's first "long term support" release -- now has a new installer that incorporates some 600 bug and security fixes and makes installation easier, especially on servers.

It's no secret that Canonical, the company that runs Ubuntu, is making a big play both for the desktop and more-lucrative server markets, and a big part of that play is the LTS release. And even though the next Ubuntu release -- 8.04 (due 4/08 ... also known as April 2008) -- is going to be a Long Term Support release, with fixes, patches and the like for three years on the desktop, five years on the server, there's still quite a bit of time left for the current Ubuntu LTS, which will be supported until June 2009 on the desktop and June 2011 on the server.

The new installer -- you don't really need it if you can successfully use the old installer, already have a 6.06 LTS install (like I do) and have done all the updates -- underscores Canonical's commitment to the LTS concept. While the twice-yearly releases of Ubuntu get most of the light and heat in the uber-geek community, there are many who depend on the relative stability of the LTS release to keep their hardware running. That's especially true on servers, where major upgrades every six months are impractical at best and detrimential at worst -- nobody wants to break a system that's been running well.

And the LTS is vital as a counterweight to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server/Desktop, both of which are supported for years on end.

I'd like to say that Debian Stable (currently Etch) and Old Stable (Sarge) are equivalents, but since you can't pin down a date certain for length of their support, there is a bit of an unknown factor there, although once the Stable release goes to Old Stable, you pretty much know that the new Stable release won't give you too many problems.

Sure, many desktop users generally want something more cutting-edge, mainly something like the regular Ubuntu releases, but there are many people -- and many situations -- that warrant hanging on to a Linux installation as long as possible. Over the time I've used Ubuntu and Xubuntu (from 6.06 LTS through 6.10, 7.04 and 7.10), I've seen some parts of the installation improve dramatically, I've seen hardware work better, then worse, and occasionally not at all.

And we all know an individual or organization that hates doing major upgrades, ever. Those coming from a Windows or Macintosh background aren't all used to major OS upgrades. In the case of Windows AND Mac's OS X, major upgrades almost always cost money. $129 for an OS X upgrade might not sound like much, but paying that much every couple of years when your computer runs just fine the way it is? No thanks. That's why I'm still running OS X 10.3 on my Mac. And Windows? I have a disc for Windows 2000, and I'm not about to pay ANYTHING for the privilege of upgrading my sole Windows box (which I boot maybe twice a year) to XP.

And in Linux, just because we can change out distros 10 times a day if we wish, it doesn't mean that we have to -- or should. For people who crave the stability of long-term releases, one thing generally drives upgrade: newer software they need to get their work done, and new hardware that needs new software to run properly.

I did this most recent Ubuntu 6.06 LTS installation for testing purposes, but I've stuck with it because it just works. On this test box, it's flawless. On my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop, it manages the fan as well as 7.10 (i.e. not at all without a cron job; but well with said cron job), but less well than 7.04 (which has the ACPI working with no coding needed). (Note: I'm not currently running Ubuntu at all on the Gateway laptop, which is currently dual-booting the Slackware 11-based Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and Debian Lenny, which I upgraded from the stable Etch.)

Using Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on this test box, sure I'm stuck with Firefox 1.5, OpenOffice 2.0, GMOME 2.14.3 and Evolution 2.6.1, but everything works. And there's nothing I do that I can't do with applications of this "vintage." If I this machine had wireless and it didn't work with 6.06, I might feel differently about LTS, but with the hardware I have now, LTS is a good fit.

So if you're looking for stable, supported releases, especially ones that won't cost you anything, it's nice to have Ubuntu LTS as a choice along with CentOS and Scientific Linux (both free versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux), SUSE, Debian and Slackware.

As far as stable, long-term releases go, I have run CentOS (3.9. 4.2 and 5), Debian (Etch and Lenny) and Slackware (12), as well as Ubuntu LTS, and Ubuntu holds up very well on the desktop in this crowd. It's more flexible, as far as adding software, than CentOS and Slackware -- it doesn't have as many packages as Debian, but it does have plenty -- and the desktop and menus are a bit more tame than Debian's, with a better out-of-the-box experience, especially for inexperienced users.

And the support available from other Ubuntu users is a major component of the distro's success. All the advice may not be of the best quality, but there's just so much of it that you're bound to find the right answer to whatever it is you're asking. Not that the Debian community isn't helpful (I love DebianHELP and the Debian User Forums, but they just don't have the sheer volume of the Ubuntu Forums. Like I said, there's a lot more noise among the Ubuntu people ... but that's the price you pay, I guess.

And since Ubuntu is based on Debian, what you learn in one community is more often than not directly applicable in the other.

Another thing I discovered today: I enjoy reading the Planet Debian blog posts from Debian developers, and I had no idea that there's a Planet Ubuntu as well. Both are more than worth adding to your favorites and checking on from time to time.

Over the past year, I've used both Debian and Ubuntu extensively, and I always say that Debian isn't as "hard" to use as some would make it appear. Nor is Ubuntu a relative cakewalk. Both require, at times, a bit of wading into the muck to make things work. As far as installation goes, Debian's installer -- upon which Ubuntu's "alternate" installer is very closely based, is quite good, and has succeeded for me many more times than Ubuntu's live CD and alternate-CD discs, but Ubuntu works often enough.

What Ubuntu has that Debian lacks is a marketing plan. For some -- especially the average Linux user (read: geek) -- having no marketing plan is, in and of itself, a marketing plan of sorts. Nobody's trying to make Debian "cool," or giving you reasons why you should or shouldn't run it. And while there are a few Debian evangelists out there, and a few for Slackware as well, there's nothing approaching the fervor over Ubuntu.

That might be good, or bad, depending on how you look at it.

A lot of people are running Debian and Slackware -- they're just quieter about it, I guess.

Anyhow, this post has gone on for far too long. All I want to say is that I'm in favor of long-term, "stable" releases with defined periods of support and a smooth upgrade path, and I'm glad that Ubuntu has pretty big foot in this very door.

And I like the fact that 6.06 LTS will be supported for over a year after the next LTS -- 8.04 -- is released a few months from now.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I had one of those days this morning when I go to the ZDNet blogs page and find literally 20 entries worthy of comment. I'm at work for the first time in five days, and I have about three Firefox windows open with between five and 20 tabs each. I open a few other programs, and the whole thing starts turning to sludge.

I have to close everything and reboot.

I could open all of those entries again, plus the six or so on LXer, worthy of blogging on, but let me just say that ZDNet has hit on a very good formula for tech blogs that are heavy on news in many different sectors of the tech world. Windows, Mac, Linux, SAAS, storage, digital cameras, education, project failures, green technology, mobile technology ... and more that I'm forgetting about. Let's just say there's a lot there -- and you will have a pretty good grip on the day's tech news if and when you visit.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

And "not just currently" also means that you can select a distribution and go back in time, following the news all the way back to when Distrowatch first began publishing on the Web, May 31, 2001 -- eons ago in "Linux years."

Whenever I write about a distribution, looking backward on Distrowatch is essential in order to get a picture in my mind of how far that distro has come and when the milestones in its development happened.

Distrowatch sums up the activity for the past seven days in the DistroWatch Weekly, at the bottom of which you will find what Ladislav is keeping track of. It's staggering. For this week, here's the tally:

* Number of all distributions in the database: 557
* Number of all active distributions in the database: 357
* Number of discontinued distributions: 125
* Number of distributions on the waiting list: 218

That's a lot to follow, and without Distrowatch, we'd all be in much worse shape. If there's any justice in the world, Ladislav is making a mint off of this site.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My lack of enthusiasm for the gOS Linux distribution notwithstanding, the Everex Cloudbook -- a light, small and relatively cheap laptop running the aforementioned gOS -- is coming to a Wal-Mart near you on Jan. 25.

It sure looks nice. Main competition? The ASUS EeePc. WARNING: don't click on this last link unless you enjoy annoying Flash-heavy trainwrecks). If you value not being annoyed by Flash, just go to Amazon, which is selling the ASUS for $399.

I thank Linuxdevices.com for the link, and for cluing me in to Everex's own site (I already know about the gOS Web page).

Here's everything Everex has to say about the laptop:

Think CloudBook

Experience the Ultimate in Mobility
9 Inches, 2 pounds, 5 hours of battery life. Surf, email, blog, IM, Skype, compute. Cloud computing makes it simple and easy for everyone.

Based on the latest gOS Rocket operating system, the ultra-mobile Everex PC comes with popular applications from Google, Mozilla, Skype, OpenOffice.org and more.

Find your $399 CloudBook at Walmart.com beginning 1/25/08.

Additional Preinstalled and Linked Software
Mozilla Firefox, gMail, Meebo, Skype, Wikipedia, GIMP, Blogger, YouTube, Xing Movie Player, RythemBox, Faqly, Facebook and OpenOffice.org 2.3 (includes WRITER, IMPRESS, DRAW, CALC, BASE)

Hardware Specifications
1.2GHz, VIA C7®-M Processor ULV, 512MB DDR2 533MHz, SDRAM, 30GB Hard Disk Drive, 7" WVGA TFT Display (800 x 480), VIA UniChrome Pro IGP Graphics, VIA High-Definition Audio, 802.11b/g, (1) 10/100 Ethernet Port, (1) DVI-I Port, (2) USB 2.0 Ports, (1) 4-in1 Media Card Reader, (1) 1.3MP Webcam, (1) Headphone/Line-Out Port, (1) Microphone/Line-In Port, (1) Set of Stereo Speaker, (1) Touchpad, (1) 4-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery

Curious aside: Both the Everex and ASUS notebooks feature an 800 x 480 screen. Hmmmmmm......

Personally, that's not enough screen for me. I'm chafing in 1024 x 768 and positively cramped in 800 x 600. I've read that the Xandros Linux OS in the ASUS has been optimized for the screen size. Given how unpolished gOS is right now, I can't believe they're going to do nearly as well.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I haven't linked to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Desktoplinux.com in awhile, and he had a great opinion piece today about the $150 PCLinuxOS box and other cheap computer solutions called "How low can you go and still run Linux?"

He does a good job of going through the distributions and recommending many low-spec software solutions for hardware of less than current vintage. He mentions many of my favorites, including Damn Small Linux, AntiX (which I haven't tried in awhile ...), Zenwalk, plus another I really should try: the PCLinuxOS "Mini-Me" spin.

He also talks up gOS, which is going from version 1 to 2. I booted into gOS today to see if Synaptic would magically do this upgrade for me. It did not. I got a couple dozen Ubuntu updates, but nothing indicating anything new or improved. And gOS is still as much of a dog as it ever was. On my hardware anyway, Ubuntu runs way better.

And I'm disappointed that Vaughn-Nichols didn't mention Slackware derivatives Vector or Wolvix (the latter being my current favorite distro), or even Slackware itself. He could've also put in a word for Debian and even Ubuntu.

One thing I've learned is that whatever anybody says about how fast or slow a particular Linux distribution is, a little experimentation on your own hardware is in order before settling down with any one setup. I recommend creating a partition for /home, which you can keep intact (and backed up) while rolling different distributions in and out of there. That's what I'm starting to do; my New Year's resolution is "less dual- and triple-booting, more separate /home partitions." See, I'm setting the New Year's resolution bar very low -- then I'll be sure to succeed (unless I'm caught triple-booting anytime soon).

Anyway, I'm still using Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and Debian Lenny on the Gateway Solo 1450. I'm packing the Lenny install with a whole lot of software, including lots of educational stuff for our 4-year-old.

I have Wolvix using a separate /home partition but not Debian. I might change that in the weeks ahead and see if they can share /home. I still can use Puppy 3.00 as a live CD -- I have a pup_save on the Debian partition. For me, this is total, complete stability, the likes of which I haven't seen in the past year.

I still have Debian Etch with Xfce on the Compaq Armada 7770dmt, with Damn Small Linux 4.0 as a live CD. I'm thinking of trying Wolvix Cub on it, but with 64 MB of RAM, it could be a little dicey. What I need to do there is bump up the RAM to 144 MB (maximum of this circa 1999 laptop).

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I knew that Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 had Gslapt -- the graphical front end to the get-slapt package manager for Slackware -- but for some reason I had no idea that it would be useful for updates.

But commenter Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér gently told me that Wolvix's get-slapt/Gslapt indeed points to a Slackware 11 mirror, as well as Wolvix's own repository.

So I opened up Gslapt, updated and upgraded. I didn't add anything, so I can't vouch for get-slapt/Gslapt's ability to satisfy dependencies, but the upgrade went perfectly, and now I've got a fully up-to-date Wolvix distribution.

Already I've said that Wolvix (and perhaps by extension Slackware 11 -- not 12) is the best-performing Slackware-derived distribution I've tried. I've had no configuration problems whatsoever. And a look in Gslapt shows me that there's a huge number of Slackware packages that I could potentially install.

But one of the great things about Wolvix Hunter is that it pretty much has everything I want. It looks great, now has the latest Firefox browser, OpenOffice, MtPaint, the GIMP, AbiWord, a ton of multimedia apps, just as many networking apps, even a bunch of text editors (I'm currently exploring what Bluefish has to offer, but there's also Mousepad, KompoZer, SciTE, medit, vi, GNU nano and JOE). Mail clients? Hunter has Claws Mail and Thunderbird in the GUI, plus mutt at the console.

And the Wolvix Control Panel is one of the best configuration GUIs I've seen.

Never mind that the current versions of Zenwalk and Vector won't run (they'll install, but they won't even give me a shell login; it's probably something having to do with a hardware hangup).

The more I use it, the more I like Wolvix.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A Wired article, seen via BoingBoing, makes an argument for running your wireless router completely open and unencrypted.

Bruce Schneier's argument takes into account security, potential violations of law and ISP policies, as well as the social benefit of both providing free WiFi and using it yourself when needed.

He does emphasize that keeping good security on your computer itself is important, and that the benefits of an open network outweigh the risks:

Whenever I talk or write about my own security setup, the one thing that surprises people -- and attracts the most criticism -- is the fact that I run an open wireless network at home. There's no password. There's no encryption. Anyone with wireless capability who can see my network can use it to access the internet.

To me, it's basic politeness. Providing internet access to guests is kind of like providing heat and electricity, or a hot cup of tea. But to some observers, it's both wrong and dangerous.

...

Security is always a trade-off. I know people who rarely lock their front door, who drive in the rain (and, while using a cellphone) and who talk to strangers. In my opinion, securing my wireless network isn't worth it. And I appreciate everyone else who keeps an open wireless network, including all the coffee shops, bars and libraries I have visited in the past, the Dayton International Airport where I started writing this and the Four Points Sheraton where I finished. You all make the world a better place.

What I'd like to know is what security precautions he is taking to protect his machines on the open network.

I'm far from an expert in this department, and the one guy I do trust in this realm -- George Ou -- thinks WPA encryption is the only way to go. Read some good articles by Mr. Ou:

How to protect your online privacy

A secure Wireless LAN hotspot for anonymous users

Why VPN can’t replace Wi-Fi security

Wireless LAN security myths that won’t die

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 image from Wolvix.org.

After dual-booting Ubuntu (at times 7.04 and 7.10) and Debian (first Etch, then Lenny, then a couple of Lennies for a couple of days) on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), I've said goodbye to Ubuntu for the time being and decided to install the dependable Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (the bigger of the two Wolvix distros) and keep Debian (still Lenny). After "losing" two Ubuntu 7.10 installs to unknown causes -- both times processes began slowing to a crawl -- I thought rolling back to Ubuntu 7.04 would give me something stable.

But the boot process for 7.04 began stalling at something having to do with the CD drive (I turned off "quiet spash" in GRUB so I could see where it was dying). I'm thinking that either my laptop or Ubuntu itself must be somehow cursed. One of the reasons I had Ubuntu installed, besides the fact that it works pretty well (when it does work) with this laptop, is that I can easily get Internet Explorer (via IEs4Linux) on the box. There's one Web site I work on that absolutely requires IE, and my need for such access could grow from minimal to critical at just about any time. That hasn't happened yet. What I'd like to see is updated instructions at IEs4Linux to get it set up on Debian. (As far as Debian goes, IEs4Linux remains stuck in the Sarge era).

But suffering through three dead Ubuntu installs in a row has made me weary. For one thing, I'm going back to separate partitions for /home. That's how I have Wolvix set up. Wolvix can be run as a live CD, a frugal install or a full install. I believe the frugal install saves files in the same way as Knoppix and Damn Small Linux, and I want to be able to access the partition when booting Debian, so I opted for the full install. I don't think Wolvix provides updates in the way Debian, Ubuntu and other "established" distros do. No matter. It runs even better on this laptop than it did on the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (where Wolvix was tested along with another crop of distros in my gOS comparison).

And Wolvix has another thing going for it: It's a Slackware-based distro that actually installs and runs with no trouble. Slackware 12 runs ... but I just can't get the X configuration right (and just about any other Slack-based distro offers a better Xfce experience in terms of applications and tools than Slackware itself, which remains a KDE-focused distro, albeit a faster KDE distro than any other). Both Zenwalk and Vector have been problematic; I can install, but something funky happens during booting and I can't even get to a console. I suppose I could turn off ACPI, AGP, IRQs and the like ... but if Wolvix can just run, why not the others? I probably will try to put Slackware 11 on the box at some point just to see if it's Slackware 12 that's screwing me over (Wolvix is based on Slack 11).

Anyhow, besides the fact that it runs and installs seamlessly, I really like the look of Wolvix, as well as the software mix in Wolvix Hunter (which features heavier apps like Open Office and the GIMP, along with lighter ones such as MtPaint, AbiWord and Dillo). Wolvix ships with Xfce and Fluxbox as window managers. In my recent tests, I've determined that Fluxbox doesn't provide much of a speed advantage over Xfce, and since Xfce has many more features, I'm pretty much running it exclusively, even on the aged $15 Laptop (a 1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt with a 233 MHz processor and 64 MB of RAM). And while the spread between Xfce and Fluxbox isn't as wide as one would think, Xfce does provide significant speed advantages over GNOME and KDE

The Wolvix Control Panel app is excellent. For everything from configuration to installation, Wolvix is way ahead of most of the distributions I've used. While the network-configuration portion of the control panel can be somewhat confusing (it reminds me of Zenwalk), it does work. Before I figured it out, I tried using Slackware's netconfig utility in Wolvix. It doesn't seem to work, though you can go through the paces. At least Wolvix offers a utility that does work. With a distro like the highly touted gOS offering NO network configuration utility (they think everybody has DHCP), I'm thankful for any kind of help. Yes, I can hack the text files that hold Linux's network configuration, but I'd prefer not to. It's just the way I am.

Since I'm constantly switching between a static IP at the office and dynamic IP at home, it's taking me a few extra steps (I love being able to easily switch between network settings in Debian and Ubuntu), but the trade-off is worth if since Wolvix otherwise performs so well.

And the Debian Lenny honeymoon is way, way over for me. I've considered rolling it back to Etch. My Alps touchpad issues are coming back (it's not as perfect as it is in Wolvix, Ubuntu 7.04 or 7.10), and the fact that the new Lenny kernel seemed able to manage the noisy Gateway CPU fan for a day but not thereafter is very troubling. I can continue to use the Etch kernel with Lenny, and I just might do that, but I'm left wondering what's going on and whether or not there's an easier fix.

What I did do, for both Wolvix AND Debian Lenny, was put my fan-managing cron job to work. It basically checks CPU temp every five minutes and, if it goes above 60C, turns the fan on, then turns it off when it goes below 50C. Rather than a shell script and a cron job, I'd just like a single line of code that I could stick in some config file to make this work. I've seen things similar to what I need, but I haven't yet nailed it down for the Gateway Solo 1450.

I did, however, get the fan to stop in Debian from boot (using @reboot as the time element for the entry in crontab for the first instance of the cron job, then following with */5 * * * * to run it every five minutes thereafter. Again, I will detail the Gateway Solo 1450 fan-control solution, step by step, in a future entry.

And while I think a cron job is a sloppy, hackish way to deal with a CPU fan, I've done it now in Puppy, Wolvix and Debian, so I'm pretty much getting used to it. It's notable that in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, I couldn't get the system to allow me to turn the CPU fan on and off, even when sudoing the command. I guess I needed to write to root's crontab, and sudoing can't quite qet you there. At least that's my six-second analysis of the situation. I would've loved to put Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on the laptop -- perhaps it could stick around without self-destructing like 7.10 and 7.04. I seem to remember Ubuntu, at least in the alternate install, offering to create a root account. Maybe if I install with the alternate CD, I can get control of the fan. But do I really want to run Ubuntu 6.06 LTS?

Briefly, here is where Ubuntu is falling down:

$ sudo echo 3 > /proc/acpi/fan/FAN0/state

yields the following:

bash: /proc/acpi/fan/FAN0/state: Permission denied

In every other distro on which I've used this line in my cron job, I need to su to root to run it (Puppy logs you on as root, so it's no problem there). But I can't seem to get it to work in Ubuntu. As it is, 6.06 LTS only has five months of support remaining still has a year and five months of support remaining (I'm no math whiz). Might as well wait until 8.04 comes out as the next LTS (or just stick with CentOS 5). ... Then again, Ubuntu 6.06 is from the Debian Sarge era. I smell another install of MepisLite 3.3 .. or maybe the recently updated -- even though I thought it was dead -- Sarge itself. I could always try to solve my Alps touchpad problems and stop my whining (if only ...).

UPDATE: I figured out how to shut the fan on and off in Ubuntu. Details tomorrow morning.

I did keep Debian Lenny (upgraded from Etch). And I know this is the testing distribution and not stable, but I was alarmed by a bug I discovered in the Nautilus file manager. When in a Nautilus window, if you right-click on a file and try to get its properties, Nautilus crashes, a bug report screen comes up, and then Nautilus relaunches. I filled out the bug report and went to the Web page for the bug. While there are about 500 reports of the same bug, it looks like the bug itself has been "closed." Well, it's not fixed, but the report is closed. It says that the bug goes away in Gnome 2.20.1. I have 2.20.2, and it hasn't gone away. I'm hoping that it will, but if the problem with the Ted word processor being catastrophically broken in both Etch and Lenny is any indication, I won't hold my breath. I guess I don't quite understand how bugs are dealt with.

As I said, I'm considering rolling it back to Etch. I'm also considering an installation of CentOS 5.0, which manages the CPU fan fine. Pros: CentOS, a copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, will be supporting this distro for YEARS; if it works now, it'll get security patches for a long, long time. Cons: it's harder -- at least for me -- to find as much variety in software as there is for Debian, Ubuntu, even Slackware. I'm sure there's plenty of software out there -- and there's nothing stopping me from compiling my own -- but I just couldn't get the hang of adding repositories and GPG keys. Just finding and installing AbiWord was beyond my capabilities. Perhaps a RHEL 5 book would help me; they've got to be out there. Another con: RHEL -- and, by extension , CentOS -- doesn't play MP3s or even Ogg audio files. I'm sure the codecs are out there, but I like the fact that most Linux distros -- whatever philosophy of freedom they espouse -- at least play an MP3. Hell -- I even can play Oggs in Windows Media Player on my XP box.

But what I did do with Lenny today was pack a bunch of software onto it. I threw all the kids' educational stuff I could find, the GIMP (I can't believe Debian doesn't ship with the GIMP), plus digiKam, which the esteemed Carla Schroder recommended to me as the best Linux image editor -- one that also deals with the IPTC caption info that I need to both preserve and edit. (Both the GIMP, as well as Krita and MtPaint not only won't edit the IPTC text embedded in a JPEG by Photoshop, they completely erase the info; NOT NICE.)

By the way, I thought about doing a frugal install of Puppy Linux, but what I did was preserve my pup_save on the Debian partition so I can continue running Puppy from CD (I'm still on 3.00; I've had no problems, so I haven't tried the 3.01 CD yet, although I do have it).

I wish Damn Small Linux would run better on the Gateway, but I'm still running DSL 4.0 on the older $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt). There are new releases of DSL in the 4 series and also in the 3 series. I have to say that I like both of them. I did a lot of work with DSL 3.2 and 3.3, and I'm glad the developers are keeping both going. I am disappointed, however, that the version of Firefox (it's 1.0.something) in DSL does not work with Google Docs. I was hoping to run DSL instead of Debian Etch (the main distro on the Compaq's puny 3 GB hard drive) and gain some speed in Google Docs, but it is not to be. For better or worse, it's another point in Puppy's favor -- Puppy's Seamonkey browser/e-mail/HTML-generator app can handle Google Docs. But now that both Puppy and DSL feature MtPaint, at least they're equal in terms of image editing; for me, MtPaint is the best lightweight image editor for Linux. If it edited the IPTC info, I'd be in geek heaven. Since it doesn't, I remain on geek terra firma.

And I continue to prefer Geany as a text editor over DSL's Beaver (and over Xfce's Mousepad, GNOME's Gedit, anything that comes with KDE ... should I go on?).

I'm having one problem with Puppy: One of the Web sites I work on -- LA.com -- has an obscene amount of Flash animation, and it crashes Seamonkey every time I try to access it. I thought that Firefox might make a difference, so I installed the PET package. But the site crashes Firefox, too. I don't have this problem in any other Linux distro or in Windows or Mac, so something fishy is going on. Yeah, the amount of Flash is obnoxious, but it's not my call.

This entry is way too long, and I didn't even mention my re-flirtation with PC-BSD. After I deleted Ubuntu and before I put Wolvix on the laptop, I decided to do another PC-BSD install. The install itself went fine. I still had that weird graphic blob below the cursor. And I downloaded three PBI files to update my 1.4 release (I didn't feel like burning a new CD, since's I've only got two left in my formerly 100-CD stack). One PBI took it from 1.4 to 1.4.1, the next to 1.4.1.1, and the last to 1.4.1.2. They couldn't do this in a regular software update? Anyway, I couldn't go from 1.4.1.1 to 1.4.1.2 -- it said something about only updating from 1.4.1. And BSD is different enough from Linux that the prospect of adapting my fan-quieting cron job to BSD is and will remain way beyond my capabilities.

So PC-BSD met the same fate as it did the last few times I installed it; it came down quickly. I'm enjoying Wolvix Hunter right now.

So here's where I stand this week with the $0 Laptop: Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and Debian Lenny on the hard drive (Wolvix with its own /home, so I can roll a new distro over it without killing out my files) and Puppy 3.00 as a live CD. But I'm thisclose to slapping Ubuntu 6.06 LTS or CentOS 5.0 in there.

Like many of you, I'm stuck between changing Linux and BSD distributions like underwear and finding something that can serve me for years without it either falling apart or me yearning for something better.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Since Puppy Linux uses local time, I had reset my test box's clock for the now-aborted Thin Puppy Torture Test II (we've had even more power outages lately, and I'm glad to stop where I did but keep writing about Puppy just the same). But now that I'm back in gOS, I needed to reset the clock to UTC. I'm perfectly capable of opening a terminal and using the command line to set the clock, but I can't believe that the casual, new-to-Linux user with gOS has no other way to set the time. No GUI, big problem.

It's just plain wrong. Ubuntu has a GUI time-setting utility. gOS should have one, too.

Already there's no way to set a static IP in gOS except by opening a terminal and either using the command line or editing the relevant configuration files. And I've already complained extensively about gOS' lack of a GUI text editor; it wouldn't have killed them to throw Gedit or Mousepad on the thing. Instead, you have to run nano or Vim from a terminal. I can use both of these editors, although I'm more rusty in vi/Vim than many. But I still prefer to use a GUI editor when working in X -- it's nice to be able to easily copy and paste in X, and I shudder to think of someone who's never seen a terminal program or text editor before in their entire lives having to use xterm and nano, or even worse, vi.

Again, it's sloppy, and it's wrong.

Assuming that everybody has a dynamic IP is one thing, but assuming that the clock will set itself? Unbelievable.

I just did an update on gOS -- 47 packages, and I had hoped that some of these issues would be solved. But not one was. And I've already had X crash once today, and GRUB isn't working so well, either. That could be due to Ubuntu 6.06 LTS not getting the configuration right for gOS (those long Ubuntu disk IDs -- not quite sure what they are or why they're used -- screw it up often). At one point in the boot, I get to a console and hit ctrl-alt-del, at which point the gOS boot continues, finally leading me to the GUI where I can log on.

The average gOS user is NOT dual-booting, so it's not a huge deal, but it's just another example of general messiness (and more of a warning against dual-booting on any critical systems).

But overall, the more I get to know gOS, the less I like it.

Anyhow, if you came here via a search because you're frustrated with gOS, here's how to set the time (this also works in Ubuntu, which can do this with an easy-to-use utility, but if you're a glutton for punishment, by all means do it this way):

Left-click on the desktop and navigate to Applications -- System Tools -- UXterm

UXterm -- gOS' terminal program -- will load when you click on it.

Once you get a prompt ending in $, you must click on the window to make it active (another bug in gOS that's just plain annoying).

The Linux format for setting time and date at the command line is somewhat arcane, but not overly so. This is how to set the time and date for 10:15 a.m. Dec. 27, 2007. Times must be in 24-hour mode; i.e. 1:15 p.m. would be 13:15. You begin using the date command. The 12-digit format for the date command is month (01 to 12) date (01 to 31) hour (00 to 23) minute (00 to 59) and year (generally 2007), Type the following after the $ prompt (and enter your password when asked for it). Don't forget the double-quote marks (not two single quotes, but the shift-quote key):

$ sudo date "122710152007"

Enter your password when needed (as in all sudo commands)

Then you need to set the hardware clock (make sure the double-dashes are spaced properly, which means they need to be attached to the words they proceed):

$ sudo hwclock --systohc --utc

Enter your password again when asked.

To check the clock:

$ date

For the software clock

$ hwclock

For the hardware clock

Both should output the proper date and time:

Thu Dec 27 10:15:00 PST 2007 (or whatever time it happens to be)

Again, users of gOS SHOULD NOT be made to do this. But they have no choice. Personally, I'd slap Ubuntu or Xubuntu on my Everex box ASAP.

gOS sounds like a great idea ... until you actually start using it. At that point you gain a new appreciation for all the work that has gone into such relatively trouble-free LInux distributions as Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware (yes, even Slackware), Red Hat/CentOS, Fedora, Suse, Puppy, Damn Small Linux, PCLinuxOS .. in fact, I could name just about every distribution I've tried over the past year (at least a couple dozen).

Again, if the CEO of Wal-Mart asked me how to clean up this mess, I'd tell him to move the Everex to Ubuntu immediately. The hardware can handle it, and it's ready in a way that gOS most certainly is not.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Tom Gapen, who watches Apple way more closely than I do, tells me that Think Secret regularly breaks news about Apple. And Apple doesn't like not having control over ... just about everything.

But now Think Secret and Apple have come to an "agreement," and the blog will go away.

ZDNet on the Think Secret settlement.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Law & Life: Silicon Valley, by Mark Radcliffe of the huge law firm DLA Piper, looks like a great way to keep up with the legal issues surrounding free, open-source software. I plan to return often.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm writing this review on Google Docs in Firefox while running gOS 1.0.1, the Ubuntu-based distribution that steers users toward Web-based applications whenever possible -- mostly those under the auspices of Google -- and which powers the Everex Linux PC being sold for $199 by the truckful at Wal-Mart.

I'm getting more comfortable with Google Docs all the time, but there are times when you need a traditional text editor. Yet there is no GUI text editor to be found in the gOS distro. There is the entire OpenOffice suite and the GIMP image editor, a smattering of games, Rhythmbox for music and Xine for video, but no stand-alone mail client (you're encouraged by the iconography on the gOS desktop to use Gmail ...). Luckily there is a terminal program, which is named UXterm but looks suspiciously like plain ol' xterm, and with that you can bring up Vim or Nano, but that's pretty much it. Come to think of it, without a terminal in the GUI, and a console text editor, gOS would be in a heap of trouble, so it's good that they included one. But every gOS user's life would be a whole lot easier with a GUI text editor. Since you can add anything in the Ubuntu repositories, holes in gOS are easily filled.

But the more I used the new, green OS, the more I wondered whether the Everex (and everybody else) would be be better off with Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Debian ... or just about anything. While the Everex, with its 1.5 GHz VIA processor and 512 MB of RAM is underpowered when compared to most modern desktops, I regularly run Debian and Ubuntu -- both with GNOME -- and even Slackware with GNOME and Xfce on a machine with similar power but half the memory. And as I found out, the speed and lightness on resources that the Enlightenment window manager promises are just not there.

One thing I do like about gOS -- and this may be a feature of Ubuntu 7.10 for all I know -- is that when you're in a terminal and try to run an application you don't have installed, the terminal outputs what you do need to do to get it.

For instance, I tried to run the Joe editor:

$ joe

and I got the following:

The program 'Joe' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install joe
bash: joe: command not found

Whenever that message comes from, it's a very nice touch and is more than enough to get even a novice user going with apt.

But sheesh, at least give me Leafpad, Mousepad, Gedit ... whatever. Normally I would just add the editor I want, but for this evaluation of gOS, I pledged to stay with Google Docs; that's what they want you to use, so I'll use it. In the past, I've even gone as far as automatically posting a Google Docs item to one of my Blogger blogs, but that feature, in my opinion, is pretty much useless. Why not just write directly in Blogger? And since you can only auto-post from Google Docs to a single blog, the write-to-blog feature won't work for me. However, the post-to-blog feature does work with WordPress and LiveJournal blogs, plus a few others I've never heard of. That makes it more useful, but what I need is for Google Docs to act as more of a "dashboard" app for my various blogs -- I'd like to be able to publish from here to more than one blog (actually about six, and therein lies my sickness).

Update: I was all set to complain about Google Docs' browser-printing problem, but I just printed a document from Docs on my Windows PC, and what Docs did was turn my document into a great-looking PDF, which opened in Adobe Reader and was easily printed on paper. I'm not sure how seamless this integration is in Linux systems, but I plan to find out soon. Printing on actual paper seemed like the weak link in the whole Google Docs scheme, but it looks like they have that problem solved very well -- I may never use a traditional word processor again (especially if the promised offline extension of Docs is ever released).

Google Docs is a whole lot better than many people let on. I never need to insert tables or pictures into my documents. I write stuff. Stuff with words, and if I need to insert photos, I'm generally already in a blog post or on a printed page that I'm dealing with in a publishing program that is a whole lot bigger and more complicated than Google Docs. But Docs CAN insert images, tables, links and more. And it's not a bad HTML generator either. You can look at the HTML source at any time and copy/paste it into your Web content.

For the everyday writer of articles for publication, Google Docs is pretty kick-ass. When not connected to the Internet, or for those who don't want Google to see their documents, there's always the option of using OpenOffice, though I think AbiWord and Gnumeric are more in keeping with the lightness touted by gOS.

Getting back to gOS ... almost: Even though this is supposed to be about gOS, the bare-bones Linux distro relies heavily on the Firefox browser and links to various Web tools like GMail, Google Docs, Wikipedia (see, they're not all Google), Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, Google Maps and Picasa. So any review of gOS must take heavily into account the browser experience.

Since I work on four or five separate computers a day, working with docs online and using Web-based (or IMAP-delivered) e-mail is a must for me. I could add a standalone mail client to gOS as easily as I can with any Ubuntu or Debian system, but for now I won't. Even so, a user with gOS can pretty much make it do anything they could do on Ubuntu. Or they could wipe gOS from the drive and replace it ... or perhaps dual-boot.

One of the most attractive things about gOS and the Everex PC is that the combination promises full power management, making for a more green PC than most anything else out there on the desktop, so if you have the Everex PC, making gOS work the way you want it becomes a more attractive option. Hopefully Linux, as it matures even further, will include better power management for all motherboards.

More mail: I'm divided about the use of mail clients anyway. Most of the time, a Web portal is fine for me, especially if the entire session takes place in a secure connection (thanks, DSL Extreme). And I suspect that the vast majority of computer users have never heard of a mail client -- they barely know what Outlook is -- and have been accessing e-mail through the browser as long as they've had e-mail access, so gOS is going in the right direction there.

Gmail tip: To keep your Gmail session secure throughout, start out in your browser with the following:

https://mail.google.com

Note the "s" for a secure connection. You can also type https://gmail.com. Unsecure e-mail, particularly over unencrypted wireless connections, is a real problem, and it makes me reluctant to use Yahoo Mail because only the password is sent over a secure connection. The rest of your e-mail is right out there for others to intercept and use for ill.

Speaking about the greenish gOS desktop, the Enlightenment window manager isn't that bad. I think gOS could've been done just as well with Xfce -- maybe even better -- but I know that some Enlightenment developers are behind the project, and I'm always happy to see any desktop environment taken to the next level. At least it sets gOS apart from the dozen or so Xfce-based distros out there. But speedy, it's not.

One of the first things I did in gOS was add some virtual desktops; it's one of the best features that Windows doesn't offer, and I think the gOS people should ship the OS with more than a single desktop showing. I like the traditional four, so I left-clicked on the mouse and went to Desktop -- Virtual -- Configure Virtual Desktops. I could've added more than four, but I didn't. Switching between desktops is done with the usual ctrl-alt-arrow keys. You can't tell in gOS which desktop you're on, but at least they're there.

One feature I turned on in Enlightenment that I've never seen before in any other window manager (although I'm pretty sure it's there in most window managers) is the ability to switch or "flip" screens by moving the mouse pointer to the left or right edge of the screen, effectively scrolling to the next desktop. It's kind of neat. I don't know if I need it (I discovered it by accident after forgetting that I set it), but it may just be something that gOS users will grow to like. I had to turn the feature off because I kept triggering it by accident -- I like my Firefox windows to fill up the screen, and more than once I found myself on the next desktop when I didn't want to be there just yet. Ctrl-alt-arrow is good enough for me. But if you like the "flip screen" feature, you can make it look even more groovy with "animated flip."

One successful install, one less so: Both my regular test box (the VIA C3 Samuel-based Maxspeed Maxterm converted thin client) and the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) are very Ubuntu friendly, meaning installs of Ubuntu-based distros generally go well on both. gOS installed like a champ on the thin client, but it won't install at all on the Gateway. On the latter, the live CD environment comes up fine (and the graphics are much snappier than on the Maxspeed), but when I do the install, I enter all the relevant information, and about six seconds into the actual install, the program crashes -- and that's it. Since I recently did an install of Ubuntu 7.10 on this very same laptop, it's curious, indeed, that gOS will not install. It's regretful, but at least I got gOS on one box. Hopefully the bug, whatever it is, will be squashed in future editions of gOS.

Potential problem: I'm running top in a terminal window on one of my four desktops, and it consistently shows Enlightenment using 9 percent to 12 percent of my CPU and 12 percent of my 256 MB of memory ... at idle. That's not exactly light. I'll have to go back to Ubuntu and Xubuntu and see how much CPU and memory GNOME and Xfce take up. I don't think it's this much. That said, gOS seems to be running as well as anything else, but not radically better. I'm able to switch windows in Firefox fairly quickly and do the same with my virtual desktops. Again, I'd have a better feel for how gOS compares if I could install it on my Gateway laptop.

So I decided to install the next distro I'm testing -- Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0. In case you haven't heard of Wolvix, it's a live CD based on Slackware that runs the Xfce and Fluxbox window managers. It can be used as a live CD, or put on the hard drive as a frugal install or traditional hard drive install. I opted for the traditional hard drive install.

The Wolvix installation process is excellent. I already had partitions set up, but the Wolvix installer offered to start up Gparted and make some or modify those I have. I also had the option of designating separate partitions for /home and other directories (I declined but would have configured a separate /home if I planned to use Wolvix long-term). The installer also gave me the option of booting Wolvix at the console or in a GUI (I chose the GUI), and it offered to put GRUB on the master boot record (I accepted). It also detected gOS, which allowed me to dual-boot. If whatever I install on the remaining partition messes up GRUB, I can easily reinstall it from Wolvix without having to geek out too much. (Note: Wolvix didn't do so well on GRUB, I instead used the gOS install disk to reinstall GRUB, and it recognized gOS perfectly).

I ran top in a terminal in Wolvix Hunter running Xfce, and at idle, with the Firefox window open on another screen (just like in gOS), the top running process was X at between 2 and 4.6 percent CPU and 7.6 percent memory. In short, a whole lot lighter than Enlightenment.

Maybe Wolvix isn't the best distro with which to compare gOS, but the Xfce vs. Enlightenment comparison is more than valid. Is it possible that the Everex PC could perform better with Xubuntu instead of gOS? (The answer is yes.)

Anyway, since Wolvix includes Fluxbox, I decided to go further and check top again. I opened Firefox, opened this document, switched to another window, opened a terminal and ran top. X was still the top running process and veered between 0.3 percent and 1.7 percent of CPU, and 6.1 percent of memory. Again, much better than Enlightenment in gOS.

To provide an even clearer picture of the performance of gOS and Enlightenment, I tested the load times of Firefox and OpenOffice Writer in a variety of Linux distributions and window managers. (Note: Slackware 12 doesn't include OpenOffice, and I haven't bothered to add it, so times are provided for KOffice's KWord -- which is generally quicker to load than OO). Load times were checked twice for each setup, since the second load of each of these two applications often happens much more quickly than the first.

Other variables that may have affected the times: Ubuntu 6.06 uses Firefox 1.5. All others used variants of Firefox 2.0. OpenOffice versions ranged from 2.0 in Ubuntu 6.06 to 2.3 in gOS.

The distros and window managers tested on the Maxspeed converted thin client (1 GHz VIA C3 processor, ECS eveM motherboard, 256 MB RAM) were:

gOS 1.0.1 (Enlightenment)
Ubuntu 6.0.6 LTS (GNOME)
Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (Xfce and Fluxbox)
Slackware 12 (KDE, Xfce and Fluxbox)
Ubuntu 7.04 (GNOME)
Xubuntu 7.04 (Xfce)
Debian 4.0 Etch (Xfce)

To sum up before the results are given, gOS was the slowest of the bunch -- even slower than Slackware under KDE -- and also slower than Ubuntu. It may be surprising, but Ubuntu with GNOME compares somewhat favorably to other distros running Xfce; you don't lose much speed by running GNOME as opposed to Xfce. Slackware and Debian with Xfce were another story; both were extremely fast when it came to loading applications. I didn't include Debian Etch with GNOME in the test because I didn't have it installed on one of the thin client's drives. But Debian compared very well to Slackware when both used the Xfce desktop environment. Curiously, Xubuntu -- Ubuntu's Xfce variant -- was slower than Debian with Xfce; in fact (as I already mentioned), Xubuntu didn't provide much of a speed advantage over regular Ubuntu.

I expected Wolvix to be the fastest, or at least as fast as Slackware. but it was buried by Slack. Not surprisingly, when Xfce was chosen for the window manager instead of KDE, Slackware was the undisputed winner, with a first-load time for Firefox of 8 seconds. That said, Ubuntu was slower, but not overly much, so if you prefer Ubuntu and GNOME to Slackware and Xfce, it's not like night and day in terms of application load time; it's more like noon and 2:30 p.m. -- a difference, but not so much as to make the slower of the two unusable.

The reason I even did this test was that from a "desktop feel" standpoint on my underpowered test box, gOS lacked the quickness of most of the other distros, including the Dapper and Feisty versions of Ubuntu.

And while Ubuntu has made some performance gains between 6.06 and 7.04, compatibility with hardware and desire for (or lack of interest in) more up-to-date apps should govern users' choice of the LTS vs. regular releases of the distro. For instance, on the converted thin client, hardware recognition is great in both versions, but on my Gateway laptop, ACPI and touchpad configuration work better in 7.10, and almost as well in 7.04. But ACPI management of the CPU fan only works with the kernel provided in 7.04.

Another aside: I saw practically no difference in application load times between Xfce and Fluxbox. So if you prefer Fluxbox, go ahead and use it, but you won't be gaining any performance over Xfce, at least in 256 MB of RAM. On the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), which only has 64 MB of RAM, I ran Debian with Fluxbox for months, and it runs just as well now that I have Xfce on it. And the superior tools included in Xfce put it ahead of Fluxbox when it comes to usability on the desktop.

The Slackware KDE vs. Slackware Xfce numbers are the most startling; using Slack with Xfce will save considerable load time on slower systems.

On "modern" PCs, however, much of this is moot. With a dual-core processor and 512 MB to 1 GB of RAM, everything loads so quickly that for desktop use, personal preference for one window manager or another holds more sway than load times, which will be acceptably short in just about any desktop environment. And for those who like all the bells and widgets of KDE, if you have enough power to enjoy them, it's probably worth it. Just Konqueror alone, with its ability to function as a Web browser, file manager, file viewer, FTP client and configuration portal, makes KDE very attractive. If only I could get X configured properly in Slackware on my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop.

Here are the test results:

gOS 1.0.1 (Enlightenment)
Firefox 2.0.0.10 1st load: 30 sec.
                 2nd load: 15 sec.
OpenOffice 2.3   1st load: 56 sec.
                 2nd load: 21 sec.  

Ubuntu 6.06 (GNOME)
Firefox 1.5.0.13 1st load: 21 sec.
                 2nd load: 10 sec.
Open Office 2.0  1st load: 44 sec.
                 2nd load: 26 sec.

Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.6 1st load: 19 sec.
                2nd load: 12 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2  1st load: 37 sec.
                2nd load: 23 sec.

Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (Fluxbox)
Firefox 2.0.0.6 1st load: 22 sec.
                2nd load: 12 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2  1st load: 42 sec.
                2nd load: 23 sec.

Slackware 12 (KDE)
Firefox 2.0.0.8 1st load: 24 sec.
                2nd load: 14 sec.
KOffice         1st load: 19 sec.
                2nd load: 16 sec.

Slackware 12 (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.8 1st load:  8 sec.
                2nd load:  8 sec.
KOffice         1st load: 15 sec.
                2nd load: 13 sec.

Slackware 12 (Fluxbox)
Firefox 2.0.0.8  1st load: 9 sec.
                 2nd load: 9 sec.
Koffice         1st load: 15 sec.
                2nd load: 13 sec.

Xubuntu 7.04 (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.10 1st load: 18 sec.
                 2nd load:  9 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2   1st load: 36 sec.
                 2nd load: 22 sec.

Ubuntu 7.04 (GNOME)
Firefox 2.0.0.10 1st load: 17 sec.
                 2nd load: 10 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2   1st load: 40 sec.
                 2nd load: 18 sec.

Debian 4.0 Etch (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.8  1st load: 10 sec.
                 2nd load: 10 sec.
Open Office 2.0  1st load: 17 sec.
                 2nd load: 17 sec.

As I say above the biggest thing to emerge is the speed advantage of Slackware and Debian, especially with Xfce. The relative slowness of Slackware 11-based Wolvix was puzzling. And while I didn't have OpenOffice installed in Slackware, and KOffice is pretty much a quicker program, I included its load numbers for comparison's sake. I did first and second loads of all apps because the second load is often -- but not always -- much quicker. Times for office suites were the number of seconds it took to open up a new OO Writer or KWord document.

While I didn't expect Debian to be slow, I also didn't expect it to be so comparable to Slackware. That's good news for Debian users.

But the biggest thing to come out of this test is that standard Ubuntu pretty much crushes gOS. The new, hot distro may be green in color, but it's incomplete and slow.

That said, the idea of doing most work in the browser and drawing on Web-based portals for not just e-mail and "social networking" purposes, but also document creation, photo editing and storage is becoming more attractive and viable all the time. In this realm, gOS is making a big "idea" contribution to the OS game, but in terms of sheer performance, polish and basic tools, it has a long way to go.

The average user -- even newbies -- would be better off with Ubuntu or Xubuntu on the Everex. And as these tests show, the Xfce desktop environment, in most instances, provides more bang for your MHz.

I wanted gOS to be great, but when it comes to Linux and BSD distros, greatness only comes with time and painstaking effort. After all the hype over the gOS-Everex-Wal-Mart effort -- some of it even generated by yours truly -- I didn't expect to see gOS beaten by every single established distro I threw at it. I don't usually do extensive time tests, but the sludginess of gOS drove me to it.

And while I expected Slackware and Debian to acquit themselves well, I wasn't prepared for out-of-the-box Ubuntu to best gOS. It wouldn't make as great a story -- "Wal-Mart chooses Ubuntu" -- but it would be way better for those buying the $199 box from the world's largest retailer.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

My Ubuntu 7.10 Feisty install is still working great. I'm very reluctant to do the Gutsy upgrade because of all the problems I had with it on the $0 Laptop. And while I appreciated the full control I had over the "touchy" Alps touchpad and it's sometimes annoying tap-to-click function, I've grown to like tapping-to-click and really don't see anything in Gutsy, other than that, that I can't get/do in Feisty.

And since non-LTS releases from Ubuntu get 18 months of support, I can easily make it to the next LTS (long-term support) release in April 2008. I could also go beyond that, all the way to October 2008, without upgrading.

I'll might buckle before then and give Gutsy another try, but I'm more likely to wait until the 8.04 LTS release, which has a three-year lifespan in the Ubuntu world.

Still, running Ubuntu 6.06 LTS -- which is scheduled to receive security updates through June 2009 -- is a VERY conservative thing to do. I hope the 8.04 LTS release starts out rock solid and remains so for its projected life.

That said, I wonder how long Debian Etch (which was released in April 2007) will be supported. Debian Sarge was released in June 2005, so it was less than two years between Sarge and Etch as stable releases.

I guess the question remains: How long should the lifespan be of a Linux install? The question would be even more relevant if I wasn't dual- and triple-booting. (Right now I'm back to dual-booting because I can't get GRUB to boot Slackware 12).

Again, I vowed to stop dual-booting and instead mantain separate /home partitions with single-boot installs. That way I could theoretically swap distros in and out but keep my files (backed up elsewhere, of course) on the /home partition in between installs.

I continue to have the feeling that when the hardware stays the same, the makers of Linux distributions (and the Linux kernel) concentrate their efforts on the newest computers, often leaving older ones behind. This is problematic for many reasons, the most important being that users of old computers often turn to Linux when the latest version of Windows a) won't run or b) costs money they don't want to spend. Just telling the new Linux user that they might have to go through a half-dozen or more distros before finding the best Linux for their box is a daunting prospect.

But once you get through the first half-dozen installs. ... It is a bit of a sickness, isn't it?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My gOS review prompted a thorough investigation of what, exactly, is faster than the billed-as-fast distro's Enlightenment window manager (so far just about everything), and that led me to explore Xfce-based Linux distributions in general, and on the $15 Laptop in particular.

The $15 Laptop is a Compaq Armada 7770dmt, circa 1999, with a Pentium II MMX processor at 233 MHz, 64 MB of RAM, a CD-ROM drive and an Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA wireless card as its only networking device.

Here's the scorecard (not all Xfce):

Puppy runs pretty well. I had one fixable glitch: Puppy doesn't configure the Orinoco wireless card if it's plugged in before booting. A quick Web search clued me in to this. The solution is to boot puppy, then plug in the Orinoco PCMCIA card and then configure it. Worked immediately. Also, the parameters generated by Puppy 2.13's Xorg configuration helped me get X properly configured in other distributions (Debian, Zenwalk). I had to use Xvesa in Puppy 3.00, but maybe using 2.13's xorg.conf will fix that problem (or I can just run Xvesa, which Damn Small Linux and Slackware do by default).

Puppy update: Making a pup_save file in 2.13 and upgrading to 3.00 resulted in a non-working X configuration. I couldn't even ctrl-alt-backspace out of it.

Damn Small Linux 4.0 runs great. It's probably the best choice for this particular system. And I can't say enough about how nice the new JWM-based DSL desktop is. I had a DSL 4.0 review in the early stages, but I inadvertently erased it in one of my many installs. ... One thing I recommend: keep Knoppix, DSL and Puppy live CDs around and try all of them on every PC you come across.

The Xfce install of Debian Etch (type tasks=xfce-desktop at the boot prompt of the netinstall disc) is very promising. Debian and Slackware, under Xfce, blew away everything in my lengthy speed test, and Debian is just so damn easy to use. But ... the Xfce install is VERY barebones. No Synaptic, no network manager, pretty much none of the things that Zenwalk or Xubuntu bring to Xfce. I really don't need all that stuff, and as I say, Debian with Xfce is damn fast. I'm very comfortable with apt, and with a wireless card, it's not like I have a lot of heavy network configuration work to do ... I might stick with it. And the X configuration was fine ... once I booted Puppy 2.13 and tweaked Debian's xorg.conf appropriately (hint: use one of Puppy's two drive-mounting tools to get at /etc/X11/xorg.conf on your Debian install).

Zenwalk, as mentioned above, makes Xfce easier to tweak. The ZenPanel, in my opinion, is the "killer app" among Xfce-based distros. That said, I couldn't seem to turn the frame-buffer feature off, and my console sessions were, shall we say, wavy. Once I got X working (again, with Puppy's help), the menus didn't seem as responsive as Debian's.

I tried Xubuntu. I had an alternate install disk for 6.10 lying around, and the install wouldn't complete. Yes, I checked the CD's integrity. It just didn't want to go all the way.

Slackware 12. I'm installing it now. I only have a 3 GB drive.-- otherwise I'd just do a full GNOME install of Debian and then add xfce-desktop after the fact -- and so in Slackware I opted not to install KDE. The install went pretty well. Without KDE checked off, I barely had any apps, although I did get Seamonkey and Thunderbird in addition to Firefox. Debian, in contrast, has Iceweasel (renamed but otherwise exactly the same as Firefox) but no mail client at all. Not that it would be a problem to add one to Debian. In this Slack install, there isn't any office software. I'd have to add Abiword and maybe OpenOffice ... except that I'm getting very close to running out of disk space. I could probably start removing packages and steal some space back, though. On my other Slackware 12 install, I used the Abiword package from Robby's Slackware Packages, with all dependencies also on Robby's site, and that worked great. He also has OpenOffice.

I was surprised at how great OO Writer worked in the Debian Xfce install. Remember, this is 64 MB of RAM and a 233 MHz CPU. I could probably get rid of the other OO apps that I never use (just about all the rest).

And as far as video configuration go, Slackware 12 was one of the few to correctly set the X parameters for the Compaq. I still had the wavy framebuffer console (gotta figure out how to turn that off), but X works fine.

And now that I figured out how to make Puppy's wireless work (the plug-the-card-in-after-booting trick), I have both of my favorite live CDs (Puppy and DSL) at my disposal for this laptop.

I get the funny feeling I'm going to end up with Debian. I like the idea of being able to keep the same setup for a long, long time, updating it easily with apt. Slackware would last longer, since support seems to go on and on. I could also go back to having a separate /home partition to make swapping out distros easier if and when I start to pile some files into this thing.

The better thing to do would be to bite the bullet and get a reasonably sized hard drive and dual- or triple-boot for awhile. And I've got to max out the memory. It might cost too much to get the 1 GB of PC-133 laptop memory for the $0 Laptop (old memory costs between double and triple what new memory costs ... so buy it NOW people), but the 128 MB of EDO laptop RAM for the $15 Laptop will only set me back a few bucks.

But I can see ending up with Etch on the hard drive, augmented by DSL and/or Puppy as live CDs.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While my answer is yes, others think differently, including this guy from InformationWeek.

Here are the first two paragraphs:

It is inarguably accurate to note that, while Linux is a success on the server side--Apache on Linux runs more Web sites than Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s ISS, though the latter is gaining--the open-source operating system has been a dismal failure on the desktop. There are at least seven solid reasons, which I'll detail below, why Linux hasn't moved the needle beyond a single-digit desktop market share since it hit the scene in 1991, and never will.

Desktop Linux's failure to launch is all the more mystifying when you consider that it's hard to think of any technology which has been backed by such an enthusiastic and committed group of supporters. Unfortunately, that boost has largely backfired.

On the contrary, I think the relative simplicity, sheer usability and security, as well as cost and lack of vendor lock-in will all work to slowly push more and more businesses and home users into the Linux camp.

With free, open-source applications like Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, the GIMP and others being ported to Windows and Mac architectures, users who have never worked on anything but a closed, proprietary operating system will be using FOSS for the first time, and that's a small step over to making the rest of their system FOSS as well.

And while projects like Ubuntu are doing so much to bring Linux to the more "casual" user, I predict that an easier-than-ever Linux (call it "Linux for Dummies," if you'd like), be it Ubuntu or some other yet-to-be released distro, will cause a major stir in the computer world and shift a sizable percentage of desktops away from Windows and to free, open solutions.

And as I've also said before, Linux is right now the most likely candidate, but the next popular OS could very well be something we've never seen -- a new project cooking in somebody's head that attacks the problem of the personal computer operating system in a whole new way.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 8:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via Denny's Blog, I found a link to bsdtalk, which features podcasts on ... BSD. I'm especially interested in this interview with Richard Stallman, who created the GNU project. The mp3 link is only a preface to the actual interview, which Stallman requested be distributed in an open-source, non-proprietary format only.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Go here for a great list of traditional (read: expensive) commercial software and the free, open-source programs you can use instead. The Webi page includes links to the home pages of all the FOSS (free, open-source software) programs it cites.

Two I plan to try are Cinepaint and Paint.NET, both image editors.

Many of my favorite apps are missing -- but the fact that there are enough FOSS apps that you can miss a bunch and still have a credible list is a very good thing.

Still, what's nice about this list is that it includes apps for Mac, Windows and Linux. I've always said that the best way to experience open-source is to do it on the OS you already know. Then the transition to a free, open-source OS like Linux will not be so daunting.

Free, open-source software is important for many reasons, but one of the biggest for me is that it enables me to compute with a clear conscience. Let's be real, most of us are using PCs with pirated software. Even if Microsoft Office, Photoshop and what have you are made by big corporations who charge many hundreds of dollars for their products, that's still no justification for stealing them. I feel a lot better using software that's meant to be free -- and freely modified, as are all FOSS programs.

And remember, you can't have freedom without "free" in the first place.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The folks who are developing gOS -- the Ubuntu-derived Linux distribution for the $199 Everex PC being sold at Wal-Mart -- have a few things to fix.

It's very clear that gOS and the Everex are meant for home use with an Ethernet connection. I haven't tried it with wireless since I don't have a wireless-capable box that it would work on, but I do have to set wired static IP address regularly at the Daily News.

But in gOS, there's no GUI or text-based utility for network configuration.

Not a good thing.

But since I've set a static IP at the console about a dozen times lately, I'm growing accustomed to it. Will the new-to-Linux user be able to do this? Or want to? Hell no.

At any rate, if you need to configure a static IP in gOS 1.0.1, here's how. Start with this n.great Ubuntu Geek explanation.

I usually do the commands individually, but editing these two configuration files is a better way, I think:

You need to use a terminal window and text editor. And since root is not enabled in Ubuntu, you also need the sudo command to invoke rootly privileges. Vi is always available, but most systems -- Ubuntu and gOS included -- also offer nano. Remember, in nano you save your file by hitting F3 and then Enter. To exit nano, hit CTRL-x.

(I tend to use nano because it's easier than vi, and if I spent six hours a day at the console, I'd probably use vi, but since I don't, nano matches the way I work in a GUI that much more.)

Back to the configuration. First edit /etc/network/interfaces:

To open a terminal in gOS, right-click with the mouse and go to Applications - System Tools - UXterm

That opens a terminal window.

At the $ prompt (it may consist of different words but will end in $) type:

ubuntu@Ubuntu:~$ sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

Find your network interface. If you've ever configured an IP address in Linux before with a GUI interface, you probably know what your interface is called. My Ethernet interface is eth0. Chances are yours is, too, but it may be different.

In gOS, go to this part of the file:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Comment out the second line by putting a # in front of it. That makes your system "ignore" the line. You can always remove the # sign later and comment out the OTHER lines if you need to change back to a dynamic IP (the kind you usually have with a home DSL modem).

auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp

Now add a new line after the commented-out line (the one with the #) and add the information for your static IP connection, which you might know from previous configurations, your ISP (if you have a static IP connection, of course) or from the geek who administers your network. Remember, these numbers are for demonstration purposes; add the numbers provided to you by your network administrator (or which you already know), or it won't work:

auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.9.200.200
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.9.200.255
gateway 192.9.200.254

(Note: the original tutorial from which I adapted this calls for a "network" address in the configuration. That's a parameter I don't need, so I didn't include it here. Also, the "broadcast" address might not be needed, either, but in my case I know it, so I included it here. Your configuration may vary, but this is definitely the place it lives in Debian, Ubuntu and all those distros derived from them).

We still have one thing to do: setting the nameservers.

It's in another configuration file -- /etc/resolv.conf -- that we can access from the terminal with a text editor:

ubuntu@Ubuntu:~$ sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

I don't seem to need a search address, but it you have it, you can put it in the file along with the addresses of your DNS servers. Add these lines to /etc/resolv.conf:

search search.com
nameserver 192.9.200.7
nameserver 192.9.200.4

Save the file (F3 and Enter in nano) and exit (CTRL-x).

Then restart your network:

ubuntu@Ubuntu:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

If you need more information (and who doesn't?), here's a great tutorial -- probably better than this one -- on how to take a Ubuntu box from dynamic IP to static IP. For more complicated setups, this page may help. Hey, that nixCraft site is pretty good.

Editorial commentary: Ubuntu has a great utility that lets you configure dynamic or static IPs and quickly switch between them -- say if you have a laptop and use it at home and at work (like I do). Why gOS doesn't have this utility (or why I can't seem to find it) is beyond me. The developers should add it -- or something even easier to work with -- at the earliest opportunity. I know "real geeks" always configure their networking from the command line, but nobody should have to, especially in a distribution that's meant for first-time Linux users who aren't necessarily technically savvy. I know that Windows doesn't make configuring a static IP any easier than your average Linux distro, but a GUI app like those in Ubuntu or Debian, or the great netconfig utility in Slackware is a MUST. All you really need to do is add in the network configuration utility from Ubuntu. Just get it done, gOS people.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I won't begin to say that I know what the hell cloud computing really is. It has something to do with huge, centralized data centers with virtualization software that enables virtual servers (notice how I used the word "virtual" pretty much twice -- and now three times? I'm at a loss) to exist in said "cloud," with their virtual (there's that word again) presence available for lease -- and for use -- by faraway customers.

Anyway, I've heard that Amazon -- yep, the books-and-everything-else-including-the-kitchen-sink seller -- is heavily involved. Google's also a player (that's a gimmie, I know).

Well, now IBM is getting into the cloud game. And according to ZDNet, that means it's going corporate, since IBM holds a lot of sway in big-business circles.

As I understand it, you rent CPU time from the cloud, and in many cases, you can specify your OS, say Red Hat, Solaris, or what have you. And you get a virtual server to do your bidding, with a bunch of techs far away to take care of everything from maintenance (and power requirements, cooling, security, etc.).

Time to get educated on cloud computing.

From ZDNet:
Google CEO’s new paradigm: ‘cloud computing and advertising go hand-in-hand’
IBM, Google fund cloud computing teaching techniques
Beware: Google cloud platform exposed
(Have I mentioned recently how great ZDNet is?)

But a better place to start (especially for all things tech) is Wikipedia:

Cloud computing is a popular phrase that is shorthand for applications that were developed to be rich Internet applications that run on the Internet (or "cloud"). In the cloud computing paradigm, software that is traditionally installed on personal computers is shifted or extended to be accessible via the Internet. These "cloud applications" or "cloud apps" utilize massive data centers and powerful servers that host web applications and web services. They can be accessed by anyone with a suitable Internet connection and a standard web browser.

The architecture behind cloud computing is a massive network of "cloud servers" interconnected as if in a grid running in parallel, sometimes using the technique of virtualization to maximize computing power per server.

Red Hat partners with Amazon on cloud computing:

Cloud computing with Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a web-scale virtual computing environment powered by Amazon Web Services. It provides everything needed to develop and host applications: compute capacity, bandwidth, storage, and the leading open source operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Cloud computing changes the economics of IT by enabling you to pay only for the capacity that you actually use. Compute capacity can be scaled up or down on demand to accommodate changing workloads and business requirements. Red Hat Enterprise Linux for cloud computing makes it easy to develop, deploy, and manage your new and existing applications in a virtual computing environment.

So how much does it cost? Here's the Red Hat/Amazon deal:

Available at a starting price of $19/month per customer plus $0.21 per hour for every deployed server, plus additional bandwidth and storage fees.

So how does this differ from renting a remote server, or space on said server? It's the virtualization. You, in effect, get your own server, even though it's not really there ... but in the cloud.

Prediction: This is gonna be HUGE.

More from Red Hat, and info on Amazon's cloud service.

Here's part of Amazon's pitch:

Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazon's scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume. Compare this with the significant up-front expenditures traditionally required to purchase and maintain hardware, either in-house or hosted. This frees you from many of the complexities of capacity planning, transforms what are commonly large fixed costs into much smaller variable costs, and removes the need to over-buy "safety net" capacity to handle periodic traffic spikes.

For those who want to go deep, here's Amazon's documentation on the EC2 Cloud.

And since I write these entries as a stream of consciousness, here's Wired on cloud computing: The Information Factories (from Wired). Most of the article's focus is on power -- electrical power -- and how much a huge data center like Google's needs, and where to get it.

The New York Times (password required, but you should just bite the bullet and get one):

Google and I.B.M. Join in ‘Cloud Computing’ Research
I.B.M. to Push ‘Cloud Computing,’ Using Data From Afar

And last, not least, but wacky enough, the Times of London's everyman take on it.

The problem I'm having in figuring this all out, is that "cloud computing" can mean stuff like using Gmail and Google Docs, Hotmail and Xdrive. But I'm trying to focus on the clouds-for-rent on which a business can get its own virtual server.

But whether it's virtual servers or SAAS (software as a service) -- the latter with which I'm saddled for half my work already; it needs to be faster, dammit -- data and the apps that manipulate them are moving off the desktop and onto faraway server arrays. Besides saving you the trouble of archiving your own data, it means accessing your personal and business data from anywhere, with any computer or data-collecting gizmo you happen to have in front of you.

What's the state of privacy and reliability of these services? That's a question going forward. But eventually cost will win out. If it's cheaper, it'll happen.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As one of the ways to keep track of my journey through the world of Linux and BSD distributions, on every CD I try to write the date I burned it. I can't remember how I found out about my first Linux live CD, Knoppix 5.1.1 (some Web story must've gone on about how great it was to run a full Linux without doing a hard-drive install), but the date I wrote on the case is Jan. 29, 2007 -- soon after the 5.1.1 release came out. And it wasn't just my first live CD, it was also the first Linux CD of any kind I made -- and my first experience with a Unix-like operating system since leaving adm3a and VT-100 terminals behind after my college days in the 1980s.

I remember running that Knoppix CD on my Dell box. I didn't know what Debian was. I had no idea that KDE was Knoppix's desktop environment -- or that there were many alternatives. I didn't know why the Web browser that looked like Firefox was called Iceweasel.

Since then I've spent considerable time running Puppy and Damn Small Linux from live CDs (and in hard-drive installs, usually of the three-or-so-file "frugal" variety).

I recently burned both Puppy Linux 3.0 and Damn Small Linux 4.0. On the one hand, I'm thinking about doing reviews of both. On the other, I think it's time to replace the Debian setup on the $15 Laptop, a Compaq Armada 7770dmt. I've been running it for months with a very basic Debian Etch install. I started with the "standard" install, then added X and Fluxbox, along with the apps I wanted. It's been running fairly well, but the problems with various applications have been piling up. I know that if I use Puppy or DSL, the apps I want should work perfectly from the get-go. Of course I could also do a fuller Debian install -- say the Xfce version -- which would include many more applications ...

So before I dive back into live CDs, here's what's been troubling me with my Debian Etch install. The laptop is so old (probably circa '98) that it doesn't have USB ports. I have my trusty Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA wireless card installed -- it works with just about every Linux distro out there -- and I have the CD drive plugged in. The floppy drive is dead, but who needs it? I have the original 3 GB hard drive, and it's pretty full, even though I've got nowhere near the full Debian install on it. I really should buy a new hard drive that's way bigger and less prone to failure.

Anyhow, the 233 MHz, 64 MB system probably could run Xfce, but I've been conservative, running both the console and Fluxbox as needed. Maximum memory for the Compaq is 144 MB, but I've been too lazy and cheap to buy the RAM. The CMOS battery is dead, and I've really been too lazy to crack the case (TORX screws aplenty) and see how to switch it out. I have the network time server app installed, and that resets the clock at each boot.

I originally wanted to handle my work e-mail over IMAP with Mutt and MSMTP. Never mind that to get a Mutt setup seems to be the height of geek competence (a height to which I do not reach), but since my original push to get the .muttrc and .msmtprc files just right, something changed and I can no longer send mail. I could never figure out how to handle multiple mail accounts over IMAP (POP is easier, since you can POP all the mail down and filter it ... and by "easier," I mean harder but doable).

So I installed Sylpheed, which I figured would be light enough for the 233 MHz box. I've always liked Sylpheed, although I've migrated over to Evolution and Thunderbird on my other boxes.

On first launch of Sylpheed, I got an error message that some parameter in some file (I confess, I didn't recognize any of it) was missing. So I went ahead and configured Sylpheed. It didn't work.

I have AbiWord installed -- my go-to lightweight word processor -- but the graphics of the laptop just can't keep up. I type, and the letters appear seconds later. Ted might work better, but it's broken in Etch. You can neither create a new file nor open an old one.

On the brighter side, the Dillo browser works great (although the fonts are better in Damn Small Linux and Vector), and I also have had no problem with Iceweasel (aka Firefox), Lynx or my favorite light image editor, MtPaint (which should be an official Debian package available via apt-get but for some reason can only be found at Sourceforge and on other distros like Vector and Zenwalk). I've also been very pleased with Mousepad as a text editor, with Nano and Vi as backups. (I'm more of a Nano users because I just don't spend a lot of time in console editors and have ragged Vi chops).

So I'm able to get my work done in Etch, but I have a feeling that I'd be better off -- especially at 64 MB of RAM -- with Damn Small Linux.

And with the release of version 4.0, what better time to re-evaluate the distro, which has been in or near the Distrowatch top 10 for quite some time.

So I pulled the CDs for Puppy 3.00, DSL 4.0 and Knoppix 5.1.1. I'm not ready to break out the Compaq laptop just yet, so I used my main test box, the converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client that runs a VIA C3 Samuel 1 GHz processor and 256 MB of RAM.

I plugged in a USB drive, with my hope being that I could then unplug the hard drive, boot from CD and then have no drives whirring for the duration.

That worked with Knoppix, Puppy, even with a Vector SOHO live CD I burned a week ago (and let me say that just as Vector excels with the Xfce desktop, it also does remarkably well in KDE).

But Damn Small Linux? No, it wouldn't boot with the hard drive disconnected. I tried versions 3.3 and 3.2 as well. No go for any of them.

My USB key is a little unsual. It was a freebie, and has a CD advertising image (detected almost always as drive sr0) as well as a 256 MB flash memory. Puppy found the flash just fine (I've always had great luck with hardware detection, especially of drives, with Puppy), and I was able to boot without a hard drive, run entirely in RAM, and save my settings and files to the pup_save on the USB drive. Brilliant, as usual.

Neither Knoppix nor DSL could find the USB flash drive, but I suspect with a "pure" USB drive the results would be different.

Even so, I've done quite a few Puppy reviews, and I wanted to start out with Damn Small Linux. So I plugged in a hard drive, booted DSL (using the dsl toram boot code that loads the whole distro into RAM) and was off.

Quickly, things that are better in DSL 4.0: network configuration is smoother than ever. Once I entered my static IP, DSL guessed the rest of the info pretty darn well. I entered my local name servers, but the gateway and broadcast addresses were correct without me doing anything. I was able to get printing working with apsfilter (I could never replicate my success in Etch, by the way).

The default window manager in DSL is now JWM, and the thing I miss most is the menu that used to come up with a right mouse click. It's easy enough, however, to change window managers to the old DSL's Fluxbox, and then everything is the way I like it. But I'm getting used to JWM (Joe's Window Manager) in DSL, and I like the clickable folders on the desktop -- it's easier and more intuitive than using the file manager.

Anyhow ... I'm not ready yet for a full DSL review, so let me just tell you that to me -- and many others, I suspect -- Puppy, DSL and Knoppix are VERY important distros in the Linux universe. Going from Windows or Mac to the world of Linux might not have happened for many of us if we didn't have live CDs that actually work that way with which to experiment.

And in many cases, working with a live CD or frugal install that allows files and parameters to be saved, either on the hard drive or on removable media, can be an easy, secure and preferable way to use a PC. Especially when it comes to DSL and Puppy, upgrading can be as easy as downloading and burning the latest ISO. And if you don't want to upgrade? No problem -- just use the version you want.

I did spend at least half a day running Knoppix with no hard drive. As I said above, Knoppix didn't find my USB drive (a situation that might be remedied with a more standard flash drive). As the king of live CDs, Knoppix, which is not one of those distros that is continually coming out with new releases, runs very, very well. Even when not running it in RAM, Knoppix is surprisingly quick, even with KDE. And if you do have 1 GB of RAM, I highly recommend running it with the toram boot option. I definitely plan to get the book "Knoppix Hacks," which has a new release slated for this month, as well as the new Damn Small Linux book.

And this thought has crossed my mind: I just might hack together a PC with 2 GB of RAM, and either a Compact Flash card or USB flash drive for storage, with no hard drive at all, to run Knoppix entirely in RAM.

(By the way, Puppy seems to know when it has enough memory to run in RAM -- I don't think you have to pass that information in a boot code).

And while the live CDs of Ubuntu, Mepis and others are helpful in terms of evaluating hardware detection, they're not designed to be used day-to-day in that manner. But DSL, Puppy and Knopix are -- and they all can be installed to the hard drive if you wish.

Before I wrap up this entry, I want to say that everybody should try Puppy, DSL and Knoppix. Download the ISOs, burn the CDs and start experimenting with all the boxes you can find. I've had more fun with live CDs than in anything else I've done with Linux. After a few months in Debian, Slackware and Ubuntu, it's a nice change of pace (and yes, I've tried Slax -- which I like -- and I plan to give Wolvix a spin soon).

So burn yourself some live CDs -- and make a half-dozen or so extras to hand out at will. It's the best way to get people started on exploring the non-Windows world of computing.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Say what you will about retail's looming giant, but Wal-Mart's got stones.

It's doing what no other mass-market retailer dares to do: offering low-cost PCs with Linux instead of Windows.

The company, which has sold Linspire-powered Linux PCs in the past, has gotten back in the Linux-box game with an Everex system that includes the PC itself, along with mouse and keyboard (but no monitor) for $198, as I read in a report from DesktopLinux.com:

The Everex Green gPC TC2502 includes popular applications from Google, Mozilla, Skype and OpenOffice.org. It runs gOS Initial G, which in turn is based on Ubuntu Linux 7.10 The gOS operating system features a simple and intuitive Linux Enlightenment E17 desktop interface with a Google-centric theme. The system comes with a lifetime of free updates and revisions.

The company opted to use Enlightenment, rather than the more popular KDE or GNOME, because Enlightenment requires minimal hardware resources for its interface.

At the heart of the gPC TC2502 is an energy-efficient 1.5GHz, VIA C7-D processor. This CPU draws less than 2W on average (with a maximum of 20W). Operating at a mere 28dB, the gPC also ranks as the quietest Everex desktop computer ever produced. It also includes 512MB of system memory, 80GB hard disk drive and DVD-ROM/CD-RW optical drive. The system also comes with six USB 2.0 ports; an RJ45 Ethernet port; an RJ11 port; and a serial and parallel port.

Wal-Mart plans to begin selling the system at stores and online sometime early this month. According to the DesktopLinux.com article, the operating system is based on Ubuntu but has many elements that differ from that distribution that are added by the Everex people. In my view, using the Enlightenment window manager instead of GNOME is a key move. The gain in graphical snappiness should make using the Everex box a much more pleasant experience.

Like I said, kick Wal-Mart all you want, but the only other giant retailer offering a PC with a full complement of software -- stuff that's the equivalent of MS Office and more -- is Dell, and it's sure not pumping it out at $198 a box -- and through America's largest retailer either (although there is an agreement by which Dell will sell through Wal-Mart stores -- just not a non-Windows product).

In this case, the Everex PC -- if it delivers as promised -- brings the kind of value to customers that Wal-Mart always says its committed to.

This just in: Wal-Mart is selling a very similar Everex PC, not currently available online, for $298. This model has 1 GB of memory (instead of 512 MB for the Linux model) and includes Windows Vista Home Basic and ... OpenOffice 2.2. Microsoft can't be happy with that -- they're putting OpenOffice on the box, making a purchase of MS Office unnecessary, AND now the same company isn't even going to put Windows on the same hardware?

And ... at $298, less the cost of 512 MB of DDR2 RAM, currently retailing for about $20 at TigerDirect.com, that makes the Microsoft tax for this box $80.

And on a $298 item, $100 is real money -- especially to a retailer like Wal-Mart.

And thus a consumer Linux box is born ...

Note:
(Images from DesktopLinux.com)

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This thread on LXer is exploding: Members of the site tell how, why and when they made the move from Windows or Mac OS to the free Linux and BSD operating systems. Don't read it all at once -- you've probably got other things to do -- but dip in from time to time and see what the fuss is all about.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That's the question George Ou's article is really answering. He hits VIA for charging a premium for its mini-ITX mainboards (which go for twice as much as the average micro-ATX board and, while often fanless and low in power consumption, don't come anywhere near approaching the specs of the mainstream boards).

But he champions Intel for offering its own mini-ITX mainboard for the low, low price of $69.

Hell, I didn't know about this ... and I want one. Now.

I'm a huge mini-ITX fan -- a huge fan of PCs that are small, consume little power and have no fans in general. And if Intel wants to take this market, I'm all for it.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Seen via LXer and written by Dave Gutteridge for the Tokyo Linux Users Group, Windows Is Free gets to the heart of the problem:

The fact is that there's a distortion in the idea that Linux can't be given away. There's something wrong in the idea the price difference between Windows and Linux is representative of the actual quality difference. There's an elephant in the room that no one is talking about.

Windows is free.

I'm not talking about the fact that Windows comes pre-installed in most computers, with its price hidden in the cost of the hardware. That contributes to the idea of Windows being free, but that's not the elephant in the room.

"The elephant in the room that no one is talking about is cracked software." The elephant in the room that no one is talking about is cracked software.

People treat Windows as being free not because they didn't have to buy the copy that came with their computer. People think of Windows as free because when they need a copy, they can get it from a guy they know. Someone has a copy they can just burn to a CD for you.

For me, this is a prime motivator steering me toward free GNU/Linux and applications like OpenOffice, AbiWord, the GIMP, Thunderbird and others.

I don't want to steal. But I don't want to pay, either. Especially for the stuff that Microsoft, Adobe and others are selling and at the prices they're asking. Hell -- a copy of Microsoft Works, which includes an ancient copy of Word, is $99 at Target. MS is about to release a version of Works for free, but you can bet that Word will not be included.

Just about everyone I work with thinks Photoshop, at $650 per copy, runs rings around the GIMP, which is free. For what they're doing -- and for what MOST users need to do -- the GIMP does an excellent job. And for the simplest of tasks, IrfanView in Windows and mtPaint in Linux load about 20 times quicker and do the job just as well.

Yesterday, a co-worker tried to use an old, legit copy of Photoshop to size some images, and it wouldn't open half of the JPGs we threw at it. The GIMP did them all. And upgrades of free software remain just that -- free.

As the article describes, people think that since their computer came with Windows, they have a lifelong license to use any future version without paying for it. I've done it. Now I'd rather not -- and I have an alternative, so I don't.

And just because it's easy to exchange pirated discs of MS Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and the like, the whole thing makes me feel more than a little squirrely. And if I'm not comfortable shelling out what would amount to thousands (and hundreds more every year for "upgrades") just to make my PC do what I want, why should businesses be any more comfortable with it?

And what if that $200 upgrade of Windows Vista runs like crap on my current hardware? Do I get my money back from MS? If SimplyMepis is too sluggish, I can just install Debian or Slackware over it. I can buy more memory if KDE isn't running so well, or I can use XFCE or Fluxbox to make things work on an old computer that won't run XP or Vista and would never load a new version of Photoshop.

One of the great, liberating things that comes with using GNU/Linux and other free, open-source software is the moral high ground. I don't think what Microsoft is doing is right -- abandoning old products so we'll all buy new ones every other year or so. Most respond by using pirated software, but it's better to reject the Microsoft model outright and use free, open-source applications as much as you can.

Don't steal from Microsoft, Adobe and others just because you don't like the way they do business. Take the other road.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Given Linspire's recent "intellectual property" deal with Microsoft, by which MS agrees not to sue Linspire or its customers over so-called patent violations in Linux (and leaving the rest of us out to dry), should I continue to use the freelinuxemail.com service sponsored by Linspire?

First of all, I love the service -- run by fastmail.fm -- because it offers the IMAP protocol, has a super-fast Web interface and in the case of freelinuxemail.com (as opposed to the plain fastmail.fm version) comes with outgoing SMTP service for free (fastmail.fm wants you to either pay for SMTP or use your ISPs server).

All my mutt experiments during my Month on the Command Line were done with freelinuxemail.com, and while I'm not currently using the service, I still have the account there.

But given Linspire's recent actions, I'm feeling a bit squirrely about using the free e-mail. I'm a longtime user of Yahoo Mail, and I've never seen a conflict there -- if, as a so-called "journalist," I didn't actually use this stuff, how could I write about it?

But the Linspire thing has got me thinking. If I want IMAP mail, I could stick to the service provided by my ISP, DSL Extreme (which I pay for), I could upgrade my own fastmail.fm account, or find another provider entirely.

It's a dilemma. What do you think I should do?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I pondered for a while whether this story belonged on "Click." It is, after all, step one in what could become the ultimate anti-clicking culture.

Turns out Japanese electronics maker Hitachi Inc. is developing technology to help coach potatoes alleviate the strain on their remote-control finger.

The "brain-machine interface" developed by Hitachi Inc. analyzes slight changes in the brain's blood flow and translates brain motion into electric signals.

Posted by Armando Hernandez at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Can you believe this bullshit? In Microsoft's new Word 2007, the .doc format has taken a back seat to .docx. Luckily there's a way to handle these files in Open Office, the free, open-source office suite -- at least for the Linux version. Novell had an ODF Converter that works on .docx word processor documents ... and this Linux Planet article shows you how to take the .RPM Novell package and convert it to a .DEB package that can be installed in Debian and the various Ubuntus.

I imagine a future version of Open Office will support .docx natively, but for now, there's this solution. Or ... you could tell people NOT to use .docx, stick with their old MS Office software or, for the love of god, just start using Open Office, AbiWord/Gnumeric, KOffice, or even Ted.

Soapbox time: I support the move to the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF), which is native to OpenOffice 2, and I hope it goes forward. I'm naturally skeptical about Microsoft's own open-document format, OpenXML, simply because having a company generally opposed to open standards creating and controlling an open standard is counterintuitive and probably counterproductive.

And like it or not, at this point Microsoft's .doc and .xls file formats for Word and Excel, respectively have pretty much become universal -- with many non-MS programs able to read and write them in most cases. That's probably why MS created the .docx format in Office 2007 -- they need to give users a reason to purchase yet another version of Office that they probably don't need. Most Word and Excel documents (or, if you prefer, and I do, word-processing documents and spreadsheets) are fairly simple and don't need a whole new generation of features and formatting. It's nice if you need it, overkill (and costly overkill at that) if you don't.

Now mind you, this is coming from someone that reads an occasional spreadsheet if it comes preloaded with data, and uses word processors for WRITING. I don't generally drop photos, tables, spreadsheets, other graphics, et al., into my documents. I just write it and post/send it where it needs to go. Some people use Open Office (and MS Word, too) to produce publication-quality documents, and I say more power to you, but for the rest of us, we don't need any new proprietary formats that prevent us from freely exchanging documents and being able to actually open, read and edit them.

The days when everybody needed to have Word and Excel -- the branded versions -- on their PC, or risk not being able to do their work are long, long past. And that's why we need ODF. I'd love to switch the default in my Open Office Writer from .doc to .odf -- and that day is coming, methinks, sooner than later.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For some reason, testing and using Linux got me interested in trying to read and manage my e-mail with traditional mail clients, even though it was contrary to my experience, habit and nature. From almost the first time I had access to Internet e-mail, I've sent and received it via an online interface, going all the way back to AOL. (That doesn't count the Los Angeles Valley College-based BBS I used in the early '90s that offered free Internet mail that I could download with Usenet news as QWK packets and read and write offline with a shareware DOS program whose name totally escapes me.)

For my personal mail, I've tried quite a few services, but Yahoo keeps upping the ante as Gmail and others nip at its heels -- and Yahoo has kept me with such seemingly benign announcements as "more storage!" "dots in your e-mail address!" "unlimited storage!"

To keep my geek cred, I do have an account on Gmail (especially since I used to be a heavy user of Blogger.com and Google Groups, which now either require or strongly suggest you have a Google account, the "benefits" of which include a Gmail address). I've never used Gmail much, not because it's better, worse or different than Yahoo Mail, but just because everybody knows my Yahoo address, and that's what I use.

Gmail does offer free POP mail service, meaning it can be used with a traditional mail client, and Yahoo offers POP access for a fee (well worth it if you need to use a mail program), but since I'm at different computers during the day and week, managing e-mail that's not on a central server just doesn't work for me -- I need it all to be in one place, accessible anywhere, at any time.

That's what made IMAP service -- where mail stays on a Internet-accessible server -- so intriguing to me when I started to experiment with Linux. But even the Daily News doesn't offer IMAP. And while Web-based e-mail clients basically deal with mail over an IMAP server, neither Yahoo nor Google offer it. It's ironic. But not helpful

So I configured SeaMonkey, Thunderbird, Evolution, and more recently Sylpheed and Mutt, to receive my POP mail from Yahoo and the Daily News' e-mail system. But downloading all my mail to one computer, as I said, doesn't work for me. And while all e-mail clients allow you to tell the mail server to keep the mail when download it via POP, there's no way to "manage" that mail via the client software -- I can't get rid of the messages until I go to the paper's Web-based client, so it's just better for me to do all my e-mail from the Web, even if our Web mail site is slow as molasses much of the time.

Even with IMAP, you have more "portability." But who wants to set up a dozen different programs on a half-dozen PCs? I've done it, but it's just too much complexity.

Still, if you want free IMAP mail, Fastmail.fm is the place to get it. For most accounts, they don't even offer POP mail. And they make an excellent case for why IMAP is better than POP and why a Web interface -- especially theirs -- is better than both.

If you want to use a traditional mail client with Fastmail.fm, you can, but the company's Web interface is blindingly fast. But there's a small catch; for those who do want to use a mail client, Fastmail.fm doesn't offer nonpaying users to access its SMTP server for outgoing mail, instead suggesting you use the SMTP server offered by your Internet service provider. However, a Fastmail.fm offshoot sponsored by Linspire -- freelinuxemail.com -- offers free SMTP access to use with your client software. At one point recently, I successfully set up mutt to access freelinuxemail.com via IMAP and to handle my Daily News POP mail at the same time, sending mail for each service via different SMTP servers.

Now that Linspire is among those Linux providers who have signed "intellectual property" protection deals with Microsoft, you might feel differently about using their free, sponsored e-mail ... and if you really do like what Fastmail.fm is doing, it's well worth paying for an enhanced level of service ... or you can just stick with the free version and stay with their ultra-fast Web interface, or use your ISP's SMTP service, if you're allowed (some ISPs don't let you use their SMTP server if you're not doing so from your home IP address, but my ISP -- DSL Extreme -- is not among those and can be accessed from anywhere).

And for those who want to use a client and crave the speed of mutt (or the University of Washington's pine e-mail program), I've found that Sylpheed is much faster than Thunderbird, Evolution and SeaMonkey when it comes to traditional Linux GUI e-mail clients, especially for old, creaky hardware like I use. And Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and some version of Sylpheed are even available for Windows, should you want to get away from Outlook for your e-mail client needs on the Microsoft platform.

I did have a lot of fun with e-mail on the command line -- using fetchmail to get the mail, mutt to read it and reply, and msmtp to send it (I never got around to sorting it with procmail or using the full sendmail server program). And while I'm amazed at the flexibility of these programs -- while being equally fascinated and intimidated by their complexity and lack of usable, real-world not-a-geek documentation -- I have to do what works for me.

And that is the Web. It's not sexy-geeky, and even though plenty of those around me at the Daily News are figuring out how to use Thunderbird or (gasp!) Outlook Express to POP their company e-mail, the functionality I need -- e-mail anywhere that's always there -- is done better through a Web interface than it is via any mail client, from mutt and pine to Sylpheed and SeaMonkey.

And while I reserve my right to go back to a traditional mail program, I'm going to stick -- for now -- with flexible, grab-it-anywhere Web mail.

So how are you dealing with e-mail? I'd love to know.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Linux-Watch and Desktop Linux predicted that Linspire would run into Microsoft's arms by interpreting Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony's remarks after Microsoft announced its Xandros deal, and now SJVN thinks that Mark Shuttleworth -- a guy who doesn't bad-mouth Redmond at all -- may be the next to do a Microsoft patent-protection deal:

Ubuntu has also recently partnered with Dell to deliver Linux on PCs and laptops from the first top-tier computer vendor to commit to Linux. I'm sure those desktop users would also like the goodies that Microsoft and Linspire will be delivering in Linspire 6 -- namely: access to Microsoft proprietary multimedia codecs; VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) over Microsoft IM (instant messaging) compatible clients; and Microsoft fonts.

Oh, and by the way, you do recall that Linspire 6 will be based on Ubuntu, don't you? And, that Ubuntu will be compatible with Linspire's revised CNR (click and run) software distribution system?

Sounds to me like it would as easy as falling off a log for Canonical to add some Microsoft features of its own to Ubuntu Linux distribution.

I didn't get a chance to ask Shuttleworth if he has something in the works for Ubuntu with Microsoft at the Summit, darn it. But, if you see some news about Ubuntu partnering up with Microsoft sometime soon, well, just remember that you read it here first.

I'd be stunned if this happened, but I can see it. Given Microsoft's deal with Novell, I wonder if Dell will switch it up and start offering Novell's openSUSE or SLED on the desktop either in addition to or instead of Ubuntu. If Mark Shuttleworth thinks that an MS patent deal is the horse to ride, he might just get on it.

But ... with Shuttleworth starting such intiatives as a totally-FOSS version of Ubuntu with no closed-source drivers or anything else, would he really go the other way and do a Microsoft deal?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In his Linspire Letter, CEO Kevin Carmony talks about why he decided to make a deal with Microsoft, trading some technological info for an assurance from Microsoft that the Redmond giant won't sue Linspire's Linux customers for "intellectual property" infringement.

Here's his reasoning, in part:

Today, Linspire announced our latest partnership, one with Microsoft, to bring even more choices to desktop Linux users, and together, offer a "better" Linux experience. Just as Steve Jobs announced in 1997 that "the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over," I too believe it's time for Linux to do the same. Rather than isolating Linux, I believe we need to understand, as Apple did in 1997, that Linux exists in an ecosystem and must work with and interoperate within that ecosystem. As unpopular as it may appear to some, Linspire is willing to take a lead in this effort. Some people booed Steve Jobs back in 1997, but if you trace the history of his announcement, I think it was an incredibly smart move for both Microsoft and Apple, issuing in a new era for both.

Nice ... get yourself neck-deep, then compare yourself to Steve Jobs. Even Steve Jobs knows he's a crazy f---. Or should know. Rich, cunning, possessing uncanny instinct, etc. ... but still kind of crazy.

Here's more from Carmony:

So about a year and a half ago, I contacted Microsoft and asked for a meeting to discuss how we could work together to make a "better" Linux. I was confident Microsoft would welcome my invitation, because I knew there could be an economic incentive for them to do so. As I had expected, they welcomed my call, and I immediately flew to Redmond for the first of many meetings over the following months, taking place in both Redmond and San Diego, culminating in this week's announced partnership.

...

(and here's the kicker, emphasis mine)

As good as Microsoft believes Microsoft Windows is, some people will in fact choose Linux. If Microsoft can contribute in a win-win way towards a "better" Linux experience, some people might be willing to pay a little extra for that. After years in the prominent position of desktop computer operating systems and applications, Microsoft certainly has many assets, which can be brought to bear to improve Linux (technology, interoperability, intellectual property, distribution channels, marketing, etc.).

About the "pay a little extra" part, Carmony addresses it again in the Q&A (again, emphasis mine):

How much more will I have to pay for this "better" Linux?

Nothing actually. Linspire has decided to cover the cost of these enhancements without raising the retail price of Linspire. Freespire will remain free, and the retail version of Linspire will remain at $59.95.

How bloody sporting of them ... and everybody who hasn't made just such a deal with Microsoft ... guess it's long-walk-short-pier time, eh, Mr. Carmony?

And what about GPLv3, which is supposed to nix (pun intended) this sort of thing? More from Carmony:

As I mentioned last week, hopefully the drafters of the new GPLv3 will take such options into consideration as they finish their work. It's important that Linux not be relegated to a 3rd-class player behind Microsoft's and Apple's operating systems, which do provide for this type of interoperability with the legacy desktop computer ecosystem.

I'm about to go all caps ... wait for it ... IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN ... NOT ... GONNA ... HAPPEN.

And here's Kevin Carmony's parting shot:

I'm sure some people who feel strongly about this will turn to other distributions, and I respect that. I do, however, think many more will end up coming to Linspire Linux for the enhanced experience they find from a distribution that works with as many partners as possible in an effort to make Linux work better. This announcement doesn't take any choices away from anyone; it just adds one more option. Choice is a good thing. I'm glad we have lots of them today as we choose a desktop OS.

It's NOT about an "enhanced experience," it's about worrying that Microsoft is going to chew you up and spit you out.

Now's not the time to get between the sheets with Microsoft. I couldn't disagree more with Kevin Carmony -- the Linux (or GNU/Linux, if you prefer) and general open-source community doesn't need Microsoft or Apple to help make "Linux work better." It seems as if Microsoft needs Linux ... or Linux companies, for that matter, to boost its own softening business.

And I resent Carmony bringing Apple into this whole mess. Apple isn't threatening to sue anyone, least of all the users and distributors of Linux. Would I like to see iTunes on Linux? For sure. Will Apple bring Safari to Linux. Maybe -- but, really, who cares?

As I've said in just about every editorial I write on this topic -- and since Microsoft is doing one of these deals just about every other week, I repeat it all too often -- let's just go to court and hash this thing out.

Microsoft and the Linux distributors it's aligning itself with need to remember that the Redmond-friendly Bush administration has a year and a half left in office. The next president and his Justice Department probably won't look very kindly on Microsoft's maneuvering -- and those of us using free, open-source software shouldn't do so either.

-----------------------------------

Linspire's press release on the deal.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Today it's Linspire agreeing to a Linux technology deal with Microsoft that includes "IP protection" for customers, with IP standing for "intellectual property," and Microsoft basically agreeing not to sue users of Linspire's Linux distro.

Curiously, Freespire -- Linspire's "free" version -- isn't included in the IP protection deal but will benefit from greater integration between Open Office and MS Office.

This follows Novell and Xandros' deals with Microsoft on the Linux-distro side, as well as royalty deals with key end users (whose names escape me momentarily), they truly are falling like dominoes.

But the Linspire deal has more far-reaching implications, since Ubuntu is set to begin using Linspire's CNR ("Click and Run" package management sometime in the future, and with Linspire beginning to base its code on Ubuntu. This seems to be putting Ubuntu's parent Canonical closer to being in bed with Microsoft -- something that would go down less than well with Ubuntu's growing, vocal fan base.

But the Linux distribution companies are going down like dominoes. If Red Hat doesn't bite -- and I can't imagine they will -- the apocalypse will not yet be upon us.

But one thing is clear -- crystal, mother-f'n clear. Microsoft is using a divide-and-conquer strategy with the FOSS (free, open-source software) community and hoping to make deals on their terms and avoid dragging this whole sorry, sorry mess into court.

But that's where it's headed -- and quickly.

(Addendum: For those who remember, Linspire used to be called Lindows until legal threats from Microsoft over trademark prompted the name change.)

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I already told you that I'm trolling ZDNet's mighty blog page, and I came across what I think is THE BLOG ENTRY OF THE FORTNIGHT (from Robin Harris' Persistent Memory blog), an entry that tells you how what Apple is planning -- and patenting -- now has the potential to do what I've been predicting will happen for years now (but heretofore with no indication that it would ever actually happen):

Leverage technical advances in OS X and its implementation on the Intel platform to port the Macintosh operating system over to PC and end Microsoft Windows' dominance.

Or in short, steal Steve Ballmer's lunch and commence eating.

Let's get down to the nitty gritty. It's all about Apple's new ZFS filesystem, the software scheme that controls how your files are created, stored and accounted for. Not sexy, right? Oh, but it is. While Microsoft's NTFS filesystem that came in with Windows 2000 was much better than the previous FAT filesystem, it's nothing like the filesystems in Linux and BSD that work an entirely different way (don't ask me exactly how because I may be geeky, but I'm not that geeky ... yet).

As Robin explains it:

What is sexy is that combined with Time Machine, ZFS enables for the first time truly safe massive home storage. Time Machine provides the “set and forget” backup automation with a simple, intuitive restore function that leaves Mac and Windows users drooling. ZFS provides the best data integrity and, for free, high performance RAID. Yes, George, better than Intel’s ICH8 chip. And it works much better with flash drives.

...

Apple had Mac OS X running on Intel processors for five years before they announced the switch. With Apple’s experience in managing big migrations - from 68000 to PowerPC to x86, and from OS 9 to Unix-based OS X - one has to wonder if Steve (Jobs) will finally choose to make the Mac OS available on Wintel systems.

Apple already has a sizable Windows software business. They install their Bonjour networking with every copy of iTunes, where it works way better than anything Redmond has. Now they are adding a browser, Safari. By inserting ZFS under NTFS data structures - and virtualizing Vista - they could start selling Mac OS X on Vista machines while preserving the customer’s investment in Wintel software.

The patent application itself, according to the ZDNet blogger, concerns a method for easily and "touchlessly" converting a Windows filesystem into a Mac filesystem.

And at the risk of over-quoting (if only because I barely understand all this):

Apple had Mac OS X running on Intel processors for five years before they announced the switch. With Apple’s experience in managing big migrations - from 68000 to PowerPC to x86, and from OS 9 to Unix-based OS X - one has to wonder if Steve will finally choose to make the Mac OS available on Wintel systems.

Now I know hardware is important to Apple, even though its strong suit has ALWAYS been the software that makes it work, but having Apple and Microsoft truly compete for the hearts and minds of users on the PC platform is something that should happen -- and quickly.

I'm not calling it collusion, because companies can clearly do what they want, and Apple thus far has been super-nice to Microsoft by not competing directly with them and, in return, getting Microsoft's continued porting of Office to Mac. Now with Apple developing its own iWork suite -- and the steamrolling of the free, open-source Open Office into real offices everywhere, Cupertino doesn't need Redmond so much anymore. So it could happen. What do you think?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Huh? What? Why?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, what you've all been waiting for (or perhaps not), the Safari browser that Apple bundles with each and every Macintosh computer sold is now coming to a Windows desktop near you. (Stories here, here and here).

No longer content with Microsoft orphaning its IE browser (no doubt because of the initial development of Safari at Apple), the folks in Cupertino are bringing Safari to the masses -- the Windows-using masses.

You might inquire as to what Steve Jobs is smoking? But he's Steve Jobs ... so whatever it is he in fact is smoking, he's using $100 bills as rolling papers.

Again, why?

But Jobs and Co. have a plan: You will use Safari, O Windows user, because it will be the only way to run Web-compatible apps with the soon-to-debut iPhone. And you will also use Safari, you Windows XP and Vista users, you, because it will be distributed with the wildly popular, culture-changing content-pushing engine known as iTunes.

Jobs cites a 5 percent share of the browser market for Safari, 78 percent for IE, and 15 percent for Firefox.

As for the iTunes connection:

(Jobs) noted that there are a million downloads of iTunes a day, with 500 million of those going to Windows machines.

“We know how to reach these (Windows) customers,” Jobs said.

And Jobs says Safari is faster than Firefox and IE. Want to find out for yourself? Download the beta.

My 2 cents: I was initially a big fan of the Safari browser in OS X. IE on the Mac was dead, killed by Microsoft (for reasons that continue to escape me -- the development of Safari itself not being sufficient), and I thought that Firefox just took too long to load. So I got used to Safari, and it was running pretty well ... until most "sophisticated" Web apps started breaking like crazy. Blogger never worked that well, even before it had a total Googlized redo, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets wouldn't even try to work. Notice that it's Google in both cases? I don't know what that says about the whole deal, but I want to use both Blogger and Google Docs (formerly Writely), and Safari just can't do it.

So I started to use Firefox on the Mac, and I'm pretty darn happy with it. Once you load it (yep, it does take a long time on my iBook G4 1GHz), you can just leave it running and open a new Firefox window in seconds. Now if Safari for Mac "catches up" to Firefox in terms of sheer functionality, I'd be inclined to give it another try. (I'm on 10.3.9, and the Safari developers abandoned that platform long ago ... if Firefox does the same, I'll have to upgrade to 10.4, I guess. But for Mac at least, Safari is in pretty big trouble, in my opinion.)

On my Windows XP box, it's a bit different. I have Firefox loaded, but I rarely use it. I'm pretty happy with IE 6 (I haven't yet made the leap to IE 7 -- I could use the tabbed browsing, but I'm loathe to give up something that "just works.")

Safari for Windows? I'll probably try it. But as I've said before, if Steve Jobs really wants to shake this shit up, he'll release OS X -- IN IT'S FREAKIN' ENTIRETY -- for PC and knock Microsoft and the rest of the computer industry on its collective ass.

So while Safari for Windows is something, it ain't everything by one gigantic, bare-assed longshot.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't like to generalize, so I'll get specific on the following inconvenient truths:

If you've got a 10-year-old PC and a 10-year-old Mac, you'll get way further with the PC if you want a decade-old computer that's productive today.

This is mostly due to the fact that the Classic Mac OS was abandoned by Apple, and there are almost no apps that have been updated so as to be useful in today's world of computing. In my experience, browsers and e-mail clients that run under the Classic Mac OS just don't work very well with today's Web pages and mail servers. On the other hand, most 10-year-old PCs will run Windows 2000 (or 98), and many will even run XP. And you can also run Firefox, IE, Abiword, Open Office, the GIMP, IrfanView, free antivirus software, EditPad Lite, even the dreaded Outlook Express for e-mail ... and the list goes on.

Windows is not slow. Some Linux distros are. On new hardware, you might not notice. On old hardware, you will.

I'm talking mostly about Windows 2000 here, and to a lesser extent Windows XP. I've run Win 2K on many, many platforms, and I'm continually surprised on how well it runs, even with low RAM. It may not be secure at all, may need lots of add-ons just to be usable and may be orphaned by Microsoft in a few years, but for now it's blazingly fast. I wish I had an XP disc so I could run the same tests with it.

While the Linux command line smokes anything Windows has to offer in terms of sheer speed, offers hundreds of up-to-date apps and can be a boon to productivity (as I learned during my Month at the Command Line), most of the Linux GUIs I've tried are a bit of a strain on the graphics capability of a PC, particularly of an older one with less than 512 MB of RAM.

Puppy Linux works great on most low-spec PCs, but in my experience, things like Flash and other multimedia files play with less trouble in Windows 2000.

Still, Puppy is much better than Xubuntu, which even though boasting a "fast" XFCE desktop, starts to chug considerably when Web pages have Flash on them. For an even faster experience than Puppy, there's Damn Small Linux.

But no matter the window manager, the apps themselves have much to do with performance. I suspect that much of my video problems stem from the Flash player in Windows being a better-written app than the one in Linux. All the more reason for Flash to be opened up to the community -- there's got to be a better player out there to be written. (Maybe the Democracy Player? So far, Gxine has been a disappointment.) If you happen to have an iPod, you're stuck. Apple doesn't appear to be interested in porting iTunes to Linux. I'm not happy about it, and you shouldn't be, either.

Still, there's much about Linux that Windows will never have, including:

a) a free, open-source base,
b) NOT being owned by Microsoft,
c) an extremely customizable desktop experience (from the command line, through basic X and small window managers, to the complex desktop environments of GNOME and KDE),
d) and did I forget to say that Linux is free?

Many, many people use pirated software -- I have, too -- and I don't like the feeling I get from doing it. Even if the apps are too expensive to begin with, and buying them would be out of the question, I don't think stealing the use of them is justified -- even if they're older versions that have been abandoned. (OK, I feel less bad about that, but I still feel way better running Linux and open-source apps whose developers want us to use them ... for free. And when it comes to much commercial software, asking paying customers to fork over hundreds of dollars on a yearly basis to keep their apps current -- is often abusive).

While I've seen many benefits from using Linux instead of Windows, I really don't think that sheer speed is one of them. Anybody who says that Linux is "faster" than Windows (NOT Vista) or Mac OS X, for that matter, at common desktop tasks has not had the same experiences I've had. As always, your mileage may vary, but I've been most disappointed in the XFCE-based Xubuntu, which doesn't seem any faster than regular Ubuntu with GNOME (or fasther than any number of KDE distros, of which NimbleX is my current favorite).

While Ubuntu and a standard desktop Debian both use GNOME, Debian runs faster.

And I'm not sure why. If you only read Web news about Ubuntu and Debian, you'd think that the people behind the extremely popular Ubuntu took an unformed, hard-to-use Debian and performed some kind of magic, bringing some kind of mystical computing power to the people. But Debian is surprisingly well-formed on the desktop, the install procedure is surprisingly like the alternate install of Ubuntu, and once you're up and running, there's not all that much different (except that Debian 4.0 Etch comes standard with more applications and, as I've said, runs just that much faster). And I haven't found running or maintaining Debian to be something only an "expert" can be -- especially since I'm far from being one myself.

It's marketing. Brilliant marketing. Ubuntu's best feature is its huge and helpful community at Ubuntuforums.org. There's a big Debian community out there too, but the Ubuntu people are just so dominant, even Debian users are wise to turn there for technical help since, at their core, the two distros are so similar (given that Ubuntu is derived from Debian, for those who don't know).

And while I'm on the subject, the Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux users are also extremely helpful -- they've come to this blog often with tips and suggestions, and I appreciate it greatly.

The only "modern" PC I have access to is my Dell 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB RAM, and I'm not at liberty to install anything huge (read: a Linux distro) to the hard drive.

I suspect that on a newish PC, the big Linux distributions run like so much buttah and that any speed advantages that an old version of Windows offers is far outshined by the added security, equality and fraternity of free Linux.

It's always better to have new, maxed-out hardware -- a luxury I've never had (besides that, I'm too cheap). And it's mandatory to try before you buy. With Linux, it's easy. Once you have a broadband Internet connection and a CD (or preferably DVD) burner and have learned how to turn an ISO into a bootable disc, you have the keys to quite a kingdom. (Now's the time to rant about how Windows DOES NOT include a utility that can burn a bootable CD. I use and recommend ISO Recorder. Mac OS X also does a good job of burning ISOs with its Disk Utility).

If I were buying a new PC today, would I want it preloaded with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora/RHEL SUSE/SLED, Mepis or PCLinuxOS?

None of the above. I'd prefer a blank hard drive. Any computer user has much to gain by a) experimenting with many distributions, and going through the installation process is part of that experience. Just knowing that you can reinstall your OS if necessary is a powerful and necessary thing for any savvy computer user (and even for some less savvy). Let me install my own OS, thank you.

Are Macs too expensive?

Yes.

What makes you blog day after day after day?

I began blogging on technology with This Old Mac and This Old PC two years ago this month, and I've been posting at Click since September 2006 (that's nine months, by my count), and it's been an enjoyable ride thus far. I haven't lost my enthusiasm for learning about all this stuff, and that's what keeps me going. It's no secret that I've gotten the best response since I began writing about Linux (with many, many thanks to Lxer, which lets me pimp this blog as much as I can. Lxer is, hands down, the best place for news on Linux and free, open-source software).

And finally ...

Linux -- and the choice to use (or not to use) Linux -- is political. There's no denying it or getting around it

It's the same if you choose to run Windows or Mac OS. Cost, convenience, knowledge, passion, maybe even ignorance all factor in, but making the choice to run one, some, all or none of the many computer operating systems out there says something about you and about the OSes themselves (and the companies and communities that produce and support them).

Do the moral, technological and intensely personal factor in? You bet they do. And that's what makes all this so damned interesting and important.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

By making "intellectual property" deals with commercially oriented distributors of Linux, Microsoft isn't alienating anybody it hasn't turned off already.

So far, the two companies that have inked such deals -- Xandros and Novell -- are focused on selling server operating systems to large businesses. And while they may have community involvement, they're not community-oriented, like the Debian distro from which Xandros is derived, or even the wildly popular Ubuntu (itself a Debian derivative).

So Microsoft is sticking with business-centric companies for these deals, and I suspect the corporate customers of Xandros and Novell will, for the most part, applaud anything that keeps them from being harassed by Microsoft. And that legal pledge of non-harassment now becomes a marketing peg that Novell and Xandros can use to sell more server software. It's dirty business, it alienates the very people who are most passionate about your products, but it just might work for those involved.

That is, unless the GPLv3 -- the new free-software license designed to stop this kind of activity -- keeps it all from happening.

Author and free-software guru Richard Stallman puts it this way:

"Software patents are a vicious and absurd system that puts all software developers in danger of being sued by companies they have never heard of, as well as by all the megacorporations in the field. Large programs typically combine thousands of ideas, so it is no surprise if they implement ideas covered by hundreds of patents. Megacorporations collect thousands of patents, and use those patents to bully smaller developers. Patents already obstruct free software development."

As this story develops, keep an eye on Red Hat and Canonical. Red Hat, the biggest and probably longest-standing seller of commercial Linux product, has not entered into any such deal with Microsoft, and it's not for lack of trying on Microsoft's part (they go for the bigger fish first). And Canonical -- maker of the ultra-popular Ubuntu distro (you know, the one now being shipped with Dell PCs) -- risks alienating its large, active community if it made any deal with MS.

The problem with this whole can of worms is that Microsoft is gambling on never going to court. Once proceedings do start -- and I predict they eventually will -- Microsoft will have to name the patents it claims Linux and the other open-source programs are infringing upon, and then the advocates of free software will be able to challenge those patents in court. That won't be good PR for MS. And the legitimacy of many of these patents -- of which Microsoft is amassing thousands -- is questionable, if experts are to be believed. Among those who think Microsoft has overstepped is Linus Torvalds, the man who began the Linux project back in the '90s.

Where this all leaves the desktop -- i.e. the non-server segment of the market-- is more of a mystery. While corporations all around the world are paying big bucks for supported Linux and for Windows server products, too, the desktop market for operation systems in is a state of extreme flux.

Microsoft is doing all it can to discontinue sales of Windows XP to push the new Windows Vista, even though most of the hardware out there today isn't ready for it. And while Linux is sufficiently mature on the desktop for most users (marshaling more over with the huge amounts of free software that are relatively easy to install and very easy to maintain), there's no real retail market for Linux desktops, meaning anything that Red Hat or Novell is selling is not looking any better than Ubuntu, Mepis or any of the dozens of other top distros that have a desktop focus and which are totally, completely free for users.

At this point, even Ubuntu-maker Canonical knows the money is not in boxed, shrink-wrapped software but in the support of that software -- something Red Hat has been doing successfully and profitably for years now.

That's probably why Microsoft is making its move. It can probably handle shareing the server market with Linux because there are many, many enterprise users who not only won't but can't afford to pay Microsoft server software prices, even if they wanted to move over from Linux. And for the most part, such a move is not something these businesses and other entities are even contemplating.

But on the desktop, the MS Office suite has been under attack from the free Open Office for quite some time. And Open Office can run just as well under Windows as it does on Linux. (If it ever comes to Mac in a form that's as easy to install as it is on PC, look out!) Open Office, the Mozilla-created Thunderbird mail client and even the GNOME and KDE office suites just keep chipping away at the Microsoft revenue base. (And that's why Microsoft is fighting Open Office's open document format in favor of its own "open" standard.)

Once you lose the apps, next thing to go is the OS.

I do a lot of testing of operating systems -- many versions of Windows, many more of Linux -- and I'm not one who says Linux is better 100 percent of the time. Windows has its strengths, along with many weaknesses, and the claims made for Linux are often overblown. I can boot Windows 2000 on machines of questionable vintage and get a lot of things done, seldom crashing (the opposite of the crash-tastic Windows 98), with very forgiving video and audio support. Pity that MS isn't selling Windows 2000 for $20 a disc. I'd love to get XP and do more testing with it ... but one thing remains ...

Windows costs money, especially when you're not using the version that shipped with your PC. And Microsoft structures Windows to, shall we say, suggest that you purchase even more software from them, as well as software from other vendors, for such tasks as security, virus-prevention, file compression, graphic design, backup, recovery, disk maintenance and more.

In contrast, Linux is almost always free, with free upgrades, free utilities and applications (although some do cost money and are often worth it), open sources (letting you see what it's made out of, and letting you and others help fix what's wrong with it) -- and you can make one, 50 or 1,000 copies and do what you wish with them.

The power to try out hundreds of distributions and thousands of applications without paying anything is key. I'm not saying that everything in the world ought to be free, but for software the free way appears to be working just fine.

And if you're a corporation or individual who is uncomfortable with free software (and, presumably, just as uncomfortable stealing it from Microsoft, Adobe, etc.), there are boxed Linux (and other open-source) products out there at retail. And when you do pay, as I've said, you're often paying for technical support, which could very well be worth the money.

All Microsoft needs to do to "beat" Linux is to be better, to do what its customers -- current and future -- want. And isn't being "better" a whole lot better than issuing threats via technology reporters?

Microsoft should cast its eye toward Apple -- a company that uses better design, functionality and, well, Apple-ness to sell more stuff.

Being better -- it's what should be for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's dinner.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

By selling at retail, Dell will reach a different kind of consumer than it currently does with its direct-only channel.

While my current Dell box at the office (Optiplex GX520 with 3 GHz Pentium 4 and 512 MB RAM) was part of a big corporate order that numbered in the hundreds of units, it isn't my first Dell.

Way back in the early '90s, pre-Web, we bought a Dell at Price Club, the warehouse store now known as Costco. It was a 386sx 25 MHz model with something like 4 MB of RAM and an 80 MB drive. It shipped with Windows 3.1, which was barely usable at the time. We mostly ran DOS (I think it was at 5.5 or 6), and that box got us on a bunch of local BBSes, plus the GEnie, Prodigy and AOL online services. Never mind that this PC couldn't run much of everything today, but in its day, it was well-built and ultra-reliable. It gave me a good impression of Dell.

Today I'd be more inclined to assemble my own system, if only to facilitate easy upgrades of the various components, from motherboard to optical drives to video, sound and networking cards. While most of us don't do all the upgrading we say we're going to do, it's nice to have the option. I still plan to replace the motherboard, drives and even power supply in the now-10-year-old This Old PC, if only to a) prove to myself that it can be done, and b) from an environmental and "simplicity" standpoint to save the case, keeping it from going into a landfill and eliminating the need for a new one. And I'm cheap.

But back to Dell. Selling through a mass-market retailer and offering customizable systems online are two very different businesses. To compete with HP/Compaq, Dell needs to be out there, side by side with its competitors.

A smarter bet for Dell would be its own mall-located, branded stores, like the Apple Store, and unlike the current Dell mall kiosks in that they'd have actual store space and actual inventory that customers could purchase and carry home. It didn't work for Gateway, but it could work for Dell (or for HP).

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Back in the days before the Thin Puppy's CF card died, I was running my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client with flash memory instead of a conventional hard drive. And since Puppy Linux takes great care NOT to write to flash very often, the media is supposed to last virtually forever. Why mine died is a mystery, but it wasn't due to wear (more likely I killed it with static electricity).

Now that I'm running Puppy 2.16 (new to me this week!), I've been thinking about going back to flash for this thin-client box -- I'm booting from CD and also have a regular-sized 14 GB hard drive connected outside the box (yes, I truly am thinking outside the box -- or my PC is).

But the conventional wisdom is that for "normal" operating systems that don't use RAM disks, you'll kill flash quickly with the constant writes required by the OS.

But today on Low End Mac, that question didn't come up for these guys who are running their Mac laptops from flash memory. That link was to the letters about this original article, which, in turn, refers to this article about doing it with a Powerbook 1400 (one of which I have ... but which is too frustrating at this point to even contemplate using for my everyday computing for reasons that have nothing to do with flash). This final article -- filled with woe about flash cards that didn't work with the 1400 -- does address longevity of the flash media, saying it should work for "years and years."

I'm going to try it again (maybe even with Debian), but I'm also going to back up all my data ...

And again, if you want to boot from flash but are nervous, give the new Puppy 2.16 a try. I'm in my first full day of use, but so far all is going very, very well.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's debut of Dell PCs with Linux preinstalled threatened to be eclipsed by another Dell bombshell -- the Round Rock, Texas, PC giant will supplement it's direct-to-you sales method with a heaping helping of Middle American retail through Wal-Mart.

Dell told the Associated Press that June 10 will mark the debut of two Dimension E521 desktop models at 3,000 Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.

The deal "represents our first step" into global retail, Dell spokesman Dwayne Cox said, according to the AP report.

No prices were announced, but the cheapest Dimension E521 goes out the door for $359 at Dell.com.

It doesn't look like Dell will offer Linux on its Wal-Mart boxes, and a check of Wal-Mart's Web site shows that the company -- today anyway -- no longer offers the Linspire-based Linux desktops it had been quietly selling for some time.

Hmmmm ... maybe it's Dell and Wal-Mart's way of giving Microsoft an open-mouthed kiss with extra tongue.

But back to Dell's Linux offerings -- prices for a single laptop and two desktops preloaded with Ubuntu 7.04 begin at $599 and are slightly lower than when equipped with Windows Vista. Oh ... and Dell's Ubuntu won't be able to play .mp3's, DVDs, Flash and a whole bunch of other stuff without the user going through the usual hoops, a kiss of death for the Dell-Ubuntu experiment, according to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 blog.

And finding Dell's Linux-equipped PCs at Dell.com isn't easy. What's more apparent is Dell begging its customers to stay with come-ons for Windows XP, which they really, really want you to know they're still selling.

There are no links on the Dell home page, and the first thing you see is the ubiquitous "Dell recommends Windows Vista Home Premium." Of course it does.

But in the dropdown menus for Desktops and Notebooks, there are links for "Open-Source PCs." The headline is "Ubuntu has arrived by popular demand." And there's a handy link, right there in the middle, for Windows users who somehow navigated to the page as if by evil sorcery:

The main thing to note is that when you choose open source you don’t get a Windows® operating system. If you’re here by mistake and you are looking for a Dell PC with Windows, please use the following link.

But for those who do want an open-source box, you can get one from Dell with Ubuntu ... or FreeDOS. Yep, nobody mentioned in this whole Ubuntu-Dell lovefest that the Texas computer giant will ship you a box with FreeDOS on it. What the hell? I'm sure there's a reason for it ...

Here's how Ubuntu describes its FreeDOS offerings:

FreeDOS is a completely stripped down PC operating system for experts and people interested in working in a DOS environment. The main things that set FreeDOS apart from Windows and Ubuntu is that it doesn’t have a graphical interface (i.e., it’s typing only, no mouse) and it only supports DOS applications, such as classic DOS games, business software written for DOS and embedded DOS systems, such as retail cash registers. Generally, users who want FreeDOS know what it is and what they want to do with it. Other users should look to our Ubuntu and Windows platforms.

Embedded DOS systems? If they're out there, I guess it makes sense ... but again, what the hell?

Anyway, when you click through on the Ubuntu link, here's what you get: A mid-level desktop, low- to -mid-level laptop and then a more upscale desktop

Not bad at all. As an exercise for this entry, I "built" a primo XPS 410 system with as many upgrades as made sense (i.e. nothing stupid), no extra warranties or support, and it came in at a hefty $1,964 with Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E6700 (4MB L2 Cache,2.66GHz,1066 FSB), 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™, Dual Drives: 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable, 19 inch Ultrasharp™ SP1908FP Digital Flat Panel, 256MB nVidia Geforce 7300LE TurboCache, Dell A525 30 Watt 2.1 Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer, Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard and 13 in 1 Media Card Reader.

So you CAN spend a ton on a Linux box at Dell.

But here's the kicker for Canonical. Although this disclaimer appears --" Dell provides hardware support only. Software support is available through Canonical and Linux Community" -- there are options available with each system for "Starter Support" ($65), "Basic Support" ($125) or "Standard Support" ($275). That's above and beyond any extra money you want to give Dell for "In-Home Service, Parts and Labor."

Who's providing this non-free support? Certainly the "Linux Community" means Ubuntuforums.org ... but the others must be Canonical, which I hope is ready for what could be an onslaught. It's an experiment, all right, in more ways than three, and it will be very exciting (and I hope not disheartening) to see how it plays out in the months ahead.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Desktoplinux.com has all the reaction to Dell's announcement that it will load Ubuntu Linux onto select desktop and laptop models. It's a good way to find out the mood of those behind the other Linux distros, including Red Hat, Novell, Xandros, Linspire plus a bunch of analysts. It's important reading, for this week anyway.

Here's the part I keyed in on:

Looking ahead, (Raven Zachary, the 451 Group's open-source research director) thinks, "We'll see some wait-and-see from the other hardware vendors: 'Let's see how Dell does with this deal.' Also, you could see Red Hat, Novell, and others swarm in to the other hardware vendors to avoid an Ubuntu sweep."

So can we expect a lot of similar deals in the coming weeks/months? Who's going to bring HP/Compaq, Lenovo and the other hardware makers to the mat?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dell and Canonical have made it official -- the PC-making behemoth will install the No. 1 desktop distro, Ubuntu, on select models. The full interview on video with Mr. Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, is on the Direct2Dell site, which recently asked users what they wanted in their next Dell (most said Linux, and most of those said Ubuntu). But if you don't want to watch the video and would rather read it, go to Ed Burnette's ZDNet blog.

Here's one question and answer:

How did this relationship between Canonical and Dell come about?

I think both organizations have been eyeballing each other for some time. Ubuntu has grown very rapidly as a desktop platform, and many of our users are running Ubuntu on Dell computers. On the Dell side, I think folks have noticed they were hearing about Ubuntu more and more. Michael Dell picked up on the trend of adoption. So, over the last couple years we've slowly been engaging. With the results of the Dell IdeaStorm there was sufficient critical mass for the idea, effectively, to take another step and turn some of those discussions into a project. The team has been working fast and furiously on that for the last couple months.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

George Ou, who writes the Real World IT blog for ZDNet, did a lengthy analysis of Microsoft Office 2007 vs. the free Open Office 2.2 suite. Not surprisingly, Open Office continues to be a resource hog, although the situation is improving over previous releases. Go to the entry for all the numbers, but here are some of his findings:

Office 2007 base memory consumption went up significantly compared to the Office 2003 I measured last year, but it's still significantly less than OpenOffice.org 2.2. Some of the OpenOffice.org applications, like Base, require Java to run, and the memory consumption spikes over 70 megabytes as soon as you start navigating in the interface. However, the difference between Microsoft and OpenOffice.org base resource consumption has gotten smaller.

... we can see that the OpenOffice.org ODF XML parser (while vastly improved) is still about 5 times slower than Microsoft's OOXML parser. OpenOffice.org also seems to consume nearly 4 times the amount of RAM to hold the same data. While OpenOffice.org continues to have fewer features than Microsoft Office, it continues to consume far more resources than Microsoft.

... It would appear that OpenOffice.org 2.2 has gotten significantly better than version 2.0, but it still has a lot to work on. ... So while I may still consider OpenOffice.org a resource pig, the pig has definitely lost some weight.

Since this is an open-source vs. MS issue (and, to some extent, a Linux vs. Windows issue, even though OO has both Linux and Windows versions), there are dozens of comments in various states of support and anger. At least one points out that once you open one Open Office app, it's quicker to open another one.

It's hard not to notice that Microsoft Office apps open extremely quickly in Windows (and, of course, they don't open at all in Linux, unless you're doing so under Wine). I have MS Office 6 on my old Mac Powerbook 1400, and that version is a real, honest-to-God dog, it's so slow. But on a modern Windows box, MS Office is, if anything, fast as hell.

On my Windows box (which DOESN'T have MS Office), the Open Office "Quickstarter" is always sitting in RAM, allowing a fairly quick start of the program. I don't quite know how I feel about it in terms of resources. I don't really use OO that much -- I'm mostly running our paper's publishing system (Unisys Hermes) and for blog writing, when I'm not working directly in Movable Type, I use AbiWord or EditPad. And I open about one spreadsheet a month (I'm a total Excel-phobe) in OO.

I use OO so little on the Windows box, I'm still on version 1.1.4. I have version 2 downloaded; I just have to get around to installing it. We have MS Office on the iBook at home, but I'm not all that comfortable using it (I've gottten rusty in Word over the years). Of course, I have OO on most of my Linux systems, but I'm mostly using AbiWord and a variety of text editors at this point. My love affair with KWrite pretty much stalled when the only time I could get "typograpical quotes" to work was in MepisLite, a distro that Mepis pretty much abandoned. In both Slax and Kubuntu, the "smart" quotes don't work. So it's AbiWord for the moment (and I'm hoping for my two most-wanted AbiWord features -- "smart" quotes and the ability to change the case of letters from the keyboard -- to be added, though I am not holding my breath).

But in the larger world of open source and Linux, Open Office is VERY important. The fact that it's free is a powerful incentive to use it -- and since it covers most of MS Office's bases, it's essential for many who might consider switching to Linux for desktop use. To "sell" open source apps and operating systems to the unbelieving public, you've gotta be able to deal with MS file formats, and while AbiWord and Gnumeric suffice, OO is better, albeit way slower. But if you're spending your whole day in, say, OO Writer, you load it once and keep it running -- start times for the program aren't such an issue.

For instance, I use the GIMP a whole lot, and while it's slow to load, as long as I've got the memory to run it, I just start it when I first need it and leave it running. Not something I'd recommend with less than 512 MB (and something I'd definitely recommend with 1 GB). But for low-resource Linux systems, mtPaint does what I need -- and it loads in a few seconds. The same is true in Windows: Irfanview isn't as powerful as the GIMP, and the former program is kind of quirky at times, but it does a pretty good job of editing images.

Of course, the best thing to do is get a PC with tons of CPU power and memory and just be blissfully unaware of all this.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's not official, but sources tell Desktoplinux.com that when Dell begins offering PCs pre-equipped with Linux, the distribution that will go on those boxes will be ... Ubuntu:

Analysis -- Officially, Dell Inc. hasn't said a word yet about which Linux it will be preloading on its desktops and laptops. Several sources within Dell, however, have told DesktopLinux.com that Dell's desktop Linux pick is going to be Ubuntu.

While unable to confirm this through official Dell channels, we have heard the same story now from several internal Dell sources. They tell us that the Austin, Texas, computer giant will be preinstalling the newly released Ubuntu 7.04. These systems will be released in late May 2007.

That means Red Hat (RHEL/Fedora) and Novell (SLED/openSUSE) will NOT be the "winners" of the Dell-puts-Linux-on-the-desktop-for-you sweepstakes. Part of the reason has to be the ability of Canonical to support Ubuntu for those willing to pay, and the vast Ubuntu fan base offering support through the forums for the rest.

Another question: Will Dell's probable embrace of Ubuntu change its Linux offerings in the server market? Currently Dell offers servers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a "non-factory install" -- and for a pricey $1,900 for a three-year subscription, and SUSE Enterprise Linux for much, much less (depending on the length of your "subscription, either 3 or 1 years, you get a $101 to $500 discount from the base cost with Windows Server 2003) -- or with no OS for a $799 discount from the Windows-equipped product. Will they throw Ubuntu on your server AND give you an $800 break?

Regarding the desktop, I think Dell made the right choice. Ubuntu continues to be white-hot in its popularity, and new releases continue to stream out every six months. The majority of people who answered Dell's recent inquiry about what they wanted on THEIR next Dell asked for Linux -- and specifically Ubuntu, so Dell is betting wisely.

And with Dell focusing at least some of its PC offerings on being compatible with Ubuntu, it can only mean good things as far as other hardware vendors doing the right thing and supporting Linux on their products.

What remains to be seen is whether there will be a discount for buying a desktop system with Ubuntu as opposed to Windows (be it Vista or XP). Microsoft can't be very happy about this, but with Dell being probably their biggest customer (or at least right up there with Compaq/HP), Redmond's leverage isn't what it would be with a smaller vendor.

And for Dell's customers, the lure of a discount -- and all of the free software in Ubuntu -- will be enough to entice them to try Linux. It's a gamble for Dell, but with Vista's current problems, the odds are in the hardware giant's favor. It's also a win for Ubuntu, which has already experienced phemonenal growth and can probably handle the much-higher stakes that the Dell deal will bring.

Again, the loser is Microsoft. Preinstalled Linux (and non-installed Windows) hits them where they live. And if Dell and Ubuntu make it clear that Open Office can sub for MS Office, it can't be good for Microsoft.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There's been some noise on the Web about the Debian Linux distribution changing the name of Firefox to IceWeasel in order to not run afoul of copyright. Debian goes ever further: Besides Firefox becoming IceWeasel, the Thunderbird mail client is IceDove, and Mozilla's great SeaMonkey Web suite (a direct descendant of Netscape Communicator) is IceMonkey.

As far as I know, there's nothing new here (and Desktoplinux.com covered it last year). I remember booting up Knoppix 5.1.1 months ago and seeing Iceweasel -- and not knowing (or caring) why the name was changed. At least it looked, smelled and ran like Firefox.

And IceWeasel, as a name, is a little more edgy, don't you think? But in the Oct. 9. 2006, editorial also linked to above, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols elaborates on why renaming Firefox as IceWeasel is a bad idea for Debian in particular and Linux in general.

And in case you were wondering, the images above are the logos for the respective programs. Get it? Fire ... Ice ... Fox ... Weasel ...

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I spent the day upgrading my new Xubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) installation to Xubuntu 7.04 (Feisty), and since Xubuntu is derived from Ubuntu, far and away the most popular Linux distribution for the desktop, I expected -- and still expect -- a lot more from it.

During my nearly month-long Thin Puppy Torture Test (chronicled extensively in this blog), I managed to get quite a bit of work done with my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (1 GHz VIA processor, 256 MB RAM, no disk drives at all), most of it related to producing this and other Daily News blogs. From extensive Web surfing to light photo editing, heavy writing and use of Movable Type for Web publishing, Puppy Linux 2.14 performed admirably, even if, along the way, I lost the ability to mount external drives and couldn't really deal with large audio files due to the lack of available memory. But for the basics, Puppy did the job, day in and day out.

With Xubuntu, I hooked up a 14.4 GB hard drive and a 32x CD-RW drive. And by the time I installed Xubuntu, I expected to get even more real work done. This time I seek to up the ante, doing work for Dailynews.com, which entails working with larger photo files (downloaded from services such as GettyImages.com and WireImage.com, although the latter offers a choice of smaller images to begin with).

And eventually, it means, installing some version of Wine (allowing use of Windows programs without the Windows OS installed), with Internet Explorer 6 running, because the Daily News Web publishing system requires IE. (And for the love of God, WHY??)

As far as text editors go, I can use just about anything. Even the anemic Mousepad editor that comes with Xubuntu would be OK, even though I prefer Geany, and even EditPad for Windows. And since Xubuntu's word processor, AbiWord is so light on resources and quick-loading, that could really serve as a text editor for my purposes.

And when it came to image editing, Xubuntu offers the GIMP, which though part of the GNOME office suite (featuring the loosely tied-together AbiWord, Gnumeric for spreadsheets and the GIMP), is a true resource hog, taking a full minute to load in Xubuntu on my 1 GHz box. For my purposes at least, I'm very familiar with the GIMP, as I've been using the Windows version for at least a year (and never having used Photoshop, had nothing to "unlearn"). So already the GIMP is a mismatch for Xubuntu, if indeed one is running it on "low-spec" hardware. I missed mtPaint from Puppy (which I just might install for Xubuntu, if I can figure it out), but I didn't miss the paint program that comes with Damn Small Linux, which doesn't do nearly what I need.

Long story short, I did work on about five photos for Dailynews.com, but the times required to save them in the GIMP really had me thinking about whether or not Xubuntu on this platform could handle this level of work. But I had to stop myself. I don't recall working with original images this big in Puppy 2.14. I mostly took images already sized for the Web and then made them even smaller. Even the GIMP in Xubuntu could make relatively quick work of that. And as far as general Web work with Firefox in Xubuntu, it went smoothly. I was even able to add the Flash plug-in for Firefox without working up a geekish sweat (translation: no command line needed, no Synaptic Package Manager, just clicking in the bar on Firefox to get the needed plug-in -- it was positively Windows-like).

When I write my full-length review of Xubuntu, I'll recount my odyssey of getting network printing working. Yes, it did take me most of the day, and yes, I'm surprised at how unintuitive Xubuntu's printer-configuration utility actually is (I gave up and used the CUPS interface), and I'm shocked that I got printing working much, much easier in both Puppy and DSL (and MepisLite ... and Slax and Knoppix and even standard Ubuntu Dapper). But that's another battle to recount on another day.

Suffice it to say that my first full day with Xubuntu Feisty was maybe a bit less bumpy than expected, especially given the high expectations I have for something that's billed as a speedier version of the hottest desktop Linux distribution on the planet -- however dubious such a distinction may be.

But in my search for answers on whether or not Xubuntu and its Xfce desktop interface is truly ready for real work (or at least for what it is that I do to put out Web pages and newspapers), I'm going to have to compare it to Zenwalk 4.4.1, which features the same interface but is built upon Slackware, as opposed to Ubuntu/Xubuntu's base of Debian. And I'll have to do a traditional hard-drive install of Puppy to see how it performs in that kind of traditional install (and whether that kind of setup allows me to deal with the kinds of large files that I do, in fact, have to process during the course of my day).

And last ... and only least if you think of it that way ... I will do a standard Windows 2000 install on the 1 GHz thin client (because I've got a 2000 disc and not one with XP on it) ... load it up with the requisite open-source apps (Open Office, AbiWord, the GIMP, Avast antivirus, Firefox, even SeaMonkey) to have a truly well-played field on the same hardware before drawing any definite conclusions in the battle for OS supremacy on my low-spec desktop. And honestly, as I work on this entry at home on an iBook G4 1 GHz/384MB laptop with OS X 10.3.9, and seeing how well it runs, I can't leave Apple and its BSD-derived operating system out of the equation.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Stephen J. Vaughn-Nichols of DesktopLinux.com (and LinuxDevices.com and Linux-Watch.com) throws it down over Microsoft's plan to sell a Windows/Office package for $3 in the developing world:

Officially, the goal is to help bring social and economic opportunity through new products and programs to as many as possible of the potential 5 billion people who do not yet use Microsoft products.

What a lot of bull feces. The goal is to kill open source off at its roots. Microsoft wants to make sure that young people in developing countries get brainwashed into the Microsoft way of computing.

...

And he thinks the plan, if implemented, will fail:

I don't think, however, that Microsoft will get away with it. Dumping product is a no-no in any country's trade plans. Besides, a home-grown version of Linux, OpenOffice, and Thunderbird is still cheaper than Microsoft's $3 suite. People who don't live in places where Microsoft rules have also realized that, while the first taste of Microsoft products may be free, the long-term costs are enormous.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I probably should've tried Zenwalk Live 4.4.1, which was released Wednesday, but I figured that since Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 is out today (or at least that's when Distrowatch announced it), I might as well get Feisty. I thought I would try Xubuntu instead, given that my hardware is generally as old as the hills, but Xubuntu seems to be the only official 'Buntu NOT to have a release at this time. Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edbuntu are all available ... that is if you can get them. All the mirrors are crazy busy -- I started one download that said it would take 36 hours (and I have a wicked-fast connection). I couldn't seem to even start any more downloads of the ISO for the Ubuntu 7.04 Live CD, and I was surprised when I was able to begin a much-faster download of the alternate-install CD.

In my last post, I recounted how the Xubuntu 6.10 alternate CD would not install on my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client. Well, today I decided to shove a few more CDs into the drive to see what would happen. I began with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, the long-term support edition of Ubuntu. It booted, no problem. But I hesitate to continue with the install because my Feisty download should be done in 3.5 hours.

I did like Zenwalk 4.2, and I will be looking at 4.4.1, but let's face it, in a month that has seen new releases of Debian and Mepis, plus my personal favorites Puppy and Damn Small Linux, Ubuntu is the 9,000-pound gorilla of Linux, and it must be contended with.

... Now my download is saying four hours ... time to install 6.06.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sorry about the long title, but some things just piss me off so much. In this case, I want to make it clear that Microsoft isn't 100 percent to blame -- maybe 80 percent, since half the times that Microsoft tries to add value to their operating system, software companies that make money downstream by selling you stuff that would be made obsolete by that added value start bitching about it -- and the feds tell MS to back off.

And while I'm no Microsoft apologist, the consumer often gets screwed in the process. But that doesn't have to happen. There are some excellent free antivirus programs out there (I prefer Avast), and just about everybody knows that Open Office can replace MS Office, GIMP can replace Photoshop, Firefox subs for Internet Explorer, Thunderbird and Evolution (not to mention Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and the like) replace Outlook ... (and, of course, Linux can replace Windows, if you're so inclined).

So now on to my point -- and I do have one. The state of multimedia -- audio and video -- on the Internet is a big hot mess. Microsoft controls the Windows Media format. The MP3 format, which can get you a swift summons from the Recording Industry Association of America, has recently led to lawsuits over royalties for use of the format itself -- and besides that it's lossy and sounds compressed. Apple's AAC is somewhat more accessible, but there still is licensing and proprietary technology involved, and Apple Lossless is another proprietary format.

But there is an alternative: the Ogg Vorbis standard for audio and Theora for video are free, open-source alternatives, and Ogg is the primary multimedia format being used by Wikipedia. For true audiophiles, Ogg's FLAC codec -- used by the Philadelphia Orchestra for its online muslc offerings -- allows for compression but is lossless, unlike MP3 and AAC.

But can your computer play them. (Go to the Ogg Vorbis site for setup info, or keep reading). If you have a Linux box, you're in luck -- just about all the players on that platform can handle the audio Oggs, and many (including mplayer, xine, helix and VideoLAN) support the Theora video format as well.

But what if you have a Windows box? Windows Media Player handles MS's own audio/video format and will play MP3s, but it won't play Ogg files without a helper app. Luckily you can play OGGs on a Web page (as Wikipedia does on this C.P.E. Bach excerpt) if your browser uses Java.

Or you can download an application that will make your Windows Media Player (or other player) able to handle Ogg files. So if you are running Windows Media Player (which I do -- I happen to like it), download and run the program, and then download an Ogg file (like this version of "Giant Steps" by John Coltrate from Wikipedia), right-click on the file, then left-click on Open With and then navigate to Choose Program and choose Windows Media Player as the default app for Ogg files. Then when you click on an Ogg link on Wikipedia or elsewhere, the file will download and play in your Windows Media Player

For Mac OS X users, there are some players available that will handle Oggs (again, check the Ogg Vorbis page), but if you use iTunes (and what Mac user doesn't?), there's a plug-in to enable it to play Oggs.

And for all of these platforms, the Democracy Player is open source and handles just about every video format on the Web, including Theora.

Bottom line: In this case, Microsoft and Apple should add Ogg support to their players straight out of the box. Nobody would complain, sue or petition the government if they did. Users should not be steered toward and forced to use restricted file formats when free, quality open-source alternatives are available. Luckily there are work-arounds for this problem, as I have described above, and I encourage all of you to implement them on your own boxes, tell others about them and help your fellow users do the same.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Now that the news is out about OEMs losing the ability to ship boxes with Windows XP by the end of the year, everybody's writing about it. I particularly enjoyed Jeremy Page's piece from the Ars Technica journal One Microsoft Way (and as I said before, it may be the address of the company HQ in Redmond, but since there's really only one Microsoft way, it's entirely apropos):

Although it's not unusual for Microsoft to push hard for their customers to upgrade to the latest version of Windows, this time they may need to take more care with their customer's feelings. Although Windows still dominates the operating system market, Apple is now a name that most users are comfortable with both from iPods and from iTunes. There are also several Linux distributions working very hard to be easy for non-IT savvy folks. People do have alternatives, more than any time since Windows 95 pulled the rug out from under IBM's OS/2 Warp.

Ah ... if Apple could just ship Leopard already. While I don't think the Linux desktop is anywhere near ready, at this juncture, to take over the world, there will probably be a whole lot of people sampling Ubuntu, Mepis and other Linux distros. ... and if Apple makes good on the rumor of free iWork and iLife with 10.5, it could spell real trouble for MS.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Leopard -- known by number as Mac OS X 10.5 -- previously expected to begin showing its spots in June, will instead go to retail in October. That just raises expectations even more for Apple, which will have a quickly maturing Windows Vista to deal with, instead of flooding the channel with something that could beat the MS OS in functionality, bells, whistles and sheer speed. Now I don't know if any of that will happen, but I do know many, many people who awaiting Leopard with extremely baited breath.

According to ZDnet and via Apple, it's all the iPhone's fault:

…iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team ...

But Apple may be sweetening the pot, also according to Jason D. O'Grady of ZDnet, via Think Secret:

Apple is reported to be mulling the inclusion of iLife and iWork as free part of the OS X package "in an effort to further play up the extra value and features Mac OS X offers over Microsoft's new Windows Vista."

Hmmmm ... free iWork and iLife might prompt even me to upgrade ... and I hate to upgrade (still on Panther 10.3.9).

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SUSE root is a nice evangelist-type site about Novell's SUSE -- specifically openSUSE, that tries to answer the questions that could be asked by a potential user of this extremely popular distro.

Looking at The Distrowatch top 100 distributions, there's Ubuntu at No. 1, followed by openSUSE and Fedora. I'm thinking of trying openSUSE because it's so darn popular, is meant for business use -- and I just want to see how it runs.

I know there's the whole Novell-Microsoft controversy over the two companies partnering and MS' subsequent patent-violation accusation against the entire rest of the Linux community, but sometiimes you've just got to see how the big dogs run, right?

Back to SUSEroot ... Here's their answer to "Should I try SUSE Linux?" Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it may be more honest:

There are a lot of things being said about Linux that are not true. Some well-intentioned Linux fans sometimes try to paint Linux as perfect for everyone and that it will solve all your computing problems; this is a disservice to people considering Linux and to the Linux community because people may try Linux with unrealistic expectations and give up on it when they find out so many things they were told by "Linux Superfans" were untrue or misleading.

I guess that if I'd never tried Linux before and knew very little about it, SUSEroot might just make me say, "Why?" Here's their outro:

Hopefully this has helped someone decide if switching to SUSE Linux and indeed Linux itself, is something they want to do. SUSE and Linux aren't for everyone. If you do decide to try SUSE or another Linux distribution, do some research to find out which one is right for you, make sure your hardaware is compatible, switch with realistic expectations, and realize that there will be a phase where you will be confused and frustrated a lot of the time. SUSE and Linux are evolving very quickly, if you do try Linux and find that you don't like it, give it another try later on, you may find that it has become easier for you or the feature you needed has been incorporated.

Again, if anything, it's reasoned and realistic. In a way, it supports my contention that Windows XP is a very good, stable system, and you have to look inward (oy, that sounds weird) for why you want to run Linux. The site does mention the cost factor -- buying a copy of Windows for every box, and updates, being very expensive. But there's no MS-bashing going on.

The site should pimp this page more, which tells how to install Fluxbox, the lightweight window manager that can make a slower system work better -- way better than with Win XP.

Here's SUSEroot's take on SUSE's place in the Linux pantheon:

As far as "cool factor" goes, a SUSE user is not mocked as much as a Mandrake or Linspire (Lindows) user, but we're aparently inferior to Debian or Slackware users (and certainly subordinate to the guys who shun distributions all together and build their own package). So if you're the kind of person who thinks your operating system says something about you, there you go.

I'm left feeling nonplussed. I guess I want to see some passion, you know? Why are you running SUSE?

Maybe Fedora's fans are more forceful ... maybe not. You sure can't beat the Ubuntu people when it comes to pimping their OS.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Slax is a live CD that I've been very anxious to try. Any distro that claims to be light on hardware -- yet features the KDE desktop -- is something I've got to try. I'm beginning to think KDE gets a bad rap. It runs pretty darn well in this distro, as well as in MepisLite. And I think KOffice is a terrific package, with KWrite being one of the best programs out there for writers.

First things first. Slax is a cutdown version of Slackware, one of the first Linux distributions, and one that remains wildly popular (it's No. 10 on Distrowatch). And it's not Debian, if that means anything. I guess I mention that because so many distros use Debian as their base, it's nice to try something different.

The boot process is pretty good. The script displayed on the screen asks you to log on as root with password "toor" And there are on-screen hints, such as startx to get KDE running, flux to use Fluxbox instead, mc to run Midnight Commander and xconf to autoconfigure the graphics adapter. Startx didn't work for me -- my display didn't cooperate, so I killed X and used xconf, which did work. I got the message, "creating /etc/corg.conf ... all done. Run startx now. If you get black screen, hit Ctrl+Alt+Plus. But all was well, and I was off and running. Later, I changed resolutions in KDE, and the screen looked absolutely terrific in all its 1280 x 1024 majesty. Thanks, KDE!

And if you want to put Slax on your hard drive, slax-install will do just that. Configsave and configrestore will save and restore your file systems,
fileswap will create a swap file. Pretty simple.

Once Slax KillBill goes into KDE, you see a yellow desktop and samurai sword that means you're in KillBill -- named because Wine is included and you can run Windows apps without Win being installed (hence the "Kill Bill" -- as in Gates -- reference).

On the menu, in addition to the KDE button that can launch just about everything, there is a console button, Konqueror, JuK (music), KPlayer (video??) and K3B for CD and DVD burning.

I easily configured my ethernet card for static IP with KDE -- it was as clear and easy as any other distro I've used.

While KillBill has Wine installed, I couldn't manage to get any Win apps to run. Perhaps I'm missing something? I'll try again later.

Another thing: The version of KWord in Slax killbill is 1.5.2, with KDE 3.5.4. I some trouble getting "smart" quotes working -- it just wouldn't do it. I didn't have this problem in MepisLite, the distro in which I fell in love with KWord. The "current" version of KWord is 1.6.2, so maybe this is a bug that got squashed.

The KDE desktop in Slax killbill is surprisingly responsive. Menus appear immediately (this being a 3 GHz Dell, I expect that, but I don't always get it).

And I got a nice surprise: Many printers on my network were automatically configured and usable without me doing anything. I was able to print to one immediately ... I wasn't able to configure an additional printer, but I didn't spend a lot of time on it, since I could print elsewhere.

KDE is such a nice desktop -- the screen resize and rotate button on the lower right allowed me to immediately pick my favored resolution -- 1280 x 1024, and as I said above, it looks terrific.

I still love KWord. It's my favorite Linux word processor by far. It's much lighter on resources than Open Office, and I've read that it's even lighter than Abiword.

KDE's Konquerer browser responds fast and displays pages well. There was no Flash player installed, though.

Sound worked fine. I had to tweak it with ALSA Mixer in a terminal window, but that's normal for my PC.

At this stage, the sticking points are the smart quotes in Kword, and for the killbill edition, figuring out how Wine works. (Wine remains a mystery to me. The only time I could do anything with Wine was when I installed IEs4Linux in Xubuntu -- that worked. Now I see why Codeweavers has a business.)

Maybe I need to run Winecfg or something. The reason I burned the KillBill version of Slax first was because one of my goals in running Linux is to port over the two Windows apps that I need at the Daily News -- Internet Explorer (because our in-house Web system requires it -- and no, Firefox won't work) and the Hermes publishing system from Unisys, which is our main software for putting out the paper. I'm not against giving $40 to Codeweavers to make it happen, but I figured that a distro with Wine in it already would somehow be easier to use.

Still, my first impression of Slax is a favorable one. I've already burned CDs of the plain Slax and the smaller Popcorn edition, meant to install on 128 MB flash media. I'll try these in the Dell, and hopefully soon in the Thin Puppy (the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client I'm using to write this post). If it works, will I have to rename that machine Thin Slax? Yes, I will.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's a plug for Geany, the primary text editor in Puppy Linux.

I've been using Geany for a few weeks now, and it's really a nice piece of software. For one thing, it's not foreign to someone who primarily uses full-fledged word processors -- and Windows ones, at that.

I'm not using Geany to write code. I use it to get stuff written fast -- and all the things I want to do, including changing stuff to upper case, to lower case, get word counts, it does it with ease. And there are plenty of keyboard shortcuts to make this and other stuff happen.

Geany uses the GTK+ toolkit, meaning you don't need KDE or GNOME to use it. There are even versions for Mac OS and Windows, if you want to keep things consistent across platforms.

On Windows, I've been partial to EditPad, but with Geany, I don't miss it.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I ran across this site, BSD/Linux Gangster (also known as Linux/BSD Gangsters), and it is freakin' hilarious. Just dip into the forums and be prepared to laugh your geeky ass off.

P.S. The guy pictured on the left is "Mob Tux"

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After asking users what they wanted to see from Dell in the future -- and seeing an overwhelming hue and cry for pre-installed Linux on Dell boxes, the company tells Desktoplinux.com that it will indeed offer computers with Linux preloaded:

(Quoted material begins here) David Lord, a Dell spokesperson, did say, however, that Dell has been listening to its users and that the users want home and office desktops and laptops. Dell's current offering in this area includes the Inspiron and Latitude laptops and the Dimension and OptiPlex desktops.

The new systems, Lord added, will be true pre-installed Linux systems -- and not just a PC with a blank hard drive and a bootable CD or DVD. Software support is likely to come from the community, however, rather than from Dell. Lord added, however, that hardware support on the Dell Linux systems is likely to be the same as it offers on its Windows-powered systems.

According to Lord, Dell will also make buying the new Linux-powered PCs as easy as possible for customers. Specifically how Dell will to do this -- making Linux an option in Dell's standard sales configuration menu, setting up special pages for Dell Linux systems, or some other approach -- the company is not yet ready to say.

(quoted material ends here)

Dell hasn't yet decided (or revealed) which Linux distribution(s) it will offer, but the company already sells servers and workstations with Linux loaded. The company is also committing to open-source drivers whenever possible. And according to DesktopLinux.com, Novell's SUSE Linux is a heavy favorite to be the No. 1 Dell distro.

Expect HP/Compaq to follow with their own preloaded Linux boxes -- and also expect some behind-the-scenes pressure from Microsoft, which tries to ensure that hardware makers load each and every box with Windows (and gives OEMs low-per-box prices as an incentive). Does this mean that MS will start pulling marketing dollars from PC makers? I've read that while it's $150 to $200 to buy a Windows Vista upgrade at retail, a PC maker is only dinged between $25 and $30 (WARNING: all figures are estimates by me and are not to be taken as gospel) per PC, with much of that money coming back in marketing dollars. How MS actually makes money on these deals is a bit harder for me to see (if, in fact, all or any of this is true), but by preserving the market for MS Office, they make it up on the back end, because people pay for that package (even though they could -- and the Daily News does -- opt for the free Open Office suite instead).

Despite all this Linux talk, my main work box runs XP, and I think very highly of the OS (and the plethora of open-source apps that run on it, by the way), but I'm made less happy by the way MS charges so much for upgrades and ignores all but the most recent hardware in the hopes that you will junk what you've got every two years and buy more MS products in the same cycles.

All I'm saying is if Linux goes legit on the desktop (and while I don't think it is ready, Win 3.1 and 95 weren't so ready either in their time), Microsoft is going to have to do a lot of spin ... not that they've never done that before. Linux is definitely not for everybody, but it could be for more bodies if it came preconfigured and if the GUI utilities to manage networking, printing and application installation get better. The Linux command line is there for all to behold, but most normal people rightly want nothing to do with it.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I heard about this Microsoft presentation on how to steer people away from Linux and back to Windows. The link first appeared on Lxer.com, but when word got out, MS took it down.

Luckily the Blog of Helios and others managed to keep a copy so we can all see what Microsoft is up to.

And Mr. Helios also points out that even as MS aims to crush Linux, Ballmer and Co. are still making money off of it with their Novell partnership and the SUSE product.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Imagine if there was only one Linux distribution.

One company or group would control the development, direction and philosophy of the operating system and the user environment. Hardware and software compatibility would be strictly controlled, both in terms of what the OS would run on, and what peripherals and programs would run with it.

Everybody's system -- at some levels, anyway -- would be exactly the same. Security patches would come weekly over the system's five years of support -- and for probably an extra five years of "legacy" support.

But would it -- or could it -- be free, like Linux is today? Even now, there's no stopping companies from selling Linux. Novell and Red Hat do it, though they each sponsor open-source, free-distribution projects on the side. The aims, I figure, are to both recruit paid corporate users by wooing their geeky IT staff and to look less like Microsoft in the process.

You could say that an OS has to cost money. How could such a major undertaking come to any kind of bootable, usable fruition otherwise? All I can say in response is to look at the open-source model and the way the Linux kernel and everything else wrapped around it have developed.

It's been said before -- and I'd sure like to figure out who said it first so I can properly credit him or her: Software wants to be free.

And while Novel and Red Hat are in the business of selling Linux, even as their open-source arms give versions of it away, those companies, along with looming Linux giant Canonical (maker of No. 1 distribution Ubuntu) know that the real money is in support.

Whether it's running Microsoft, Mac OS or Linux, equipment and software in the business world (and at home, too) need support -- and the days of dropping a PC box on a desk with OS and software installed and expecting it all to work -- on day 1, day 100 or day 1,000 -- without technical support from real people, those days were never here and never will be. And that goes for Mac, Windows and Linux.

So when we focus on the configuration issues of installing a Linux distro -- and go through it as many times as we download and burn to CD and now DVD the dozens of distributions out there -- remember that Windows and even Mac OS had and still have these same problems.

Case in point: The cheap HP printer I bought was labeled "Windows compatible." Only the look-alike HP printer that cost $40 more offered Mac compatibility.

What did I do? I took the cheaper one home, trolled the Internet and found the solution. Did I find it at HP.com? Fuck no. Amazom.com's buyer comments on the printer gave me the hack: Go to HP.com, download the Mac driver for the "expensive" printer and install. The cheap printer and the Mac itself wouldn't know the difference. It worked immediately.

And how does Apple get around the nightmare of configuring third-party Wi-Fi adapters? By only supporting Apple-made Airport, that's how. You try finding a Wi-Fi card or USB interface that supports Mac. They ain't out there. You're stuck with Airport. Nice work, Cupertino.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Linux, like Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X, is a computer operating system -- the landscape, if you will, for the work, play and other things we use computers for.

But it gets to the apples (not Apples, cap A) and oranges stage and beyond pretty quickly. While parts of Linux -- the kernel itself, the X windows system, the various graphical user interfaces and other building blocks -- are common across the now-hundreds of distributions that deliver the free OS to desktops and elsewhere, just the fact that there are hundreds of ways to bring Linux to many different kinds of hardware (and for many different working styles) makes it a very distinct fruit (getting back to the apples/oranges thing).

In contrast, there's only one Windows -- Microsoft's. And while XP is still available because the business world demands it (and because much of the new hardware still in the retail channel can't run Vista), good luck if you want to purchase or get support for Windows 2000. Primary support for Win 2K ended in 2005. "Long term" support -- probably security patches and nothing more -- ends in 2010 -- 3 years from now. At least it had a 10-year or so life. But you can't buy Win 2K at retail.

I've heard whisperings about something called "XP Legacy," a cut-down OS that will run on hardware from the Windows 98 and 2000 era. But I can't find any information at Microsoft.com. Apple does the same thing. It's selling OS X 10.4 Tiger for a fairly reasonable $129. But can you get 10.3 Panther from Apple. Not on their Web site. And the new 10.5 Leopard is coming ... I don't know when, but soon. So should I pay $129 to upgrade my Panther to Tiger, then another similar amount to go to Leopard? Nah. I'm sticking with Panther.

But we're starting to get to the point where Mac apps won't run on 10.3, and users will need, at the minimum, 10.4 to install the software they need.

In the Linux space, Ubuntu -- the current No. 1 Linux distribution, according to distrowatch.com -- maintains a six-month release cycle, bringing out new versions of its OS at that interval. And there is one release -- currently 6.06 -- that will receive "long-term support," meaning 18 months of security patches, bug fixes and the like. But you can move to 6.10 and beyond at any time -- for free, of course. Or wait until the next LTS release comes out, if you loathe changing OSes.

Therein lies the beauty of Linux. You can partition a giant hard drive and load 10 separate distros to try them out, upgrade whenever you want -- and delete what you don't. And the only investment is your time and a stank of once-blank CD-R discs.

Ah, but your time ... it is valuable ... and there lies the eternal rub. Linux often takes time to configure and always takes time to learn.

And while hardware configuration troubles can stall a Linux newbie in his or her tracks, I was reminded just this week that Windows doesn't do hardware all that well. The cheap Airlink 101 Wi-Fi card that wouldn't work on This Old PC under Windows 98 is now refusing to work with Windows 2000 -- which I upgraded to for this very purpose. Never mind that the wireless card -- supposedly built by Ralink -- one of the few Wi-Fi card makers to offer an open-source Linux driver, doesn't seem to work under Linux, either (though This Old PC's age as well as my geekery skills, may be at fault). A pending test in the Thin Puppy converted thin client should shed some more electronic light on the issue.

But inherent in the term "distribution," is a generally sizable bundle of software included with a free Linux OS -- usually an office suite, photo-editing program, dozens of utilities, Internet everything (browsers, mail programs, IM and FTP programs, HTML editors). And the big distros offer realtively easy installation of hundreds or thousands of additional applications -- again, all free.

So is "free" the killer app of Linux?

Let's look first at the competition. What are the killer apps of Windows and OS X that make each a must for their adherents? I'll start with the less-obvious for both Windows and Mac -- iTunes (you didn't see that one coming, did you?). Then there's Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook), Adobe Photoshop and ... well, I can't think of anything else.

Mid-editorial news flash: The latest release of Crossover Linux -- the consumer- and business-friendly $40 implementation of Windows emulator Wine reportedly now runs iTunes, in addition to MS Office.

Microsoft Office ... it's another gorilla in the room, but these days not quite the King Kong he used to be.

Linux, without MS Office substitutes Open Office and KOffice, would be the ultimate nonstarter. As it is, these packages offer a very viable alternative -- and did I forget to say free alternative -- to the expensive Microsoft Office.

And there's the GIMP. Though not an full equivalent of Photoshop, it's got plenty of sophistication and is way, way less expensive. Again, it's free. Add to the GIMP at least a half-dozen other image-editing programs, like my current favorite mtPaint, which loads just about instantly in Puppy Linux and does everything I need to prep images for the Web.

And what about the Internet? Linux has everything you need -- even the Evolution mail client -- as well as Mozilla-produced Thunderbird -- to negate of Windows' killer apps, Outlook. And by not being Outlook, they just might avoid lots of nasty spam and system-crippling viruses.

But the free, open-source programs that could be Linux's killer apps -- Opne Office, the GIMP, Mozilla/Firefox -- are for the most part available in Windows versions, too, and often for Mac OS X as well. So it's easy to build an open-source box with everthing but the OS itself available for free. Chances are you're using -- or at least have installed -- Firefox, the current big daddy of open source. And I've also heard that Mac's Safari browser borrows code from Konqueror, the browser/filer for Linux's KDE interface.

So perhaps Linux's killer app is ... the OS itself, the fact that it's not Windows or OS X, not controlled by a single corporation, is free now and in the future, and can be -- and probably already is -- freely modified into a configuration that suits your needs as a user.

Of course free and open top the list. Windows and Mac OS do work well for most of the people, most of the time. But neither, by their very nature, encourage free, upgradable, machine-tuned computing. The advantage Win and Mac OS do have are vast user bases offering many people and resources with which to get help.

And while Ubuntu's forums are nipping at their heels, yet another double-edger for Windows and OS X is that each has only a few variants out there in the world, while there are hundreds of different Linuxes (though they share many, many commonalities).

So whether you choose Windows, OS X or Linux, each presents strengths, weaknesses, challenges and opportunities. And competition for loyalty on the desktop makes everybody better.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The South African guy who's made of money (yep, he blew a bunch of it on going into space -- as in orbit) and is now using a pile of it to bankroll Ubuntu (and the support company Canonical) has a blog that's updated quite frequently.

I'd say that Shuttleworth is the most important guy in the world of Linux at the moment, so what he thinks is way more important than, say, what I think. So do the right thing and bookmark it.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the past week, I paid visits to Barnes & Noble and Borders, looking for Linux books. Now, computer books are big business, they sell a lot, and Linux is one of the hottest categories when it comes to computer buzz -- and people need books to help them figure this stuff out.

But the selection at both stores was anemic. The entire Linux section was dwarfed by just about every other section. There are more books on Photoshop than on Linux. More books on networking certification, even more books on Flash. Say what you will, but without Amazon, we'd be in big trouble.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After going through my 10th or 13th eBay auction for old PC laptops that, if the world wasn't crazy, should be selling for $100 and often less, but usually sell for $150 to even $250. Even 233 MHz laptops with 5 GB hard drives, 64 MB RAM, Windows 95, no USB ports and no onboard Ethernet are bringing $150 to $200. THAT'S A DOORSTOP, PEOPLE. It's not worth more than $30. But the demand is out there, on Craigslist AND on eBay. You don't see anything older than a Pentium I, and barely even those. It's mostly Pentium II-class, and if it's running more than 400 MHz, look out -- it's going to cost you.

What's wrong with you people? You can get a freaking Dual Core notebook NEW for $500 if you wait for the right sale at Staples or Circuit City. An 8-year-old has-been piece of crap should NOT be selling for $150 to $200. Have you all lost your minds?

I got pissed enough to fire up This Old Mac -- the 117 MHz PowerPC-based Powerbook 1400, circa 1996, that forms the basis of my relationship to old computers.

Now don't get me wrong. Nobody's paying big money, on eBay or anywhere else, for PB 1400s -- and with good reason: They max out at 64 MB of RAM (I've got 48 MB stuffed in mine) and have a hell of a time running Mac System 8, let alone OS 9 -- and forget about OS X. That will never, ever in a million years happen. I'm running System 7.6.1, regarded by many as the perfect OS for this laptop. The only mail program that works with today's POP and IMAP services is Netscape 4.x. and it's damned slow. I always say you've got to use apps tuned to the system, apps which are processor-speed- and memory-appropriate. Well, that would be Claris E-Mailer, and it plain doesn't work. Same is true for MS Office 6.0, supposedly rewritten for PowerPC at the time of the 1400's release, but which takes forever to load. Again, ClarisWorks is a better fit, and WriteNow even better still. But neither offers credible Word-compatible formatting.

All I'm saying is that a PC-compatible laptop running at 300 MHz is better than the 1400, but not THAT much better. And if you skipped over that line -- NOBODY IS PAYING CRAZY PRICES OF ANY SORT FOR POWERBOOK 1400s. Now Pismo and Walstreet laptops still command crazy prices, and that holds true for other Powerbook G3s and G4s. But they all cost about $1K new. There's no new $400 or $500 Mac laptop ... so it takes them that much longer to get down below $200 ... or so goes the theory.

But the silver lining is ... if you either already own a laptop or are considering buying one, your investment is safe. Three to five years from now, or even longer, you can turn it around on eBay and get a chunk of money for your trouble. Capitalism, baby ...

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m writing this from MepisLite — the ‘lite’ version of the well-regarded SimplyMepis Linux distribution, which though configured for older systems (just how old I’ve yet to determine) nevertheless uses the KDE desktop environment, which many prefer over the GNOME desktop that runs Ubuntu (although KDE is available for Ubuntu either in its Kubuntu incarnation or as an add-on package).

I was thinking, as I drove in today, how Abiword is such a nice program — fast loading, able to read and write Microsoft Word-format files (a must for the publishing world, even though the Daily News publishing system handles Word and text files with equal aplomb). But its one fatal flaw is a lack of smart quotes — or any ability to easily type directional quotes manually.

The argument against smart quotes (and directional quotes, for that matter) is that they’re not needed (meaning true geeks don’t use them) and that they’re the spawn of Microsoft, and therefore inherently evil. All I can say is that these people are not writers or editors, or at the very most not writers or editors outside the world of blogs, which by default don’t have smart quotes. But the print world does have directional quotation marks, and a word processor, by convention, is different than a plain text editor in that it inserts more formatting to make a printed document look good.

Yesterday, in frustration at not being able to acquire an older PC-compatible laptop (in the 300-500 MHz) range for a price that I consider sane (that price being $100 or less), I fired up This Old Mac, the 117 MHz PowerPC-based Powerbook 1400 that runs System 7.6.1. It does the Internet begrudgingly with Internet Explorer 5 (still the best browser for 7.6.1), a little less well with Netscape 4.x, which I also use as a very slow mail client and newsgroup reader. That said, Netscape is currently the ONLY mail client runs under 7.6.1 and works with today’s POP and IMAP e-mail systems. Not Eudora, Claris, or even Outlook 4.5 (you need at least version 5.something). I’ve tried them all.

But getting back to my point. I ran the supremely fast WriteNow — a program whose copywright is somewhere around 1990 — that’s 17 years ago, my friends, and IT HAS SMART QUOTES. Same for the writing portion of ClarisWorks. But neither can make an acceptable MS Word-compatible document. I don’t even know if they can do Rich Text Format. They’re fast as hell (especially WriteNow), but without file compatibility, not very useful. I do have Office 6.0 on the Powerbook, which, despite being written for PowerPC, isn’t very swift at all.

So if an 11-year-old Powerbook has THREE word processing programs with smart quotes, the Linux of today should offer that feature — and allow it to be turned on or off — on each and every word processor available for the platform. Open Office has it, but for older systems, it would be better to run Abiword or Ted. Abiword, as I said, is ideal, because it saves in Word format. But it doesn’t offer smart quotes. It did at one time. It was buggy, so I read, but instead of fixing it, the programmers decided to keep it geek friendly (and writer unfriendly) and offer straight quotes only.

This brings me to KOffice, with which I’m writing this entry. So far the program works great. It’s very Word-like — but very fast, with great auto correction. And under Settings---Configure Autocorrection there is the provision to turn on or off smart quotes and other various kinds of auto correction that are typically offered in Word and Open Office.

But KOffice doesn’t offer a direct, simple “save as” Word format. There’s Abiword, Open Office (for which even Word is getting an optional filter), HTML (actually freakin’ useful), even Palm (why? unless KOffice will sync my Palm, and it just might, but who knows?) Lotus Amipro (does ANYBODY use that?), Word Perfect, Microsoft Write (at least it’s close) and RTF, which is labeled as “Microsoft Word compatible.” No Word.

Well, maybe it’s time for me to get comfortable with Rich Text Format, since that’s offered in Ted as well, and since I like KOffice so well at this point, being in giddy smart-quote heaven, I just might learn to live with it.

(As an aside, I realize that blogs entries do not commonly use directional quotation marks, but would it kill you to see them? No worry, back to straight quotes in the blog after this.)

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

When I talk about thin clients -- hell, even I didn't know what they were a month ago -- I do so with the belief that in the future, perhaps near but definitely far, we will all be working on computers that, like today's thin clients:

-- Will have no moving parts

-- Will be much smaller than standard PC boxes.

-- And will work with tight applications loaded into solid-state memory, augmented greatly by both applications and data served over the Internet (or, more likely, the freakisly fast and vast successor to today's Internet that, one day, will replace every other media, information and communications delivery system and make today's Web look like a smoke-belching Model T).

Along those lines:

-- Expect laptops with "disk on module" (basically giant flash drives) replacing traditional spinning hard-disk technology in the next six months.

-- Look for Google and Microsoft to up the stakes in their Web-delivered applications technology in the next year.

-- And expect a major broadcast network to offer a 24-hour online feed in the next two years.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via a link from Low End Mac, I came across this great Wired roundup of tools for writers, electronic and not, which brings together some of the other gadgets I've meant to blog on, and introduced me to some new things I've got to check out.

I've already heard about the Alphasmart Neo, a $250 laptop-like device with a full-keyboard and smallish LCD screen. It's aimed at a pure writing experience, and the best thing is that it weighs less than 2 pounds and runs 700 hours on a set of three AA batteries. Yes, I didn't say 7 hours, but 700. It's already been blogged about by the O'Reilly people here and here.

The Wired people also discuss their favorite pens, laptops, and two writing programs that intrigue me enough to try them out:

RoughDraft for Windows and Scrivener for Mac OS X. The best news about these two programs is that RoughDraft is sold on a "donation" basis, and Scrivener, although needing OS X 10.4 to run, costs only $34.99 after a 30-day trial. I don't have 10.4 on the iBook at home, and I don't do much writing on it, either, but I will give RoughDraft a try and report back.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Besides its current play to remain king of the desktop with Vista, Microsoft is quietly (or not so much, depending on your definition of "quietly" -- see the fake newspaper above) making a case for Windows Server over Linux for delivering Web pages, running databases and the like. Check out this Microsoft page, peppered with testimonials and full "case studies" from entities that found Linux hard to manage and, as a result, turned from Linux back to the boys and girls of Redmond.

Here are a couple of quotes:

"Many people underestimate how complex a Linux cluster is to set up and manage. After that, it’s a long learning curve just to be able to use it."

— David Dai, Computer Science PhD Student, Advanced Research Institute Virginia Tech

"One of our scientific programmers had to spend a large portion of his time being ‘the Linux guy.’ Now he can focus on creating chemistry applications instead of on cluster maintenance."

— Matt Wortman, Genome Research Institute, University of Cincinnati

Funny, it is, that the "case studies" are downloadable ... in Microsoft Word format. Glad I have Open Office (and now Abiword) so I can read the damn thing.

Here's a bit of the case study on Continental AG:

IT experts at Continental AG first tested the options of a Linux platform. Supported by Sun, Continental had also evaluated StarOffice. According to Rölz, however, using a Linux/open-source solution would have necessitated an “unmanageable migration expense,” especially because individual Microsoft Office documents and solutions would not have been convertible. Moreover, a series of important applications that run exclusively on Microsoft software would have made it necessary to run virtualization software on a Citrix application server in the background of any new Linux platform.

So ... they clearly haven't heard of Open Office. If they do have a number of "important applications" that only run in Windows, I'll give them that one, but ... what ... exactly ... are ... those "important apps"? In-house hacks, or commericially available programs for which Linux-compatible equivalents could be found?

Then:

Continental chose a uniform client-server infrastructure based on the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system (for its server computers) and the Windows® XP Professional operating system (for workstations and portable computers). The company decided to equip each client computer with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003.

They bought the whole shebangy --- the Server software, plus XP and Office for all desktops.

By way of explanation:

“We were especially concerned about Microsoft Excel macros and Microsoft Access databases that had been developed over the years by many employees at different sites and that over time had evolved into important tools without anyone’s noticing,” reports Dr. Bernd Thomas, Manager of Corporate IT Infrastructure at Continental AG.

What can you do? I'm not an Excel guy, so I don't know how Excel macros migrate over to Open Office's spreadsheet, or Gnumeric, for that matter. But did they test this? Did they try to migrate some of these files over to even the Windows version of Open Office to see how they run?

If you're married to Microsoft Office, I can't tell you to change. And if you're a big, moneyed corporation like Continental AG, I guess price is, if not "no object," at least not as much of an object as it is here, at the Daily News, where we run XP, but no other Microsoft apps. And our main editorial software from the Unisys company runs on Windows and Mac (although we don't run it on OS X), and I believe also will run on Linux (but I'll have to check that one) -- it's very platform-independent, as far as that goes. We all have Open Office, and nobody has complained that it's not as good as Word. I know OO isn't as good as MS Office, but it's plenty good enough -- and free, with no looming, expensive upgrades down the road.

There's been plenty of talk lately about whether or not Linux is ready for the desktop. In a touch of irony, I think it's not ready for the casual home user -- it's still in the realm of hobbyist types, even though reatailers such as Wal-Mart are offering Linspire-equipped boxes to consumers.

On the business desktop, I think Linux has an even better chance. After all, when cost is king, Linux can offer a better deal ... out of the box, as it were. If the choice of hardware and OS is based on applications -- and with many business applications becoming Web-based (such as the way I'm writing this blog in Movable Type), it doesn't matter whether the box is running Windows, Linux or Mac OS -- all that matters is whether or not it has a Web browser and some kind of office suite when needed. The temptation to save $200 a box on the OS and somewhere between $300 and $600 on suite software -- and even more on antivirus and related security products -- is powerful indeed. And if the IT people in charge are committed to making Linux work with the hardware chosen, a savings of $800 to $1000 per workstation on software costs, multiplied by hundreds or thousands of PCs, becomes very real money indeed. That's where Linux has its "in," from the cubicle to the shop floor and beyond.

I'm not coming at this as a Microsoft hater -- I use XP every day, and my experience has been very, very good. But I am not using any MS apps, simply because my employer didn't want to pay for them. A wise choice, because our need for that functionality is secondary -- and ably satisfied with Open Office. I even applaud the decision not to purchase Photoshop for everybody. Sure, the photo-department pros have it on their Macs, but for the rest of us, who are pretty much just shrinking and cropping JPGs for the Web, the GIMP is more than sufficient. In fact, I'd like a program with fewer features that loads faster, but nothing else out there will do the job. The best I've found is IrfanView, which is a great photo viewer and pretty good image manipulator -- just not as good as the GIMP.

But since both programs are free, I was able to test them on actual work before I committed to learning one or the other -- and I tested those two and many more.

I applaud the many programmers out there who are offering their work either as shareware or in time-limited trial versions, with a nominal fee due if you continue to use the program. That way, you can decide if it's valuable enough to merit continued use. Codeweavers, the grown-up version of Wine emulation for Linux, and Parallels, which enables Windows and Linux programs to run on OS X are two such programs that allow you to try before you buy -- and which don't cost an arm and a leg if you do decide to pay up. Add to that EditPad, which is free for non-commercial use, and available in a commercial version for $49.99. So between free and $100 per app, there are many ways to get stuff done with a computer.

OK, I realize I'm totally off-track, but another school of thought says that Vista's late and incomplete arrival, coupled with the impending release of the new version of OS X will make things very, very dicey for Microsoft. And if even one of the current or even future Linux distributions steps up and brings true ease of use when it comes to installation, automatic hardware configuration and software management, the whole business of operating systems could shift. (And at this point, that distro is Ubuntu, especially after its alliance with Linspire and impending use of the latters's CNR click-and-run software installation system.)

And remember, there's money to be made with Linux, especially when it comes to support. Ubuntu's parent, Canonical is doing it, and even HP is making good money propping up Linux, bringing in $25 million in fiscal 2006 alone.

See -- when you don't own the OS, you follow the money. And when you're an IT consumer at the business level, you seek savings and relative sanity. So, workers of America, your next PC just might be running Linux; and remember, it's a money thing.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sure open-source applications and open-source operating systems are intertwined, but I think the near future is all about people using open-source apps on non-Linux operating systems, i.e. using free software on their existing Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms.

It's a natural progression from paying for all software (or, all too commonly, "stealing" those apps) and suffering through the upgrades that follow, paying again and again, yet not having the shock to the system, bodily and computer-wise, of trying to get Linux to work.

I say this partially because my experiences with OS X and Windows XP on newish hardware are overwhelmingly positive. The OSes pretty much never crash, and apps only crash regularly (and recovery is easy). Additionally, the major apps, in Windows anyway, are tuned to load and work quickly. Try loading Word or IE in Windows -- it's almost instant. That's because, as some say, major components of those programs are preloaded with the OS kernel. Whatever the reason, I like it. I don't see the same speed in OS X -- many apps take too long to load, although they're plenty fast once they get going. But from a stability and compatibility point, the two "major" PC OSes work very, very well.

But since I don't want to pay $140-$200 every couple of years for "upgrades," I'm looking extra closely at Linux.

Still, for the business world, it's possible to use Linux and save money, but it's not likely for the majority of businesses, which are pretty much going to order Windows boxes and plop them on desks. That's where open-source software can really shine. Everybody already uses Firefox, and more and more are using Open Office, even if it is slower than MS Office. It's a lot freer, as in NOT $400 or so, and that makes a big difference when it comes to equipment budgets.

Already at the Daily News, we use OO, and a lot of us need the functionality of Photoshop (or even the "light" version). But the company is not running out and purchasing either the $700-ish Adobe CS or even the $70-ish Photoshop Elements. Instead, a bunch of us are using The GIMP, the open-source image-editing program that runs on Linux, Windows and OS X and, again, while possibly not quite as good as the full version of Photoshop, is a whole lot cheaper, being free and all.

So when it comes to apps, it's a slam dunk to pay nothing instead of hundreds of dollars. For operating systems, it's a tougher non-sell, since the OS generally comes "bundled" with the hardware and is good for the life of the box. I can assure you, this newsroom full of Dell Optiplexes with Windows XP will never see Vista -- and that's a good thing, too, since they don't (and never will) have enough memory or graphics power to properly run the latest MS operating system.

Of course, open-source apps on closed-source operating systems is closer to wholly open-source computing, and the needle is most definitely moving.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Abiword is one of the great free, open-source, multiplatform programs out there. It looks like Microsoft Word, acts like Microsoft Word, yet is faster than Word -- and it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. The only problem -- no smart quotes (since to the Linux geek world, smart quotes are the devil's -- e.g. Microsoft's -- plaything). But I'm learning to live without them, and Abiword is so damn fast, at least I'm getting something for my trouble.

Jeremiah Foster of O'Reilly's Mac blog tells of his brother's surprise when the Microsoft Word on his new Mac suddenly stopped working. Seems it was a "trial" version. He figured that he already paid for Word (even though he didn't), and didn't want to pay any more, so Jeremiah told him about Abiword:

Abiword looks a lot like Word, or rather how you expect Word to look. I have no idea what Word looks like today, with the release of Vista surely the interface has changed in Word but I do not use it. Abiword has all the right buttons in the usual places, it is very easy to get acquainted with its interface. It has all the tools you’d expect, spell checking, various formatting, plus some things you might not expect. One very handy feature is that it reads and writes all kinds of documents. You can use it to write html for example and of course it can read all your Word documents (.doc) and rich text (.rtf) documents. Abiword also has a versioning system. This is particularly useful if you make multiple revisions of your documents or need to get back text you wrote previously. It changes the text of different revisions to make it clear what has changed. It even has a built in tool to report bugs so you can aid in the development of the software.

I already like Abiword better than Open Office (although OO does do smart quotes) because Abi is so much quicker to load, especially on my older hardware. I also like Ted, another slick word processor, which is even quicker to load than Abiword. The only problem: Ted doesn't save in Word's .doc format ... and it's Linux/Unix only.

Another word processor I've had occasion to use in the last week was KWord, part of the KOffice suite that works with KDE desktops under Linux. KDE is known for being slow, but that doesn't have to be the case, I've learned. MepisLite, the still-developing little brother to the SimplyMepis Linux distribution, is surprisingly responsive for a KDE-bases system -- and it's designed to work on older hardware. KOffice ran great, but the one problem I see so far is, again, no .doc option for saving files -- is that so hard, people? Like it or not, and I really do not, Word is the de facto standard for formatted documents, and it's almost as make-or-break as smart quotes for professional publishing. And if you're calling your suite KOFFICE and KWORD, shouldn't they be compatible with the programs from which their names were derived?

I plan to explore MepisLite and SimplyMepis further, so I imagine I'll spend more time in the KOffice world. For real geeks, including Linux creator Linus Torvalds, KDE is much preferred to GNOME due to the former's greater configurability ... and the geekier the better, right?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The G5 CPU is fairly new, super fast ... and fading into obsolescence.

The same is true for the G4 (except the "new" and "super fast" parts).

The G3: down on all counts.

Many G4s can comfortably run OS X 10.3.9, and I bet most will run 10.4.6 and the soon-debuting 10.5. But that will likely be the last Apple OS upgrade that will even be compiled for any chip in the PowerPC family, I think.

A G3 can run OS X, if it's fast enough. But those machines really thrive on OS 9.2.2. Except that there's no modern Web browser that'll run on them. Oh, and there's been no innovation, support or applications coming down the pike for, say ... seven years now.

Did you know that you can bring a G3 Mac into the era of current browsers and more free apps with Linux? Well ... you can, but it's not all so rosy.

There are a few Linux distributions that compile for PowerPC (going back to G3 and previous PPC chips, but not all the way back), the most popular being the fast-rising, easy-loading Ubuntu.

I have burned PowerPC CDs for Ubuntu and Xubuntu. On my iBook G4, Ubuntu ran right away, with sound and Ethernet auto-configured to work. I've never before gotten sound to work on anything without a little tweaking. Would I dump OS X 10.3.9 for Ubuntu? Probably not, but I'd consider dual-booting for the time being. (Since that machine is used mostly by Ilene, I'm going to leave it as is.)

The relationship between Ubuntu (funded by a weathy South African whose name escapes me) and the PowerPC chip is straining. Since PPC accounts for about 5 percent of Ubuntu users, Ubuntu creator Canonical has recently converted the PowerPC versions of all the 'Buntus from fully supported product with twice-yearly updates to a "community maintained" port ... and a more tenuous status overall.

There is much hair-rending and teeth gnashing in the very busy Ubuntu forums over the distancing from PPC, but the beauty of Linux is that there are hundreds of distributions -- and at least a few of them have PowerPC ports and will maintain them. (Yellow Dog and Suse come to mind).

Let me emphasize: If you're running OS 9 on a G3 or early G4, you might want to give Ubuntu Linux (or its less-powerful cousin Xubuntu) for PowerPC a try.

While the live CD of Ubuntu worked perfectly in the iBook, it didn't fare so well on a Power Mac G4 tower, which pretty much screams on OS 9. On that machine, Ubuntu booted slowly (slow CD drive, I think), Ethernet wouldn't work (I did a quick config and got nothing) and upon launch of Open Office, the whole thing crashes. No 'Buntu live CDs would even load on the iMac G3 500 MHz. Many commenters have said that using the alternative install CD of Xubuntu allows installation to the hard drive, and that method does work.

The upshot: If Ubuntu, or any other distribution, can bring a modern Web browser to G3 Macs, that is huge.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

PowerPC -- it's not the beginning of the end. It's more like the middle (of the end).

By now it's old news that Apple abandoned the IBM-made PowerPC line of CPUs in favor of Intel inside (or is it Inside, capital I?). For the first time, Apple shares a processor family with its Windows-running bretheren. Now if the market share between Mac and PC was 50-50, or even 20-70, this would be even bigger news than it already is. But Apple is still in single digits when it comes to percentage of market share in the computing landscape.

What would really turn the computing world on its ear? An official Mac OS X port for the PC platform. It could be done. Apple could make billions.

They'd piss off everybody in Redmond, and Microsoft might pull the plug on Office for Mac. But Apple has already seen that kind of "trouble," with MS orphaning Internet Explorer for Mac. In that case, Apple thrived with its own Safari browser and the widely used Firefox, now the only browser to run on OS X, Windows and Linux (and yes, I am counting all the Mozilla derivatives as part of the Firefox family, even if Mozilla's the daddy and Firefox the fast-growing baby).

While on the subject, any software that has versions for all three major platforms -- Mac, Windows and Linux -- is a-OK by me. In addition to Firefox, the Abiword word processor and the Open Office suite are fine examples. It just makes it glaringly obvious how badly iTunes needs a Linux port. Keep it closed-source -- I don't care, just get iTunes on Linux already

Now back to our regularly scheduled computer whining ...!

Anything Microsoft did to "punish" Apple in the unlikely event that OS X for Windows is ever released would be dwarfed by fanfare, sales and sheer market-changing force by a real Windows competitor. After all, OS X 10.4 is the product upon which Windows Vista is modeled.

Hey, wasn't it the Classic Mac OS that drove Microsoft to develop Windows in the first place? (Answer: yes, for those of you too young to remember.)

OS X on a PC? You can already run Windows apps on an Intel Mac with Bootcamp or Parallels, and that has -- in some way -- boosted the esteem for Mac in the greater Windows-dependent world.

But a full OS X for PC can be done -- and should be. The fact that it hasn't, though, probably means it never will.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was looking on Craigslist for bargains. Maybe a 300 MHz laptop with 128 MB RAM for $100. Or an 800 MHz desktop for the same $100 -- or less.

What did I find?

A lot of crap from people who are totally deluded as to its value -- if it has any at all.

Laptops with 100 MHz CPUs and 16 MB RAM for $75 -- hey kids, it comes with a Windows 98 disc! Bargain city! This, clearly is a $25 item, again, if it's worth anything at all.

And desktops -- where are the $50 PC desktops out there? It's hard to get rid of these for NOTHING -- even the Salvation Army doesn't want 'em. My very own This Old PC isn't worth $25 -- and on Craigslist I couldn't find anything priced ... to move.

I'd like an old laptop on which to test Linux. But I'll be double-damned if I'm paying $300 for 5-or-more-year-old hardware. If it cost you $600 in the year 2000, it's not worth $300 in 2007 -- it's just plain not.

Hell, Fry's periodically has a new laptop under its "Great Quality" label for $250 or so. No PCMCIA port (come on, now!) no WiFi. But it's a real PC laptop with a new, working battery, USB ports on the back ...

If they can blow out a new laptop for $250, surely you can let a five-year-old one fly for $100 or less. It's not doing you any good molding in your coat closet.

Every once in a while, somebody breaks out of the beige box when it comes to computer hardware. Not just in case color or size, but in conception, execution -- and even price.

Not that it's happening a lot, Apple being the leader when it comes to all the above angles on innovation -- excluding cost, of course, which remains high for Mac hardware.

But on another front, taking inspiration from the Mac Mini for size, from Linux for value, adding the flash-memory version of Puppy Linux, Michael C. Barnes, the Desktop Linux writer whose articles have been so helpful, has a company in Thailand called NorhTec, that specializes in small, rugged, fanless PCs -- one of which costs $120 and can run Puppy Linux from a Compact Flash memory card. (The people behind Damn Small Linux offer a similar setup but it costs $375-$399.)

The Norhtec machine doesn't have a hard drive. But it's $120. Yes, a new PC -- Mac Mini-style -- ready to be connected to your own keyboard, mouse and monitor. It's got USB ports -- so add a drive that way, if you must.

But in any event, you can run Puppy to get on the Internet, write e-mail, do word processing, spreadsheets and more. Remember -- there's no hard disc, no CD-ROM (or CD-R, or DVD), just a Compact Flash plug on the front, USB and Ethernet on the back.

It's a Linux-running Mac mini footprint minus the drives -- and at less than 1/4th the price.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've made no secret of my satisfaction with Windows XP and the fact that it's hard to beat -- hell, it can't be -- in the business world. This comes after about a year of daily use (following a few miserable years with Windows 98, not even "second edition" and its inability to even run a single IE window with any degree of normalcy).

From the Linux world, Michael C. Barnes lays out the argument for XP vs. Linux:

Taking on Microsoft Windows 98 on the desktop is one thing, but taking on Windows XP is quite another. Microsoft XP is a magnificent piece of work. We have all heard the arguments about viruses and the arguments about costs. Microsoft Windows XP will certainly run on 100% of the new computers on the market and it will support 100% of the new peripherals made for computers. No Linux distribution can make this promise.

It is also possible to run most major Open Source applications on Microsoft Windows XP. Open Office, GIMP, Mozilla, and many other Open Source applications are available for Microsoft Windows XP. A very good starting place for Open Source software for Microsoft Windows is TheOpenCD. A copy of Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition and the software contained on TheOpenCD is another way inexpensively introduce Open Source.

Linux does have advantages over Microsoft XP. Linux is more secure and it requires less resources than Microsoft XP. Linux distributions also allow for faster installs as most distributions install the applications as well as the operating system. The best of the Linux distributions preconfigure everything for the user.

Here's more insight into Barnes' computing life. He again lays out the general parameters for choosing a home OS:

For home computers with 16 Mb to 32 Mb RAM, Windows 98 is the best solution. For computers with 64 to 128 Mb of RAM, GNU/Linux (with all the bells and whistles) becomes and option. Microsoft Windows XP needs 128 Mb or more.

If your computer originally came with a different OS, such as Windows 98 or Windows Me, you must purchase upgrades for each computer. One license is only good for one computer. If I ran Microsoft Windows Home Edition on all five of my home computers, the cost for just the upgrades would be about $500.00 USD. This does not get me the application software I need.

He recommends an Office-compatible suite, 602 PC Suite, that, while not free, is available for $40 -- much less than Office, and even a bit less than Microsoft Works (which Barnes also recommends for home use). 602 also edits photos and creates PDFs. That's pretty useful on both counts. A 30-day free trial is available.

More Michael C. Barnes on "Desktop Options":

Here's a good tip for migrating from Windows 2000 to XP:

When you install XP or Windows 2000, you have a decision to make. The decision is whether to convert your drive to NTFS or not. I have done both. I believe that for most users, leaving file system FAT32 is best. NTFS is suppose to be more stable and faster, but it is also very difficult to convert back to FAT32 in case you change your mind.

More words of wisdom and reason:

The area where Microsoft Windows has been criticized the most is for security. One of the unfortunate facts of life is that one of the biggest challenges anyone using Microsoft Windows will face is viruses. Viruses are not something we can blame Microsoft for directly. If GNU/Linux were more popular than Microsoft, then GNU/Linux's would be the victim of more viruses. Viruses attack Microsoft products because they are the most popular and any weaknesses are well documented. Anyone using Microsoft Windows is well advised to use and update virus protection software.

Go to this article for much more on what OSes are good for what computers.

The gist of Barnes writing is something I almost all the way agree with. He says that while LInux is fun and all, if you have XP, that's the best way to ensure compatibility (and all the free software for Linux is available for Windows as well). But if you're running Windows 98SE and things aren't going well, give Linux a try and find the right flavor for your system. He's not as hot on Windows 2000 as I am. He rightly points out that when upgrading from Windows 98, there are a bunch of driver issues (I also had to junk a lot of stuff when moving), but for me, the superior (i.e. working) handling of USB and CD-R in 2000 made any other issues pale in comparison.

I've still got some quibbles with Windows 2000, but it's pretty stable overall. I'm surprised to learn that my 333 MHz system with 256 MB of RAM can run XP comfortably. Too bad I don't have an XP disc. I am not paying for XP. Not gonna happen.

Photo: Michael C. Barnes from Desktop Linux.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went on a mission. Call it CES - Woodland Hills. I wanted to see all there was to see in pocket-size computing. I wanted to try the latest Palm models as well as compare them with Windows Mobile devices.

Would the Microsoft-powered portables work as quickly and intuitively as the Palm? Would Windows Mobile's version of Word solve my "smart" quote and em dash problems?

And what about the latest from Palm? The E2, T/X and Lifedrive beckoned. I've only been using Ilene's Tungsten E hardcore for about three weeks, so it's my infancy/honeymoon with the whole Palm concept. The fact that I'm composing entire blog posts in Palm's Graffiti 2 script language with the E's metal stylus means I've either gone crazy or discovered the missing link in my own writing workflow.

How hard could it be to see all that is new in Palms, iPAQs and the like?And since Woodland Hills is a hotbed of electronics retail, I assumed my task would be an easy one.

Little did I know that the state of PDA retail would range from borderline adequate (Frys) through wholly deplorable (Best Buy) to suspiciously absent (Circuit City). Some of this could be due to the general withering of the PDA category, but much of it must be due to basic neglect by the manufacturers of their products' position and very presence in the retail arena.

HP, maker of the iPaq, could be focusing on desktop and laptop PCs, while Palm is moving toward becoming a cell-phone-only player.

Or it could be sheer incompetence and business-category suicide.

On my first trip to Frys, neither Windows Mobile-equipped iPaq was in working condition. All the Palms worked. That's when I discovered the LifeDrive's lag due to its reliance on a disk drive as opposed to memory to load applications. None of the Palms had a working Wi-Fi connection, something I very much wanted to test.

The cheapest Palm, the Zire, at $99, was dismaying after my weeks with the Tungsten E. No e-mail, a low-res, smallish screen, no Documents to Go -- what exactly was the Zire good for? The extra $100 for the Tungsten E2 is mandatory. The next $100 for the TX is strongly suggested. But the final extra $100 for the LifeDrive is ill-advised. The TX is the sweetest of spots in the Palm PDA line, though the E2 will do very well.

Briefly, because even I'm tiring of this entry, here's the rest of my search.

Circuit City: No PDAs at all.

CompUSA: The TX, Zire and E2 are all running. No PC-based PDAs are available for demo.

Staples: TX is running. Others not. No PC-based PDAs running.

Best Buy: Two Palms (TX and maybe LifeDrive) are behind plastic, barely seen. Not avaliable for demo. Prices ABOVE retail. No PC-based PDAs Smartphones have plastic "fake" screen and can't be demoed.

Second visit to Fry's: Two IPaq's are now running. Is there any provision for stylus-based writing? If not, there's not even a keyboard. What gives?

In the famous "smart quote" search, it appears the Word-like app on Windows Mobile devices does not do smart quotes. Since you can get them in any Palm application if you put them in a Shortcut (or use the Targus wireless keyboard), Palm wins the smart-quotes battle, hands (or Palms) down.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are two ways to look at my technological laundry list over the past many months. Old PC rehab, old Mac rehab (everything from new OS to wireless), through the Palm (the search not for Spock but for smart quotes, the importance of which is ... not so much, now that I've found them) and now Linux.

If Palm Desktop ran on Linux, this "progression" would be that much more natural. Ah, if things were only that easy.

Update: There are ways for Palm and Linux to talk to each other. Evolution on Ubuntu Linux seems to be able to do it, and this page has a bunch of other apps that claim to do it, too.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I heard Bill Gates talking about Windows Vista on NPR this morning, along with a tech writer from PC Magazine saying that we'll all be using Windows Vista eventually if we're using Windows today. Even Gates said being compared to Mac's OS X isn't a bad thing, because you have to be compared to something, and that's the only other thing out there.

What they didn't talk about was whether or not most of the hardware out there could even handle Vista's memory, processor and graphics requirements. For the most part, the answer is no, and I predict a good year ahead for memory manufacturers, as well as the entire PC sector in general. Expect everybody from Dell on down to move a whole lot more gray, tan and black boxes over the next couple of years.

For my money, of which I'm not spending any, I've found Windows XP to be a very stable, well-appointed operating system. I even like things like Windows Media Player, the My Documents and My Pictures folders and the way XP handles photos and files. Nothing earth-shaking, just a solid environment in which to work. And the right-clicking? I'm a big fan of right-clicking, and I think Mac OS X would benefit from a two-button mouse with a similiar philosophy in regard to right-clicking.

One thing that changed with XP is that you have to be a registered user to install it -- no passing around a CD and installing on multiple computers without paying ... not that I'd ever do such a thing (I really wouldn't, but that's another bucket of brine).

Photo: Bill Gates back in the day, from a blog post titled "Bill Gates: Nerd Stud."

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Writing about the iPod in the Current section was so nice, the L.A. Times did it twice. On the same day.

First Steven Levy, pimping a book about the same subject, talks about how iPods in general, and their "shuffle" capability in particular, is reimagining the way we are in the world:

The iPod has changed us in a lot of ways. Its insular nature protects us in public spaces with a happy bubble of our favorite songs. The accessibility of one's music library, when one chooses to expose it, provides a peep show to our personalities. And the passion engendered by the device's Zen-like simplicity and museum-quality looks has raised the design bar for the entire field of consumer electronics. No wonder the iPod has charmed everybody from Karl Lagerfeld (he claims to own 60 iPods) to President Bush (he goes into Ear-bud Land on a daily basis for his workout).

In the very same section, Thomas de Zengotia (is that a real name?) fetishizes the iPod, repeating many of Levy's sentiments:

The iPod is the most perfect realization of the culture of self-construction, even more so than the cellphone. After all, though you can filter people out of your world with your cell, once they are on — well, they have their own scripts. But your music never lets you down. It always delivers what it delivered before, what you know so well, what you want again.

What's more, with the iPod's amazing storage capacities, you can keep adding to your cache of meaning enhancements. You can build an evolving library of self-reflection, a virtual history of your life expressed in song. You get to dote on your past as well as your present — because there's nothing like a song to make memories come alive, is there?

And if you happen to be in the mood for surprises? Well, there's always the iPod shuffle function. Another stroke of genius. Randomness domesticated. Safe risk. You don't know what's coming on next but, whatever it is, you can be assured of this much: It will be about you.

Never mind that a single section, on a single day, has two "essays," about the very same topic, both pretty much fawning over the iPod (with only slight hints of a perturbation in the Force). And while the iPod, iTunes and all that goes with it is revolutionary (or perhaps just evolutionary) in both the realms of entertainment and commerce, there's more afoot than just the iPod itself. Like the portable CD player before it, the Sony Walkman before that, portable and home cassette recorders, vinyl LPs, 45 RPM singles, 78 RPM discs, wax cylinders, radio, the printing press, etc., the iPod represents a degree of technological evolution and change that would come one way (and with one device) or another, destined to change the way we consume entertainment, and the way said entertainment is made and marketed for us to consume in turn.

If you ask me (and I know full well that you did not), the devaluation of recorded music as a salable product, given that it's too easy to get free illegally over the Web, is transforming the world of entertainment way more than the iPod itself.

Sure iTunes is there, at 99 cents a song, to offer a "digital rights managed" file that can be transferred to a maximum of five computers (unless you burn it to disc as a .WAV file and re-rip in that format or as .MP3), but should I pay 99 cents for as many of the 20 tracks on that Elvis live record ... or get the whole thing from iTunes for $9.99 ... or get the physical disc, rippable forever with no restrictions for $8 from Amazon?

So many choice, so little relation to real value. The idea that I'm pretty much "renting" that live recording of "Suspicious Minds" until I go through five computers -- which takes me 25 to 30 years, but some only 10 years --or neglect to back up my hard drive and lose it at any time, well, that doesn't sound all that attractive. Sure, I don't have to go through all the machinations of buying the CD, hoping my PC will do a clear rip (it's dicey as hell on This Old PC) and bringing it into iTunes. It's so much easier to click and buy. At 99 cents, you're tempted not to care about the future in increments of $1 minus 1 cent. Live for today, buy again next decade.

There's still plenty of free music out their in this post-real-Napster era. I found Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" as an .MP3 in about 5 minutes. I felt guilty enough to get it on iTunes for 99 cents the next day. But when I downloaded "99 Luftballoons" from iTunes, I just picked the "best match" on iTunes and got some weirded out, 20 years later live version. Question my taste in crappy music -- I'm doing it myself -- and question why I didn't listen to the preview before clicking (It was late ... the kid was sleeping ... yadda), but I ended up with a bum version of Nena's only hit. iTunes doesn't provide enough information, the catalog isn't deep enough (no "Elvis as Recorded at Madison Square Garden" at all). And does anybody want one company controlling the hardware, software and media of all recorded music (and eventually video)? That means Microsoft, Apple or other.

The whole idea that recorded music, as a means of making money, is over and done with -- at least as it has been known for the past 50 or 60 years -- just means that a new model needs to be found to, as the Clash once said, "turn rebellion into money." It means dealing constructively with downloads, albums vs. tracks, iPods, iTunes, MySpace, YouTube, touring (and ticket prices), podcasts, merchandising and more.

Hey, 30 years ago Gene Simmons realized that music was one thing, but selling KISS-branded crap of all kinds was another way more lucrative one. I watch Gene Simmons' reality show today and am amused that the KISS' "The Demon" (I didn't know the various KISS members had such monikers -- you learn something ...) wonders who wouldn't merch the hell out of their music. Hey, I spent 99 cents on "Rock and Roll All Nite" (would it kill them to spell "Night" right?), so consider the deal done. I didn't spend $200 on a KISS concert ticket. Sorry, Gene.

Anyhow, back to my point -- and yes, I do have one, the world of recorded music and the money that could be made from it was by no means static from the 1920s through 2000. During World War II, there was a union-imposed ban on recorded music entirely. And the record "industry," as it is called, got itself a 15-year reprieve from retooling and creating its own survivable future while the advent of the CD spiked sales of back catalog during that period. And in the wake of Napster, that same industry needed Steve Jobs to bring legitimate digital music sales to reality (they could've done it themselves and reaped all the benefits ...) and still isn't terribly comfortable dumping their entire catalog into the 99-cent electronic bin.

Summing it up ... the iPod is a tool. There's always a new way to hammer that nail. Watch your thumbs, O consumers.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)