Friday Sep 14, 2007
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Friday Sep 14, 2007
I was recently (and good naturedly) accused of being a Luddite by an acquaintance for my preference for plain text emails. I always configure my email clients to send plain text only. Why do I do this? Well, some of it is habit. I've been sending and receiving emails in plain text for as long as I can remember. Once you start with a long established rut, you tend to stay in it.
There are also a bunch of technical reasons plain text emails are preferred over HTML. For example... when Microsoft released Outlook 2007, they based its HTML renderer on... get this... MS Word. The short of it is... this broke pretty much all HTML rendering. Any messages you send to someone using Outlook (and unfortunately that is a huge number of people) formatted as anything but excruciatingly simple HTML riskes it being displayed as an unreadable mess.
So, yes I still send emails in plain text because I know that my email can be read by anyone.
Does this make me a Luddite because I don't like to read emails with fluffy kittens on a pink background, with yellow text? (yes I received an email formatted like this from a relative) 
Tuesday Sep 11, 2007
Open source projects are amazing. I raised the issue I grumbled about here yesterday with the openSUSE community (the radical difference in a core component of openSUSE depending on what window manager you selected). I started out with an email to the openSUSE user list, and that incited a large discussion. In the end it distilled down to a request that I post a clear statement of the problem to the project, and the community as a whole can look at finding a solution.
Compare this process to closed source. Some megacorp makes an operating system. They decide for you that you will like things better if it is done in a certain way regardless of the impact that may have on you and your workflow. You buy that new operating system or get it preinstalled on the next computer you purchase. You have one choice... use it as is. You, as an end user, have zero influence on the layout and content of that operating system and its associated tools. You cannot approach the developers and plead your case. You don't even know who or where the developers are... and besides... the developers are likely just following what some project manager in an ivory tower is telling them to do.
The beauty of open source is that every single user can have a say. You do not need to be a programmer. You can step up and contribute in other ways like... constructive criticism and suggestions, adding or fixing documentation, or even just listening in and adding comments when the discussion passes by a topic you know something about. You can take a part in the development of a product even if you are not some über cyber-goat owning, fembot creating, evil Linux super villain
Monday Sep 10, 2007
openSUSE 10.3 is deep into the Beta test cycle and things are looking (for the most part) very good.
This weekend I decided to test the Gnome install (I'm a long time KDE fan). Installation went fine, and it was all looking great until I started up YAST and went to the software installer. Wow... I was shocked... and dismayed.
One of the major strengths of openSUSE over the myriad of other Linux distributions out there is a tool called YAST. It is the main tool used for installing openSUSE, and then administering it after it's all up and running. It is really the gem that makes openSUSE stand out (well to me anyway). I love it because it works, and it does the job very well.
In the 10.3 development cycle someone decided to create a GTK version of the software installer component of YAST (this was a Google Summer of Code project). This seemed to me to be a great idea. It would make the software installer "fit" better with the Gnome look and feel. I never paid it a lot of attention though since I rarely use Gnome except on the SunRays here at work.
This new component was included in the Gnome release of 10.3, and this is what I thought I'd try out in the Beta3 version I installed this past weekend. I started itup expecting a GTK themed version of the long standing QT version that has been a part of SUSE for what seems like forever.
Surprise...
The GTK version doesn't even look remotely the same as the QT version. In fact it is impossible to draw any relation to the two at all. The QT version sorts things nicely in groups somewhat like a file manager (I am not saying the QT version is perfect...). The GTK version simply presents everything in one big looooong list with apps available on the left and apps installed on the right (which can be a rather long list when you have a couple thousand applications installed)
The very first thing I thought of was... what about people who have to support openSUSE in an environment that uses both KDE and Gnome. Up to 10.2 it really didn't matter that the end user chose Gnome, KDE or any other window manager... the administration tool was identical regardless of window manager. Now... it's different... not just in look (which I would be OK with) but also in function. the workflow is different... not just a little different.. not parallel... it is radically different.
Now... am I being unreasonable in thinking that this is a bad thing? What about documentation? We went from one nice simple tool to document to two radically different tools to document with totally different workflows. What about support? We went from one common tool to work with to two radically different tools to work with.
It has been suggested that I don't like it simply because it is different. This couldn't be farther from the truth (I think anyway). if I didn't like things that were different, I wouldn't be using Linux.
So.. tell me... does anyone else see this as a problem? Is it a problem that you take a common tool that is core to the distribution and split it into two different development paths with radically different software installation tools? Shouldn't the admin tool be one of the cornerstones of what makes a Linux distribution stand out from the others? Am I being unreasonable? or am I on the right path here in raising the proverbial flag and saying "Hang on a sec here guys!"?
Screenshots of the QT version (These are quite old, but the interface hasn't changed much)
Screenshot of the GTK version (from the Google Summer of Code project - second image)
Friday Sep 07, 2007
Sometimes right of way is important... particularly if you a re a warthog. It's nice to know that the authorities have recognized this. I snapped this photo in Nairobi a few years ago.
Thursday Aug 23, 2007
Linux....
Hmmmm... what to say....
I've been using Linux for a very long time. I started out with Linux sometime around 1998. Back in the days when getting a sound card working meant recompiling the kernel. Ouch. Painful... and then some. It was a hobby at best for a self proclaimed and hopeless nerd such as myself.
Time moved on.
Linux evolved
Microsoft Windows degraded, bloated and simply got worse.
Linux evolved some more.
As Linux got better, I started using it more and more. These days it's all I use at home. It's nice to be free of Windows and all the mess that comes with it.
Linux has a hard time gaining acceptance with people.... probably because of it's humble beginnings. I can't begin to count the number of times in the past 6 months someone has told me that Linux is all command line and nothing works with Linux. Sigh... it's simply not true. If you were to take a random and relatively recent computer and install XP (or Vista on it) and note down ALL the problems you had, all the drivers you had to go hunting, all the time you spent trying to get everything playing nice, and all the time you spent rebooting.... and then did the exact same with openSUSE (my preference) or Ubuntu, or whatever leading distribution you prefer), I would bet you'd be pleasantly surprised.
I do not understand why people expect that Linux is 100% ready to go out of the box... that 100% of the hardware drivers are in place, and that ALL the applications are already installed, when they do not have that expectation with Windows. Why is OK and acceptable to trawl the internet digging up Windows drivers for sound, video, motherboard chipsets etc, and not OK to have to download and install the nVidia (or ATI) video driver for Linux? Especially when chances are, that is the ONLY driver you will have to go get... and... and... it's more than likely already sitting in a pre-configured repository so installing it is a matter of about 3 clicks.
Well... not everyone is afraid of making their computer work better. The 2007 Desktop Linux survey results are out, and there is a marked increase in numbers... http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8454912761.html
Linux has really grown up...
Wednesday Aug 15, 2007
Linux is popping up in the mainstream media more and more these days. Dell is offering Ubuntu preinstalled on a selection of laptops an desktops (in the US, and recently in a few countries in the EU). Lenovo is offering laptops with Novell's SUSE preinstalled. This is a firm sign (to me anyway) that Linux is finally becoming accepted as a serious competitor and alternative to the usual Microsoft Windows.
Linux is still missing a few things to make it fully acceptable on the desktop world... like truly legal DVD player application and multimedia codecs to allow you to play MP3s, and the various Microsoft formatted videos (Yes I know all about OGG etc., and I use OGG for most of my music... but the reality is that the vast majority of multimedia is not in open source formats).
There is a very strong “grey” community that provides all the codecs and players you can ever need to play pretty much any and all media formats out there (for example MPlayer and the w32codec pack and libdvdcss for decoding and playing encrypted DVDs)... but this is not an acceptable solution for the commercial world, and really should not be for the private home user world either. It is technically infringing on the patent rights of the people and companies that own the patents to the various decoding technologies.
Linux vendors are faced with either purchasing a general distribution license which can cost well into tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars/Euros, or remove the offending software. The solution that most vendors resort to is to strip out the illegal codecs and recompile the media player applications in such a way that the applications are no longer infringing on the rights of the various patent holders. A prime example of this is how Novell handles it with openSUSE where all questionable codecs are removed, and apps are recompiled. Ubuntu also does not distribute these applications and codecs – although they do make it quite easy for the end user (with loads of warnings that you should read, but most people ignore) to tap into the grey community and install the codecs and players they need to make the desktop fully usable for multimedia.
Not a nice situation is it?
As an end user you appear to have little choice... use the Linux distribution as it was provided with limited multimedia playback ability (no MP3 support, limited video playback support, and no way to play encrypted DVDs) or install the stuff you need from the community repositories and hope the patent holders don't mind.
But... there are some choices you might not be aware of.
Real Media has licensed a few of the codecs from the patent owners – for example MP3 playback. You can use the Helix backend (a part of the RealPlayer/Helix community project) in the various music programs (for example Amarok) and have full MP3 playback support. This works quite well. The player is free and usually available in the repositories of your favorite Linux distribution.
This doesn't resolve everything though... you still have very limited support for video formats.
Now what?
Well... if you still want to stay away from installing the quasi-legal solutions, there is another commercial option. A company called Fluendo has licensed some of the technologies and is selling them via their webshop at https://shop.fluendo.com/ The codecs cover most Linux variations and Solaris as well, and are not expensive. For 28€ you can get a codec pack that gives you WMA, WMV, ASF, MMS, MPEG2, MPEG4, MP3 and AC3 playback using GStreamer. That covers most of it. Fluendo is reportedly developing a native Linux (and Solaris?) DVD player which I would expect is licensed to play encrypted DVDs (otherwise, there would be no point.. there are dozens of DVD player applications for Linux... just none that legally support encrypted DVDs).
It is not a perfect solution (for example, Quicktime support is missing from this option), but it is a start... a step in the right direction.
In the end though, the reality is - at least for the home user side of things - people will still use the not-so-legal solutions because it is easy and it provides complete support for all media formats including Quicktime.