There has been a lot of push over the past many years to get more Linux onto more desktops. That’s fine, as long as the pushers keep in mind that an Operating System is, fundamentally, a means and not an end. Similarly, desktop environments are neither the journey nor the destination—they are, at most, the steering wheel and the dashboard.
About 6 years ago I took a serious plunge and installed FreeBSD on my primary laptop for work. Admittedly, I kept that Windows partition around for necessary occasions, and it was necessary. About 4 years back, I dumped the dual-boot and went with only Red Hat/Fedora, and I’ve been pretty happy ever since.
And yet, I’m now switching to Windows XP. There are reasons.
* Projectors
My job requires that I give presentations using a projector. With Linux, I spent too much time getting projectors to work. Sometimes they’d work flawlessly, and sometimes they wouldn’t. The problem here is consistency and plausible deniability. With Windows, I can walk into a customer site and expect the projector to work; if it doesn’t, it’s the projector’s fault.
* WebEx
I have to use WebEx, and they claim to support Linux, but it doesn’t always work from one code revision to the next. Same logic applies here as with projectors.
When all of your co-workers are using an app and they have to specially save their docs for you because you’re not on the same app, its motivating. Crossover office doesn’t support Office 2007, OpenOffice doesn’t support Office 2007 formats, and not having Office 2007 impacts my productivity. This makes me sick, by the way. Being forced to a format that is only compatible with itself is just plain wrong.
I’ve been using XP exclusively for two weeks now. Am I happy? The short answer is no. I’ve traded external pressures for internal annoyances. The pain of Linux was everyone else’s. The pain of Windows is my own.
* Applications
I realize now that there are a host of supporting applications that I use(d) on a daily basis, but that aren’t strictly required for my job. Some of these (gimp, firefox, nethack) run on Windows as well, but many do not. Gthumb, the gnome image browser/viewer, is a surprisingly clean tool. I used it for simple editing of images. I never thought I’d miss the rats nest that is package management on Linux, but where Windows has stagnated, Linux has improved. Yum is really quite good, and the ability to search and install from repositories is pretty powerful.
* Speed of Use
I was running FC6 on a broke-down T40, and I’m running XP on a brand-spankin T61p. I miss the T40. It’s not the hardware. The software, especially Office, is just plain bloated. I get significant pauses waiting for things to start up or waiting for Outlook to open the ‘new message’ window. Where is the experience commensurate with the hardware?!
* bash, grep, sed, vi, etc
The beauty of Linux is right here; these are small, purpose built tools that perform their designated jobs quickly and easily. The more familiar you get with them, the more powerful they are. Windows has no equivalents, plain and simple.
* ssh
The fact that Windows doesn’t come with an SSH client or server is a gaping hole in functionality. Sure, I can install a myriad of tools to make up for this, but it’s still missing.
* Docking
The one thing I thought I’d never have to think about is sticking this laptop on a dock and having it work. Yet, this is a problem for Windows. nVidia provides a handy substitute control panel for the display that lets you set up profiles and hot-key them. For some reason, these hot-key combinations magically disappear. Sometimes the laptop docks fine, and adds my second display automatically. Sometimes I have to re-configure it. Sometimes, it just powers off with no warning when I dock. Linux may have been both limited and complex in its docking (editing Xorg.conf isn’t really fun), but at least it was predictable. Windows does let you change display properties without ‘restarting X,’ which is helpful.
What does this add up to then? I have no idea. I’ll give XP a shot for a while. I owe it that. And there’s no harm in bolstering my Windows power user chops. I suspect, however, that when Crossover gets around to supporting Office 2007, I might just switch back and not tell anyone. Until then, Cygwin and VMWare will just have to do.
The Dunn Bros on Washington Ave (north loop) has two Linux-based free web terminals. They’re well done too. The interface is KDE 3.3, but they’ve limited what the user can do so that you can basically open Firefox. Right-clicking is disabled, they’ve limited the KDE menus and the menus within Firefox as well (no ‘open location’ and browse the system).
Everyone go buy a cup of coffee there to thank them for using Linux.
OK, I have not posted here in a while, largely due to my overwhelming personal life. Therefore, I thought that I would make this post a good one. This is especially for all of you who have been wanting to get old tech up and running and doing more than just web surfing.
I have an old IBM Thinkpad X21. It is thin and light (3.1 pounds) has a 20 gig drive, 700MHz PIII, 12.1 inch 1024×768 screen and decent battery life. I even have a docking station for it that, among other things, allows it to basically become a desktop system. It is a great little machine as PC’s go and, because of it’s size, very portable. But it is also probably pushing the limits for a usable installation of Windows. What better opportunity to give it a little Linux love.
Now, I know many of you are asking, “Hey Patrick, you are a Mac guy with a Powerbook. Why do you need a Linux laptop?” Well, here is the deal. As many of you know, I am living between two houses right now and will be for a little while longer. I am getting tired of dragging my machine back and forth between the two places. Having this one set up permanently at the new house will save me a bunch of hassle.
Many of you are aware of Ubuntu. It is quickly becoming one of the more popular Linux distros and for good reason. It is easy to install, has a wide range of hardware support, is very easy to use and has great community support. With a new version recently released (6.06 LTS) there could not be a better time to give it a spin around the old hardware block. It also is very efficient in use of disk space because the base install includes (almost) everything you need and nothing you don’t. But, do notice that little “a” word there – almost.
The fact of the matter is that while Ubuntu will give you a web browser (Firefox), e-mail client (Evolution), chat (Gaim), office suite (Open Office) – you get the idea – but there are a lot of things it leaves out. For instance you need a bunch of codecs for playing video, a lot of fonts to render web pages correctly, a decent media player, DVD encryption decoding… A whole bunch of stuff for making a machine for everyday use. There are many reasons, legal and otherwise, for leaving these out that takes too long to get into right now. Here are a couple of resources that really helped me get all of these things and more after the install.
Prepping Dapper for Everyday Use – This was a great starting point for everything from configuring the look and feel of the desktop to installing MS like fonts (It is a Windows world after all). It is written from the perspective of a beginner Ubuntu user and has just a few things to tweak it here and there.
Windows to Ubuntu Transition Guide – Even if you are not a Windows user this is hands down the best guide I have come across so far for turning Ubuntu into a highly usable everyday system. The single best item in the article is a pointer to a package of scripts called Automatix. Automatix basically does all of the work for you and downloads, installs and handles all the dependencies for just about everything one would need. This includes Acrobat Reader, VLC, every codec for any multimedia you will ever need and much, much more.
Because of this I now have a great little everyday machine that is fast and portable and capable of doing almost anything I could ask of it. I hope this helps any of my fellow geeks out there who have given Linux a try and been less than impressed, left wanting more or did not have the skills needed to get stuff working.
And yes, it can work. Grant and I successfully installed Ubuntu’s Breezy Badger on a vintage 500MHz iBook. This time we have a filesystem complete with the Nautilus file browser. Online updates downloaded and istalled successfully, too. We were trying to set it up with the latest Firefox browser and Thunderbird email app to use it as a lightweight web station. Does anybody know how to actually install Firefox 1.5 in Ubuntu? Being the ignorant Mac users we are, we were hoping for an installer to do the trick, but we were unable to get that going… Any thoughts?
So this conversation at the last Geek Gather & Munch inspired me, and so while Amy and I are awaiting the birth of our first child, I decided to spend a little bit of time trying to put new life into an old iBook G3-500 with a lean installation of Ubuntu. I like the idea of a second life for old computers.
I successfully ran the Ubuntu live CD on this machine and therefore decided to download the “Breezy Badger” for PPC from Ubuntu’s website. Installation commenced without any (more…)