Thursday, April 27, 2006
The pill that makes you fly
A man went into a bar in a high rise. He saw another man take a pill, take a drink, walk to the window and jump out. He flew around for a minute and zipped back into the bar.
As the amazed newcomer watched, the man repeated this twice more. Finally the man asked if he could have a pill. The flier said it was his last one. The man offered five hundred dollars to no avail, so he made a final offer of a thousand dollars. The man said that it was all he had on him.
The flier reluctantly gave in, took the cash, surrendered the pill, and turned back to the bar. The man took the pill, took a drink, went to the window, and jumped out only to fall to his death. The bartender walked over to the flier at the bar and, wiping a glass, said, "You sure are mean when you're drunk, Superman."
Linux and Windows (again?)
I like Linux. In fact, that's not correct. I love the environment. It's just the fact that you can build a very sophisticated computing platform with very little money. It comes at an expense though. You'll have to have some patience to struggle through the installation and in some cases things just don't work the way they're supposed to.
Microsoft has an entire section of their web-site (http://www.microsoft.com/canada/getthefacts/default.mspx) devoted to Linux and why the argument made by most Linux aficionados is not true. The main argument from the Linux camp, according to Microsoft and not true, is that the total cost of running Linux is lower than that of running Windows Server. That the initial savings are eroded by the long term cost of running a Linux shop. There are even a number of documents related to security issues and reliability. The two main things that Linux says are all the more reason to move away from Windows.
So is all this true? Well, I'm not sure about your experience with Windows, but one thing rings true for me. I've been using Windows for many years and I cannot see where Windows outperforms Linux for basic computing needs. Things that a regular user would require a computer for like creating documents, much like this one, safely surfing the Internet, and getting regular tasks done. There are just as many, if not more, word processors for Linux as there are for Windows. The ease of creating documents in Linux now matches what you can do Windows. Using the mouse in a windowing environment is made possible by having a large number of window managers available for Linux, versus the single graphical interface presented by Windows.
I've found that Windows has become overly bloated over the years. The lightness that was in Windows 3.1 was replaced by a highly buggy Windows 95 interface. The Windows 95 interface was not bad. In fact, the overall desktop experience was a huge leap forward. Windows continues to use pretty much the same graphical environment, with tweaks here and there. Many other window managers on the Linux and the Mac side are doing the same. Having a desktop that's taken over by the window manager and arranging your workspace within this desktop wasn't a Microsoft creation, however, they did a pretty good job with the implementation. On the Linux side of things you have KDE and Gnome as the current winners. How these two groups make money is a mystery to all, including Microsoft. They give away their product for free. In fact, they allow companies to piggy back off the free offering and charge for it. I've always wondered if there'd be money becoming a KDE installation expert. Learn how it works inside out and then charge people to have it installed.
This is essentially one of the issues that Microsoft has with the Open Source model. Who's behind your product? Who's going to stand there and provide support for it? Is there a real company with assets behind the product, or just noise and confusion without clear direction. Who's essentially in charge of controlling development of the product? Clearly a good argument though not one that Microsoft themselves should be using. Have they proved that having a strong company with deep pockets is a good thing for a product? I don't think so.
Most of the computing population uses Microsoft Windows. It's very hard to get used to something for an extended period of time and then have to leave it. There's no doubt that the chips are in Microsoft's favour. In addition to this, there must also exist a real reason to change. Change just for changes sake will never convince anyone. There must be strong valid reasons to change one's computing habits and do something else. This is why Microsoft has devoted an entire section of it's web site on this type of education. Why are they bothering to challenge an operating system that has less than three percent of the desktop market? Why bother? Microsoft owns the desktop.
Microsoft bothers because it's decided to actually take a look at the Linux offerings and see what's actually there. The old argument that Linux is difficult to use for regular users is no longer true. Linux is very easy to use, in fact, I'd bet that the K desktop on Linux is as intuitive to use as Windows. That's only one user. Linux, which shares history with UNIX, was specifically considered a server, or back room, operating system. It ran the data warehouses and the shared programs such as e-mail and web sites. Microsoft entered late into the server platform. They entered back when Novell ran the show for a lot of medium to small offices. It didn't take them long to take over this market. Novell has been reduced to scraps in the North American market, and rumours are that they are struggling in Europe and the Middle East. These are rumours but there's always some truth to some stories. Novell has switched direction also. They recently purchased SuSE and are building a server and desktop product around Linux. Interestingly here's a company with IT intelligence moving back into the arena for round two. Microsoft knows that the barriers to entry for Novell are not as huge and they can make a difference. Just like Microsoft had very little moving into the server space, they quickly and decisively knocked Novell to the ground for a count of ten. They, Microsoft, know that you just can't sit down and ignore the competition, no matter how small it is.
The barriers to entry in the desktop space are also much reduced. The Internet has allowed the common hacker or IT specialist (is there a real difference) presence that they never had before. In the old days, when you wanted to sell products and services, you needed some financial back bone. There were a few companies (like IBM and HP) that could compete safely in the market. In fact, both IBM and HP also had operating system offerings that they kept quietly in the server space, never offering them for the regular user. Sun Microsystems, on the other hand, has played both sides of the game, offering Sun OS and Solaris as a server and a desktop computing platform. There's much more to the Sun story that I may get into on another blog. So now, the average Joe (or Mary) can sit at home on a powerful computer that has all the server software they require and run like a business. Sending electrons back and forth to clients is not an expensive proposition and finding the tools and knowledge is easier to do. Microsoft cannot ignore this. It's real and it's happening right now.
So now the desktop arena is open to a lot more players than just Windows. Many of the larger vendors (IBM, HP, Dell, Sun, Intel, AMD...) are embracing this operating system. Even with it's tiny desktop share, it's server share is reasonable. I believe that the last set of numbers I saw were close to 30% of market, and there was expected growth to 37.5% by 2008. This is respectable for an operating system that's supposedly lacks support. Open source is not about lacking support. Open source is simply about making source code available. When source code is available, development can proceed a bit faster and bugs can be found quicker. Microsoft is right to keep their code locked. They need to keep their source code locked because they have a business model to increase wealth that's based on having complete control over what goes into their product. I recall some time back that Microsoft indicated that they were going to share some of their source code with the Federal Governments. I wonder what ever happened to that? They have a section on their web site related to this "Shared Source" initiative: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx. The arguments here against opening up source code are quite typical and in short claim that most Open Source vendors are really not that open.
I started this blog by stating that I like Linux. I like Linux, not because it's open source or free essentially, but in the flexibility it gives me to do the work that I need to do. I've been hacking around Linux for years and not once had to open source code and fix something. Normally, just as in the Windows world, if there's a problem with a particular piece of software that I use, someone will have discovered it before me and a patch will be ready for it. Windows is not like that. I've seen some strange things happening in Windows 2000 and Windows XP that I absolutely cannot find a fix for. Having a support agreement would not have helped much because of the way these support agreements are created. Because I run more than one piece of software on my computer, it ends up being a fight between software companies as to whose software is really causing the problem. "It's not ours!" says one. "You'll have to take everything out before we can take a look at it," says another. Because there's so much available on the Linux space, I can download what I need and eventually get my job accomplished. Whether it's a word processor, graphics editor, scripting tool, full featured database, they're all easily available. Not to say that they don't exist in the Windows space, they do, but I'm sure you know that it's not very easy to remove programs from Windows once they're installed. Some programs refuse to behave and won't come out. In addition to this, my experience with Windows is that it won't tolerate the stress of constant installs and removals. You have to be gentle or you'll eventually see the dreaded blue screen of death. Yep, I said it. No analysis of Windows is complete without a discussion of the blue screen. I think everyone's seen one. It's pretty much a standard Windows back door. An exit from a bad situation.
Because I like to use a variety of tools for my work and I deal with many different types of IT projects, I've found that Linux offers me the flexibility to achieve anything I want as well as communicate with my Windows friends. I still have a few PCs around with Windows 2000. I never quite made it to XP and I don't think I'll be trying out Vista.
Oh well, next writing will be about Linux applications. I'd like to share with you some of the ones I think are great, just great.
Microsoft has an entire section of their web-site (http://www.microsoft.com/canada/getthefacts/default.mspx) devoted to Linux and why the argument made by most Linux aficionados is not true. The main argument from the Linux camp, according to Microsoft and not true, is that the total cost of running Linux is lower than that of running Windows Server. That the initial savings are eroded by the long term cost of running a Linux shop. There are even a number of documents related to security issues and reliability. The two main things that Linux says are all the more reason to move away from Windows.
So is all this true? Well, I'm not sure about your experience with Windows, but one thing rings true for me. I've been using Windows for many years and I cannot see where Windows outperforms Linux for basic computing needs. Things that a regular user would require a computer for like creating documents, much like this one, safely surfing the Internet, and getting regular tasks done. There are just as many, if not more, word processors for Linux as there are for Windows. The ease of creating documents in Linux now matches what you can do Windows. Using the mouse in a windowing environment is made possible by having a large number of window managers available for Linux, versus the single graphical interface presented by Windows.
I've found that Windows has become overly bloated over the years. The lightness that was in Windows 3.1 was replaced by a highly buggy Windows 95 interface. The Windows 95 interface was not bad. In fact, the overall desktop experience was a huge leap forward. Windows continues to use pretty much the same graphical environment, with tweaks here and there. Many other window managers on the Linux and the Mac side are doing the same. Having a desktop that's taken over by the window manager and arranging your workspace within this desktop wasn't a Microsoft creation, however, they did a pretty good job with the implementation. On the Linux side of things you have KDE and Gnome as the current winners. How these two groups make money is a mystery to all, including Microsoft. They give away their product for free. In fact, they allow companies to piggy back off the free offering and charge for it. I've always wondered if there'd be money becoming a KDE installation expert. Learn how it works inside out and then charge people to have it installed.
This is essentially one of the issues that Microsoft has with the Open Source model. Who's behind your product? Who's going to stand there and provide support for it? Is there a real company with assets behind the product, or just noise and confusion without clear direction. Who's essentially in charge of controlling development of the product? Clearly a good argument though not one that Microsoft themselves should be using. Have they proved that having a strong company with deep pockets is a good thing for a product? I don't think so.
Most of the computing population uses Microsoft Windows. It's very hard to get used to something for an extended period of time and then have to leave it. There's no doubt that the chips are in Microsoft's favour. In addition to this, there must also exist a real reason to change. Change just for changes sake will never convince anyone. There must be strong valid reasons to change one's computing habits and do something else. This is why Microsoft has devoted an entire section of it's web site on this type of education. Why are they bothering to challenge an operating system that has less than three percent of the desktop market? Why bother? Microsoft owns the desktop.
Microsoft bothers because it's decided to actually take a look at the Linux offerings and see what's actually there. The old argument that Linux is difficult to use for regular users is no longer true. Linux is very easy to use, in fact, I'd bet that the K desktop on Linux is as intuitive to use as Windows. That's only one user. Linux, which shares history with UNIX, was specifically considered a server, or back room, operating system. It ran the data warehouses and the shared programs such as e-mail and web sites. Microsoft entered late into the server platform. They entered back when Novell ran the show for a lot of medium to small offices. It didn't take them long to take over this market. Novell has been reduced to scraps in the North American market, and rumours are that they are struggling in Europe and the Middle East. These are rumours but there's always some truth to some stories. Novell has switched direction also. They recently purchased SuSE and are building a server and desktop product around Linux. Interestingly here's a company with IT intelligence moving back into the arena for round two. Microsoft knows that the barriers to entry for Novell are not as huge and they can make a difference. Just like Microsoft had very little moving into the server space, they quickly and decisively knocked Novell to the ground for a count of ten. They, Microsoft, know that you just can't sit down and ignore the competition, no matter how small it is.
The barriers to entry in the desktop space are also much reduced. The Internet has allowed the common hacker or IT specialist (is there a real difference) presence that they never had before. In the old days, when you wanted to sell products and services, you needed some financial back bone. There were a few companies (like IBM and HP) that could compete safely in the market. In fact, both IBM and HP also had operating system offerings that they kept quietly in the server space, never offering them for the regular user. Sun Microsystems, on the other hand, has played both sides of the game, offering Sun OS and Solaris as a server and a desktop computing platform. There's much more to the Sun story that I may get into on another blog. So now, the average Joe (or Mary) can sit at home on a powerful computer that has all the server software they require and run like a business. Sending electrons back and forth to clients is not an expensive proposition and finding the tools and knowledge is easier to do. Microsoft cannot ignore this. It's real and it's happening right now.
So now the desktop arena is open to a lot more players than just Windows. Many of the larger vendors (IBM, HP, Dell, Sun, Intel, AMD...) are embracing this operating system. Even with it's tiny desktop share, it's server share is reasonable. I believe that the last set of numbers I saw were close to 30% of market, and there was expected growth to 37.5% by 2008. This is respectable for an operating system that's supposedly lacks support. Open source is not about lacking support. Open source is simply about making source code available. When source code is available, development can proceed a bit faster and bugs can be found quicker. Microsoft is right to keep their code locked. They need to keep their source code locked because they have a business model to increase wealth that's based on having complete control over what goes into their product. I recall some time back that Microsoft indicated that they were going to share some of their source code with the Federal Governments. I wonder what ever happened to that? They have a section on their web site related to this "Shared Source" initiative: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx. The arguments here against opening up source code are quite typical and in short claim that most Open Source vendors are really not that open.
I started this blog by stating that I like Linux. I like Linux, not because it's open source or free essentially, but in the flexibility it gives me to do the work that I need to do. I've been hacking around Linux for years and not once had to open source code and fix something. Normally, just as in the Windows world, if there's a problem with a particular piece of software that I use, someone will have discovered it before me and a patch will be ready for it. Windows is not like that. I've seen some strange things happening in Windows 2000 and Windows XP that I absolutely cannot find a fix for. Having a support agreement would not have helped much because of the way these support agreements are created. Because I run more than one piece of software on my computer, it ends up being a fight between software companies as to whose software is really causing the problem. "It's not ours!" says one. "You'll have to take everything out before we can take a look at it," says another. Because there's so much available on the Linux space, I can download what I need and eventually get my job accomplished. Whether it's a word processor, graphics editor, scripting tool, full featured database, they're all easily available. Not to say that they don't exist in the Windows space, they do, but I'm sure you know that it's not very easy to remove programs from Windows once they're installed. Some programs refuse to behave and won't come out. In addition to this, my experience with Windows is that it won't tolerate the stress of constant installs and removals. You have to be gentle or you'll eventually see the dreaded blue screen of death. Yep, I said it. No analysis of Windows is complete without a discussion of the blue screen. I think everyone's seen one. It's pretty much a standard Windows back door. An exit from a bad situation.
Because I like to use a variety of tools for my work and I deal with many different types of IT projects, I've found that Linux offers me the flexibility to achieve anything I want as well as communicate with my Windows friends. I still have a few PCs around with Windows 2000. I never quite made it to XP and I don't think I'll be trying out Vista.
Oh well, next writing will be about Linux applications. I'd like to share with you some of the ones I think are great, just great.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
SuSE Linux
This is the distro to beat now. It's quite amazing what happens to a Linux distribution once a real company with real money gets behind it. That's probably why Red Hat decided that a completely free offering was not economically viable. Once a big company, like Novell, or IBM or even Corel gets behind a linux product with money and resources (people), then amazing things can happen.
This, I believe, is what has happened to SuSE. I've always been a Slackware/Red Hat user. In the office we're all Windows, but we have our specialized linux installations for simple things like FTP or SAMBA.
Installing SuSE is very easy. Download SuSE Linux from their main site at http://www.suse.de. Yes, it's in Germany. However, you may get a redirect to Novell at this link. Burn the downloaded CDs and boot from the first one. Follow the prompts to install SuSE linux. It's as easy as any mature operating system like MS Windows, AIX, Mac OS, Solaris which have amazing financial backing. I'm amazed that SuSE supported by unpaid developers is able to provide such an amazing product. Now with Novell's teeth behind them, this is an unstoppable beast.
I reccommend using KDE (http://www.kde.org). Not that I don't like Gnome, but if you're coming from a MS Windows background, you'll find KDE easier to use.
This, I believe, is what has happened to SuSE. I've always been a Slackware/Red Hat user. In the office we're all Windows, but we have our specialized linux installations for simple things like FTP or SAMBA.
Installing SuSE is very easy. Download SuSE Linux from their main site at http://www.suse.de. Yes, it's in Germany. However, you may get a redirect to Novell at this link. Burn the downloaded CDs and boot from the first one. Follow the prompts to install SuSE linux. It's as easy as any mature operating system like MS Windows, AIX, Mac OS, Solaris which have amazing financial backing. I'm amazed that SuSE supported by unpaid developers is able to provide such an amazing product. Now with Novell's teeth behind them, this is an unstoppable beast.
I reccommend using KDE (http://www.kde.org). Not that I don't like Gnome, but if you're coming from a MS Windows background, you'll find KDE easier to use.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Test Post
This is just a test. I had some problems earlier on publishing a post... don't know if things are working again.
Linux flavours
One of my laptops crashed today. A sad thing really. It had been chugging along quite faithfully running Fedora Core 2 for the longest time. I had it configured exactly the way I wanted it. Fortunately, I've learnt that machines are machines. You can't put too much personal dependence on them since sooner or later they WILL disappoint. Doesn't matter what type of machine it is. Computers are the worst though.
So I took this opportunity to try out different flavours of Unix. First, I downloaded a copy of Edubuntu (http://www.edubuntu.org). As with all user-grade Linuxes, the install was completely automated. In about thirty minutes I had a working Linux laptop. Fortunately, I keep a copy of the configuration files for my X setup. I tried using Edubuntu to configure X, but after some frustrating attempts, I copied my configuration file and all was well. The system is supposedly based on Debian Linux which, to my knowledge, is the favourite for Linux die hards.
I then tried FreeBSD (http://www.freebsd.org). Yes, not Linux but the favoured son of Unix. The current version is 6. I had tried FreeBSD a long time ago and even more recently, FreeBSD 5. These FreeBSD.org guys (and gals) have not changed the installation "wizard" at all. It's as industrial as it was back ten years ago. In any case, I went through the text wizard and completed the installation. All seemed to be well and the last step prompted me to remove the CD from the drive and reboot. That, unfortunately, was the last time I saw FreeBSD. My IBM ThinkPad would not even pass POST. The IBM logo would display on the screen and the system would hang. After searching the Internet (and where else does one go for help these days) I found the problem. Apparently, my particular model of ThinkPad (T20) has a bug in the BIOS (a particular version of the BIOS that I "luckily" had) that causes it to see the FreeBSD partition as a FAT suspend-to-disk partition, and then when it tries to parse the partition it hangs. The solution to this problem is to delete the partition (which you can't do with the drive in the machine since it won't even boot), or downgrade or upgrade the BIOS to a version that does not have this problem. Fortunately, I was able to download a bootable floppy version of the latest BIOS for the ThinkPad T20, boot my notebook and say goodbye to FreeBSD.
Lastly, I installed, or rather six hours later I'm still installing, Gentoo. I've heard really good things about Gentoo. I've seen the screenshots, nice eye-candy. I know some people who use it and swear by it. I thought that Linux geeks in general were passionate about their beloved operating system. Boy, those Gentoo geeks are something else. The only complaint I've heard about Gentoo is the time it takes to install. It takes a long, long time. So armed with grim determination and the patience of Job I set out to complete this task. I started the installation at 1 PM. I had to leave it running at 4 PM. I'll have to get back tomorrow to let you know how this story ended. If the "live-CD" that I downloaded is any indication of the final product, I won't be disappointed. However, I still can't understand why it takes a frigging whole day to install an operating system, even though, if truth be told, I did a famous "everything" install.
I'd best get on to some real work now. Later.
So I took this opportunity to try out different flavours of Unix. First, I downloaded a copy of Edubuntu (http://www.edubuntu.org). As with all user-grade Linuxes, the install was completely automated. In about thirty minutes I had a working Linux laptop. Fortunately, I keep a copy of the configuration files for my X setup. I tried using Edubuntu to configure X, but after some frustrating attempts, I copied my configuration file and all was well. The system is supposedly based on Debian Linux which, to my knowledge, is the favourite for Linux die hards.
I then tried FreeBSD (http://www.freebsd.org). Yes, not Linux but the favoured son of Unix. The current version is 6. I had tried FreeBSD a long time ago and even more recently, FreeBSD 5. These FreeBSD.org guys (and gals) have not changed the installation "wizard" at all. It's as industrial as it was back ten years ago. In any case, I went through the text wizard and completed the installation. All seemed to be well and the last step prompted me to remove the CD from the drive and reboot. That, unfortunately, was the last time I saw FreeBSD. My IBM ThinkPad would not even pass POST. The IBM logo would display on the screen and the system would hang. After searching the Internet (and where else does one go for help these days) I found the problem. Apparently, my particular model of ThinkPad (T20) has a bug in the BIOS (a particular version of the BIOS that I "luckily" had) that causes it to see the FreeBSD partition as a FAT suspend-to-disk partition, and then when it tries to parse the partition it hangs. The solution to this problem is to delete the partition (which you can't do with the drive in the machine since it won't even boot), or downgrade or upgrade the BIOS to a version that does not have this problem. Fortunately, I was able to download a bootable floppy version of the latest BIOS for the ThinkPad T20, boot my notebook and say goodbye to FreeBSD.
Lastly, I installed, or rather six hours later I'm still installing, Gentoo. I've heard really good things about Gentoo. I've seen the screenshots, nice eye-candy. I know some people who use it and swear by it. I thought that Linux geeks in general were passionate about their beloved operating system. Boy, those Gentoo geeks are something else. The only complaint I've heard about Gentoo is the time it takes to install. It takes a long, long time. So armed with grim determination and the patience of Job I set out to complete this task. I started the installation at 1 PM. I had to leave it running at 4 PM. I'll have to get back tomorrow to let you know how this story ended. If the "live-CD" that I downloaded is any indication of the final product, I won't be disappointed. However, I still can't understand why it takes a frigging whole day to install an operating system, even though, if truth be told, I did a famous "everything" install.
I'd best get on to some real work now. Later.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Saturday February 25 at 1:49AM
Welcome to my blog home. I signed up at almost 2 in the morning on Saturday February 25th, 2006. Getting frustrated with some writing and decided that I could let off steam from time to time ranting. No, no this won't be a rant site. The title is quite telling really. Art, life and technology.
I'll probably kick things off with an IT project that I'm currently working on - writing. Then some posts on motivation and achievement. Living life to it's fullest. Embracing change, that sort of thing.
Right now it's way past my bedtime so I'm not going to say much. Hopefully by the time anyone visits there'll be more than this nothingness... this void.
Kwaheri ya kuonana.
I'll probably kick things off with an IT project that I'm currently working on - writing. Then some posts on motivation and achievement. Living life to it's fullest. Embracing change, that sort of thing.
Right now it's way past my bedtime so I'm not going to say much. Hopefully by the time anyone visits there'll be more than this nothingness... this void.
Kwaheri ya kuonana.
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