The first thing I noticed is a subtle change to the menu when you boot from an Ubuntu CD. Before there used to be an option called “Start or Install Ubuntu”. Now there are two separate options “Try Ubuntu Without Changing Your Computer” and “Install Ubuntu”. That’s a very smart change that is going to make a big difference for new users. Also, they have supposedly made changes to how the Live CD works when you put it into a computer that has Windows presently booted. Handing out CDs is going to be a much more effective way of spreading the love.

Also, there were a bunch of features included in the Feisty Fawn, and also the Gutsy Gibbon, that weren’t 100% perfect. This includes some of the audio and graphics support. All those things have been polished a great deal. I think that is because Hardy is an LTS release. That’s actually a big deal because Dapper has reached the point where it is too old to be still useful. I’m actually thinking that I might use Hardy full on until the next LTS release. Though, I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold myself back from upgrading for so long. Maybe I can do it on my computer at work.

I don’t really have that much else to say other than that I tried the Xubuntu Hardy Heron to see what was up. I used Xfce way back in the day on Gentoo machines, and I was a fan. I really like the idea and style of Xfce, but since I switched to Ubuntu and Gnome, I can’t deal with Xfce. Basically, when I use Gnome, I only use a fraction of the features it offers. Most of the other stuff is cruft. Xfce is sort of like Gnome light, even though Xfce people will probably yell at you if you say that. I like that it has most of the Gnome features I want, and takes out pretty much all the ones I don’t want. The thing that keeps me away is that there are always a handful of things I really need that Xfce leaves out. It’s getting better, but I don’t see myself using it anytime soon.

Everyone, I mean everyone, with a PC, should at least try the Hardy Heron. Even if you’ve tried Linuxes or Ubuntus in the past, that doesn’t matter. Try this one. This is the real deal.

Anyway, one of my major disappointments with the iPhone is the lack of podcatching software. If it had a podcatcher, I probably would have bought one right off the bat. Android has presented me with the opportunity to write my own mobile podcatching software. I’ve decided that I’m going to go for it. Being an Ubuntu user, I had to setup the SDK to get working. However, I ran into a few problems along the way. Since I suspect many other Ubuntu users out there also might want to get into the Android developing business, here I will post how I got the development environment setup in Ubuntu.

The first thing you need is a computer with Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon installed. The computer should be connected to the Internet. Ubuntu by default tries to use open source versions of Java, and while these are pretty good, they will not work for android development. The fact that Ubuntu will not default to using Sun Java, even after you install it explicitly, is the primary reason this how to is necessary. Anyway, the first step is to update your packages and install Eclipse and Sun Java.

sudo aptitude update

sudo aptitude install eclipse sun-java6-jdk

If you want to use Sun Java as the default JVM in your web browsers, run this command as well.

sudo aptitude install sun-java6-plugin

Now you need to make Sun Java the default jvm in Ubuntu. You can do that with this command.

sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun

We also need to edit the file /etc/jvm. Edit that file as root with your favorite text editor.

sudo gedit /etc/jvm

The contents of the file will look something like this.

/usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj
/usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-1.5.0-sun
/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun
/usr

Change it to look like this, then save and quit your text editor.

/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
/usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj
/usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-1.5.0-sun
/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun
/usr

When certain programs on your system want to run java, they will look at this file to figure out which JVM to use. They will try every JVM in the list starting with the one on top until one of them works. Eclipse, however, does not use this file. It has its own file that works in the same way. First edit the eclipse java_home file as root.

sudo vim /etc/eclipse/java_home

There should already be a line in that file for Sun Java 6. Move this line to the top of the file. Add it to the top if it isn’t there.

/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

Now your Ubuntu system is ready to run the Android development kit. Go to the Android documentation site and follow the directions there. Have fun making mobile apps in Java!

If you take the newest version of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, you can install it on just about any standard desktop PC, and it will work. The video card will most likely work just fine. It will work even better if you take the two clicks to install a binary driver, if necessary. The mouse, keyboard, and other peripherals will work. All of your drives will work. It is only incredibly rare hardware, such as some proprietary enterprise RAID controllers, that will be completely unsupported. Also, if you have an extremely new high-end motherboard, it may not work perfectly. However, problems with new motherboards seem to get fixed in the next kernel release. You can’t expect much more than that, especially considering the incredibly rapid kernel development cycle. I can not honestly say the situation is perfect. There are still a lot of drivers that need writing. However, it has been a very long time since I have encountered any completely unsupported desktop hardware, and more drivers being written every day.

If my experience is not uncommon, why is there still a common perception that Linux lacks hardware support? Perhaps people tried Linux back when hardware support was terrible, and they don’t realize how far it has come since then? Perhaps people who have this impression have never really tried Linux, and they just go by what they read in the tech news? These are possibilities, but whatever the cause, I can tell you that there is actually another, bigger, problem looming in the Linux world. The problem I see is that many existing Linux drivers are incomplete.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to say the drivers are low quality. In fact, Linux drivers are among the best in terms of stability, security, and performance. What I mean by incomplete is that the drivers do not support every feature of the hardware. Sure, they support the core functionality, but many pieces of supported hardware have non-essential features which are unsupported. If the Linux drivers were complete, as well as quality, we could honestly say that Linux actually supports hardware better than Windows does. Instead we continue to play catch-up. To fully demonstrate my meaning, let me give you some personal examples of incomplete Linux hardware support. Just as a note, I am aware that not all of these examples should be solved in the domain of kernel drivers, but how the solutions should be implemented is irrelevant to my fundamental thesis.

On my desktop at home I have a Logitech MX1000. It is a wireless USB laser mouse with thirteen different buttons. The core functionality works perfectly in Linux. I can point, I can click, I can scroll, and I can hotplug the USB. This is a big improvement from the Linux of just a few years ago. However, all is not well. Many of these 13 buttons do not work properly, or easily, under Linux. Also, this mouse is designed to run at 800cpi. In Linux I must install and use a command line application to set it to 800cpi instead of the default of 400cpi. I also have to use the same application to change the cruise control setting. This is a very powerful mouse, but under Linux it is no better than a normal wireless USB wheel mouse. The user can do a lot of tweaks to improve the situation, but at the present time you can not achieve anything close to the features offered by Logitech SetPoint under Windows. Linux may be free as in beer, but it effectively costs me $50 if it reduces my $80 mouse to the feature set of a $30 mouse.

Now let’s look at some high-end motherboards. As I said, brand new motherboards tend to have flaky Linux support until a new kernel version is released. That is to be expected. However, many enthusiast motherboards produced by companies like Abit and ASUS have extra features not found on the motherboard in your average Dell. Many of these motherboards allow flashing of the BIOS while the OS is running. Others allow live overclocking. I personally would never suggest using such features, but that is besides the point. The point is that the hardware has features which are not available to the Linux user. The advantages of software freedom appear quite diminished when you realize that to get them you will not get everything out of your hardware that you paid for.

I have a Fujitsu P7230 notebook running Ubuntu Gutsy. I am using it to write this very article. It works extremely well, but, as you would expect, not every feature of the laptop is functional under Linux. This laptop has a g-force sensor. In Windows it uses that sensor to determine when to park the drive heads. In Linux this feature is completely unsupported. The fingerprint reader, two custom buttons, and the internal microphones are all unsupported. The internal memory card reader works, but has IO errors with some SD cards. The basic functionality of my laptop computer is all there with Ubuntu, but none of the weird special features are. Those weird and special features might seem relatively unimportant, but people want to use them. When they pop in a Linux LiveCD and a feature they use is not available, to them it is no better than if it hadn’t worked at all.

Let me now bring back my longest lasting Linux gripe, sound. Audio has improved a lot in Linux since I last blogged about it, but it is still the one department where I feel Linux needs the most work. Let us look at the sound card in my desktop as an example. It’s an on-board Nvidia/Realtek sound card. It can produce and capture analog stereo sound, and it can output PCM audio through the optical output. The basic functionality of the sound card works perfectly, and with some tricky configuration of alsa it can do a bit more. However, if you want more than that, just give up. I’ve been waiting for years, and there has been no improvement whatsoever.

Pretty much zero of the advanced features of the sound card are supported under Linux. Under Windows the sound card will mix, in hardware, all outgoing audio into a single Dolby Digital signal and send that out of the optical output. It can also do lots of other things involving the routing of sound to different speakers, or routing the PC speaker to the optical output. It’s actually quite incredible that the on-board sound card has more features than most home theater receivers. Regardless, only the most basic features of playing and recording audio function under Linux. Support for surround sound in Linux in general is complete shit. People these days have these incredible DSPs in their computers capable of advanced hardware audio processing, but under Linux they might as well all be Sound Blaster 16s. This is a case where we have a driver for a piece of hardware, and it works, but it does not implement every available feature of that hardware properly.

For one more example, let’s look at my scanner. It’s a CanoScan LiDE-50. It used to be completely unsupported under Linux, but it works now. However, it works like shit. Under Windows it scans very quickly, under Linux it scans slowly. Also, there are four buttons on the face of the scanner. Under Windows these buttons allow launching of the scanner application, or even taking the current scan and directly attaching it to an e-mail. Under Linux these buttons are unavailable. Sure, it’s nice that the scanner works, but the fact that it works worse than it does in Windows is not going to give someone a reason to switch. What we need to strive for is making the scanner work better in Linux than it does anywhere else. Not only should it scan at the proper speed, but perhaps the functionality of the buttons could be customizable by the user. Perhaps some open source scanning application could find some new and intuitive uses for those buttons and make Linux superior to Windows in even more ways.

When people try out Linux, they don’t care just that their hardware works. Even if Linux hardware support were exactly the same as Windows hardware support, many people would not switch. They have no reason to switch, because there is no advantage. However, if Linux actually supported the hardware better than Windows did, that would be something. Imagine someone putting in a LiveCD to find that their scanner scans faster. Imagine someone finding out that with Linux they can use the g-force sensor in their laptop as a theft alarm. What attracts most average people to Linux in the first place is its superior performance, stability, and security. However, those advantages will be overshadowed if someone finds out that they can’t do everything they used to do with the exact same hardware.

I want to conclude by clarifying that I am well aware that not all of these unsupported hardware problems are a result of incomplete kernel drivers. Many of these problems should be solved in userspace in one way or another. That is all irrelevant. What is important is that when you have a piece of hardware primarily designed to do function X, but capable of Y and Z, you can’t support just feature X and consider that to be satisfactory. Unless every single feature of a given piece of hardware is pushed to the absolute limit by the software, then the user is not getting everything they have paid for in that hardware. The failure to implement features Y and Z is keeping Linux back these days much more so than the failure to implement X. If there are Linux developers out there looking for things to work on, go back and take another look at hardware which is currently considered to be supported, and make sure that every single feature is supported 100%. If not, you’ve got some work to do.

This article begins by referencing professional tech analysts who say Linux isn’t ready. Keep in mind that tech analysts are people who know about computers. They use computers in advanced ways for advanced things. They most likely use Max OSX or Windows. They use it on machines with 100% compatible hardware. They use the machines only for things that their machines are capable of doing.

If these people try Linux, they will try to do all the things they do with their old OS with Linux. If any one thing doesn’t go just right, they will say it isn’t ready. Well, not ready for their desktop at least. What if someone else doesn’t need to do that particular thing? For those people who are not tech analysts, it might be ready.

Here is how we can calculate Linux’s desktop readiness. Take the total number of desktop computers in the world. Subtract those which have so much unsupported hardware that Linux won’t work on them. Now figure out what the users of the remaining machines want to be able to do. If what they want to do is possible on Linux in an easy and user friendly fashion, then that is one desktop ready machine. Divide the number of desktop ready machines by the total number of desktop machines in the world, and you’ve got the Linux desktop readiness quotient.

Basically, I just want people to stop asking whether or not Linux is desktop ready. The question in itself is fallacious. The correct question to ask is “Is your desktop ready for Linux?” I will be the first to admit that the answer is not yes for everybody. However, the vast majority of people do very few things with their computers. They browse the web, read and send e-mail, send instant messages, watch videos, listen to music, manage their photos, and play games. I think I can say that the vast majority of average users out there who have desktop computers are ready for Linux. The only ones you can subtract are people with advanced needs, e.g: 3D gaming or HD video editing, and people with incredibly incompatible hardware.

So stop writing articles about whether Linux is ready for the desktop. Instead, grab yourself an Ubuntu LiveCD, and determine whether Linux is ready for your desktop. I make no guarantees, but it doesn’t cost you anything to at least try it out.

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Being a former Gentoo user, I can understand some of the frustration with waiting for new packages. For example, the current version of Banshee is 0.11.1, but in Ubuntu Dapper the newest available version is 0.10.10. 0.11.1 has many significant improvements over the older version that vastly improve the user experience. But because of the nature of Ubuntu development, you have to choose between using older, crappier, software or risking your system integrity.

This is very very annoying, especially if you are used to an operating system like Windows. On Windows, you can use the newest version of Firefox the day it comes out. You don’t have to wait for a bunch of dependencies to be marked stable before you can get the new version. You can get your new features and your new version that same day. And if anyone cares about new features and upgrading ASAP, it’s enthusiasts who use Linux.

So what we end up with are two separate problems. On the one hand we have users who screw up their systems because they demand to have the latest and greatest software. On the other hand we have package repository maintainers who aren’t making the latest and greatest stuff available quickly enough.

What’s the solution? I think it’s possible to kill two birds with one stone. What we need is a GUI application which allows users to take any source package and turn it into a proper deb package which installs from a local repository. Too many unofficial debs and repositories provide malformed packages which do more harm than good. Normal users do not know how to build and install applications from source. Even if you do successfully build a package from source, the package manager does not recognize it. It is also unreasonable to expect that every open source development team also maintain builds for every possible distribution. And don’t even get me started about dependencies.

The only reason this won’t work is because of dependency hell. Someone will write an application which requires version 4.0012 instead of version 4.0011 of some library. Some other piece of software requires version 4.0011 and will not work with 4.0012. Somehow, both of these programs may not run on the same system. The solution to this is to have a system where multiple versions of the same applications and libraries can simultaneously exist. Each application should link to the newest versions of the libraries with which it is compatible. Also, old libraries which are no longer needed should be discarded to avoid clutter.

In the end, this is just one of those very annoying aspects of Linux on the desktop. It’s awesome that new versions of new applications are coming out all the time. It’s awesome that users are getting access to all sorts of new features on a sometimes daily basis. What’s not awesome is when the middle-man, the distribution, gets between the users and the shiny new applications. Barring mistakes made by application developers, we need a distribution which can provide desktop users with the newest versions of desktop applications at all times. People are willing to screw up their systems to get this stuff. The only way I see to prevent them from doing so is to take away the incentive.

I am a big-time Linux user. I’m going on 7 years of heavy Linux desktop and server use. However, I do not have the hangup that everything has to be free. I use Linux because it is a better operating system. I use Firefox because it is a better browser. I use it because it is an environment in which I can be more productive in my computing. I use it because it allows me to use my computer the way I want to. It is only a vocal minority of the open source community who disagree.

If you ask Linux desktop users, the people who will use Firefox on Debian, most of them want the original icon back, and they will go to great lengths to get it back. There is an extremely popular thread on the Ubuntu forums for a script that simply re-adds the original Firefox logo. People actually care about the icon. They even care about a dialog box they will never look at. They don’t care about two silly patches they will never notice, and they don’t care about using only 100% free software. Only a few crazy idealists like RMS care, and they’re ruining it for the rest of us.

Open source people often promote the fact that OSS is all about choice. Users are given choices. However, most users aren’t smart enough to make those choices. I know how to build Linux from scratch, but my mom doesn’t. She runs Ubuntu though, so whatever Ubuntu decides is what she gets. When IceWeasel appears, she is going to be confused. When we have less than 1% of the users imposing their ideology on the rest of us, that is not choice. It is not freedom. If you demand in ideological 100% freedom, you actually end up losing the freedom to use something that is not 100% free. In trying to fight for more freedom they have somehow achieved less freedom.

Imagine a Linux distribution just like Ubuntu. Now imagine this Linux distribution comes with ndiswrapper all set out of the box. It comes with NTFS read/write support out of the box. It comes with NVidia and Ati drivers. It comes with Xgl/Compiz/latest 3d shiny stuff out of the box. It comes with demos of some of the few proprietary games that run on Linux, perhaps from Introversion. It comes with wine already setup and working. It comes with real Sun java and real Adobe/Macromedia Flash already working. It has codecs and players for every multimedia format that exist right out of the box. This would rapidly become the dominant Linux distribution on the desktop.

That distribution would have questionable legality, but, if it existed, it would make every other Linux distribution insignificant on the desktop. Nobody would continue to use distros like Debian on the desktop except for the scant few crazies who support things like IceWeasel. There would be no reason to. I help people convert to Ubuntu very often, and such a distribution would eliminate 90% of the things I have to tell people. How many of those people give up on Linux forever because ndiswrapper is hard to set up? Why deny these people? Why hurt Linux for the sake of useless ideology? Have we forsaken the practicality that makes the Linux platform so great in the first place? I haven’t.yeah

Most people just want their computer to work and accomplish certain tasks. They don’t care if it’s 100% free. They care that their wireless card works. They care that they can visit websites with Flash. And yes, they actually care about a Firefox icon. Linux can do all these things! It just can’t do them easily, because zealots are holding us back. We could have awesome Linux on the desktop right now. Look how good Ubuntu is. It is so close to perfection, it’s not even funny. The only problems we have left are in places where proprietary software has fulfilled a function that open source can not. The only thing stopping us is the unwillingness of a few people to use the proprietary software or to make deals with proprietary software companies.

There is a point at which you can try to promote something with such zeal that you end up hurting it. We have reached this point. Stop it.

First off, if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. One guy was having a problem because he was following some guide about how to setup the perfect Ubuntu install. He didn’t have a specific problem he was trying to fix or anything. He was just following some guide that claimed to provide directions to a perfect install. Luckily I was able to convince him that there was nothing wrong with his Ubuntu as it was, and none of that stuff was necessary.

Rule number two, don’t tweak things for the sake of tweaking things. Some people enjoy uselessly twiddling widgets on their computer for no reason. They like to do things they think increase performance just for fun. Not only do some of those tweaks not actually increase performance, but these people only use their computers as boxes of tweaking. If any performance is ever gained it is never used outside of a benchmark. Trying to uselessly tweak bits in your software without a reason is going to get you into trouble. Don’t be that guy. If you want to be that guy, get an old PC and install Gentoo on it.

Perhaps the most important rule is that you shouldn’t do anything unless you understand what it is you are doing. Far too many people find a howto guide and simply type all the commands in order. They don’t understand what any of the commands do. They don’t read the output from those commands. And even if they did read the output, they wouldn’t understand what it means. I put part of the blame on howto writers for not explaining what commands do, but simply giving direct instructions. However, users are not without blame. They blindly follow the instructions on random websites without even trying to understand what they are doing.

If you are planning on using Linux as your desktop operating system, and you care to actually get real use out of it, then follow my instructions. Do not fix what is not broken. Do not tweak or change anything unecessarily. Do not do something unless you completely understand what it is you are doing. If you follow these three rules, you will have a much better experience.

So even more surprising than his move to Microsoft was his recent departure. But he wasn’t even fired, he quit! When this story first broke there was lots of confusion and speculation as to the reason for his resignation. Many people including myself were waiting to hear a story about the bad things going on in Microsoft’s Linux laboratory.

But this was not the case. Daniel came out and said that the reason he left (and I paraphrase) was that he was not able to fully utilize all of his skills at his position at Microsoft. That’s a fairly boring and generic reason to quit for most people to hear. Whether it is true or not I do not know. But what I can tell you is that I feel the exact same way.

I don’t know if you’ve read my about page on this site, but I have an entire lifetime of technological skills at my disposal. I learned Logo in Kindergarten for crying out loud. Yet at my job right now I only use a very small subset of those skills. Not only that, but I’m not really learning anything new. I think this has been a large part of the reason why I am not 100% satisfied with my current employment situation.

Every day I go into work and I don’t really do much. I have a project to work on, but I’m waiting for the full specifications. I’ve got a few features to add or bugs to fix to existing projects, but if I really wanted I could do all of that in one day. I refrain from doing so simply to maintain something to do if I really wanted to. If I did them all I would literally have no work to do and no reason to leave my house.

Some days the only reason I get out of bed is because I might do this little bit of inane work I have yet to do. Daniel Robbins, I understand why you quit Microsoft. Hopefully by the time I finish the project I’m working on I will be able to find some more exciting work. More than money, more than fame I just want to do something fulfilling and challenging every day of my life. Maybe I should get off my ass and start a company despite my large debt.

I also rebuilt my Gentoo. That Gentoo had been installed since a very early 2.6 kernel. Now you’re saying, “I thought Linux got better over time!” Well, it did. “Then why did you re-install?” Well, I’ll tell you.

That install of Gentoo was the best. It was perfectly customized for my needs and was becoming more customized every day. However, it had fallen victim to a Gentoo specific problem. Other Linux distributions just update packages to newer versions. e.g: Ubuntu will update package 1.0 to package 1.1. Gentoo doesn’t force you, but encourages you to update to the newer technology. So you switch from devfs to udev, or from supermount to submount to dbus, hal and ivman. Theoretically all these things can go smoothly. But, as they are newer technologies you are just learning, they get messed up. You have the choice not to update if you don’t mind missing out on the new functionality. But if you don’t update you’re not getting a better Linux, are you?

Technically I could have made the system perfect without formatting and re-installing. However, when that system was first built most of my hardware was very new. I needed the latest and greatest ~x86 software just to make it work. Nowadays I only need stable packages to make it work. Also in those days it was more difficult to customize different options for different packages in Gentoo. Your only choice was the dreaded ACCEPT_KEYWORDS. Nowadays /etc/portage exists, works and is well documented. Since it is not possible to go from unstable Gentoo to stable I rebuilt the whole thing. I imagine I wont do this ever again unless I get a new computer because all these technologies look like they are here to stay. /me crosses fingers.

The last reason I did a system overhaul was to try out my strategy for the greatest USE flags. It’s an obvious way to do things if you know anything about Gentoo. But back in the day it wasn’t easy to do. The -N flag to the emerge command looks for packages with USE flags that have changed and marks them to be rebuilt. Before that argument existed changing USE flags was a nightmare. You would have to manually search for which packages you had installed that used that flag and rebuild them. So what I would do in those days was read the list of USE flags and set as many as I could at install time. If there was even a thought I would need a flag I would set it. However, I often got caught on undocumented package-specific flags. It also sucked when I had a flag I wanted to remove.

So for this new install I had a new strategy. Every time I emerge a new package I do emerge -pv to see which USE flags will effect the build. I go through the list figuring out what each and every flag means. I set all the ones I want then run the command again to see if any new dependencies have appeared that might have their own new flags. This way my system has all the flags I want, and I am guaranteed not to fill make.conf with flags that don’t effect my installation. If I forget a flag it’s no big deal. I add it and use the -N.

I would also like to note one more thing. This latest installation took less time than any other Gentoo install I have ever done. It might be because I have a lot of experience. It might be because the handbook is improved a lot. But a significant factor was simply that installing Gentoo is more streamlined and a little bit easier than it used to be. It is still not for newbies, but it is less troubling. It took me only 24 hours this time, instead of the usual 48+. Way to go Gentoo guys.

There is also a new graphical installer for Gentoo now that is in Alpha. In its current format I wouldn’t use it for any production system. But it’s still pretty slick. It’s basically a Gentoo LiveCD with X, like a Knoppix or Ubuntu CD. In true Gentoo fashion it wows you with beautiful purple graphics, and then it starts Gnome. It’s a standard Gnome, but on the desktop is a link to run the install program. It’s a very nice GUI program that takes you step by step through the Gentoo install process. It reminds me a lot of the old Mandrake installer with the steps listed in a column on the left. Maybe that’s the idea since a lot of Gentoo users, including myself, switched from Mandrake.

So it seems that the computing situation in my house is just about in order. After I get back from vacation I’ll take a little nap and then enter high-productivity mode. Expect awesome.

For all of these computers I was extra lazy and took the Ubuntu path. I’ve pretty much cut back on Linux distributions to the point where there are only three I use regularly: Gentoo, Ubuntu and Knoppix. I use Gentoo on any computer important enough for me to put in the requisite effort. I use Ubuntu whenever it is up to the task because it is as good as Debian without the effort. And of course, I use Knoppix variants for when I need a LiveCD with lots of tools.

Ubuntu has been the choice on all the new computers. It is excellent as usual. The issues with sound I previously griped about don’t even come up, because Ubuntu automatically sets up esound awesomely. I haven’t yet tested to see if it will correctly make surround sound work. I honestly doubt it will. But the fact that hal, dbus and udev work perfectly out of the box is more than enough for me. Of course there is one fatal flaw of Ubuntu.

Like its parent Debian, Ubuntu is big on freeness. Every package in the default repositories is fully free. Without jumping through a few hoops you can’t install any non-free software. Some of these hoops are legal hoops. For example, installing and distributing Sun Java as part of Ubuntu would be illegal. However, it is a small vocal minority of Linux users that actually demand that every single piece of software they use is free as in speech. In my experience most users just want everything to work and don’t care if they have to use something that isn’t free speech. As long as it is free beer they will take what works best. There are people who use Linux for reasons besides freeness such as security, stability and flexibility. If you really believe most Linux users care, why are the Nvidia drivers so popular? On the Gentoo forums you’ll see many a thread about how to use them or how to fix problems with them. And you’ll see maybe one zealot per thread yelling about how it isn’t free. Well guess what? Only zealots care. It would be nice if there was a truly free alternative. In some cases there is. The forcedeth drivers are arguably better than the nforce-net. But if given a choice between a fully free solution that is sub-par and a free beer solution that works better, just about every non-zealot is going to pick the non-free solution.

This is the flaw with Ubuntu. Its freeness makes it incompetent for multimedia. It comes setup with a piece of software for every multimedia task you want. Playing audio, ripping audio, playing video, the whole shebang. But it only works on free file formats. With a setup like that new users are going to think Linux is useless multimedia-wise, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The truth is that if you setup Linux with a full set of non-free software you will be able to rip, mix, burn, play and transfer every media format you want. And it does it all without DRM and without any annoyances. It also does it with fewer pieces of software. In other OSes you often need multiple pieces of software to play different file types. In Linux you can arguably use just one piece of software to handle all files. You also aren’t limited in how you use the files. QuickTime might not let you full screen the trailer, but mplayer will. In this department Linux blows Windows and Apple out of the water. Apple only wins in the content creation department. Windows wins in neither, even if you go through the trouble to setup mplayer on Windows.

The problem is that there are only two ways I know to get Linux to this perfect configuration. The first is to use Gentoo. If you set all the appropriate USE flags and emerge mplayer you’ve completed the playing component. Just merge k3b, XMMS and grip and you’re 90% of the way home. But it requires a lot of learning and effort to install Gentoo. Debian can do it too, but you have to add lots of repositories and do a lot of package hunting. Debian also is not easy for newbies to install. Ubuntu has the same problem as Debian with the repository searching and package hunting. Thankfully, the Ubuntu Wiki provides a lot of help in this department, but it’s not near enough.

Here’s what I suggest. Make a non-free, multimedia fork of Ubuntu. It will come installed just like Ubuntu, a fully capable and easy desktop OS. But this fork will include a full set of multimedia packages and codecs by default. Or it will include as many as it can without being legally questionable. To avoid some legal traps they can add extra user interaction at the end of the installation. I noticed you have an Nvidia card, would you like to install the Nvidia driver now? Would you like to install Sun Java? You get the idea. From there on it will guide the user to setting those things up in a way that requires the minimal effort from the user while remaining legal.

If this distro really existed and worked I believe it would trump Ubuntu itself in popularity. That assumes the distro would be maintained and that there would be sufficient public awareness. Once we’ve got this down I think there will be some real Linux migration by normal folk. Normal folk who are fed up with not being free with their multimedia. I guess those zealots will have to learn to deal with the fact that the only way to be truly free with multimedia is to use some non-free software.

What would be extra cool is if there was a way to make a deal with software companies to allow us to distribute their software. If it isn’t possible, then perhaps we could create an illegal distribution and host it in some country that doesn’t care. I always wonder, if it is legal for mplayer to host all the codecs on their site for free download why would it be illegal to host a distribution including all those codecs on the same site? A lot of what people do with their computers now is multimedia. If Linux can cast away a few zealots it can show that it is the best multimedia playing and managing operating system. Once it catches up to Apple in the content creation department it will be unstoppable.

There are some areas of obscure hardware that Linux still has a hard time with, but these are rare. One example is a scanner my parents own. It is a Canoscan LidE 50. Most scanners work perfectly using the SANE system, but this particular scanner has a chip that is not yet fully supported. But these outliers are almost always supported eventually if there is enough demand. Very rarely does it take long for new popular hardware to get Linux support if it doesn’t have it already.

Despite the vast improvements made in this area, there is still one gaping hole in Linux hardware support, and that hole is sound. The issue isn’t that sound doesn’t work in Linux. In fact, sound works very well. With just about any sound card you can get audio to go in and out using Alsa or OSS. That’s not the problem. The problem is that the full feature set of most sound cards is not even close to being fully implemented.

I have two sound cards in my computer. One is the Nforce on-board sound card that is part of my Abit NF7-S. The other is a Create SBLive! Value. Both of these cards have support under Linux and I can make them both work easily. Heck, I can get them to both work simultaneously. What needs major fixing is that in Windows they work better. Not just a little better, shit tons better. Let me count the specific ways.

First off, I have 4.1 speakers. In windows to get 4.1 audio all I have to do is tell windows I have four speakers. That’s it, no matter which sound card I use the 4.1 audio works flawlessly. In Linux there is no way AFAIK that it is even possible to get the 4.1 audio to work with either of my cards. Neither the Gentoo Forums nor Google could provide an answer.

Next, the audio quality in Linux is entirely deficient. In windows, using Winamp the sound is terrific. Even if I disable 4.1 and use 2.1 (which is what I can get Linux to do) the music is still terrific. Playing the same audio files in Linux with 2.1 and either XMMS or Mplayer there is a noticeable difference. We’re not talking audiophile bull shit here, there is an obvious deficiency in the quality of the sound emanating from either of my sound cards. It is such a noticeable deficiency that anyone I have ever asked notices it outright without a question. Same speakers, same hardware. The software is not bringing the audio quality up to full potential.

Controlling and configuring sound in Linux is a huge pain in the ass. Of course in Linux I’m not expecting an easy GUI that lets me do everything all nice and simple like Windows or Mac. But even a guy like me, using Linux for many years, has trouble configuring and mixing the sound cards. The Mixers often have multiple channels, many of which are cryptic. What is IEC958? What is Wave Surround? How come Master doesn’t really work the way it should? Why should I have to setup a crazy dmix thing? It should be that way by default. How come I can’t choose which sound card is 1 and which is 2 if the drivers are built into the kernel? Why are the kernel drivers not the latest versions? Putting Alsa in the kernel was supposed to solve problems, but apparently the way to get more up to date sound support is to keep doing things the old way with external drivers. All these problems must be rectified.

Generating audio be it listening to music, watching movies, playing games or even just normal beeps and boops is an extremely important part of the function of a personal computer. Just about the only thing worse than a computer without sound (besides no computer) is one without an Internet connection. And until sound works correctly and fully in Linux there will be no chance of winning over any non-corporate desktop market.

I will grant the fact that it isn’t easy to make this happen. I heard things about Nvidia not giving out the information to get hardware mixing to work. I know that working with DSPs is not easy, and writing sound drivers is fairly difficult. There are also too many sound interfaces in the Linux world: esd, arts, Alsa, OSS, etc. Alsa seems to be winning out due to kernel acceptance, but the others are far from completely dead. Well, maybe esound. These factors don’t make it easy to get sound working beautifully and perfectly in the OS.

Despite these difficulties I still feel that not enough effort and attention is being put into these sound issues. I’ve had my SBLive! and 4.1 audio working in Windows 98, and that was back when the SBLive! was a brand new card. To this day, Linux still can’t do it. That’s over 5 years of development. That is really sad. If anyone can prove me wrong and show me that indeed 4.1 audio does indeed work with my card I will be glad to hear it. However, this has something I have been trying to make work on and off for a long time with no success. I highly doubt that there is some secret that has eluded forums and Google for all this time. The bottom line is that this stuff has to be fixed. And it’s very shocking to me that basic problems like this which have existed for many years have gone unfixed while much less important things, like LEGO control towers, are working great. Fix sound in Linux. If not for me, then for all the people running MythTV who could potentially avoid buying a surround sound receiver and use their Myth Boxen isntead.

I considered some co-location, but I think I’ll have to set that as a long term goal. I need money now for a security deposit on an apartment, not for another computer. Luckily I found Linode. Basically what they do is utilize the user mode Linux technology to turn one giant server into 20 or so normal servers. Then they sell each of the 20 servers to people like me. UML is really cool because what it does is virtually turn a single physical hardware computer into as many fully functional Linux machines as you want. It’s kind of like VMware, but for Linux only and 1000 times more powerful.

Originally I was hesitant about getting it. I was afraid it wouldn’t be powerful enough. But it was the only place that was providing complete root control of a Linux box for a reasonable price. So I took it and I can say so far I am very pleased. The web interface is especially nice. I can reboot the computer all i want and re-image with any distribution from their image server at the push of a button. I’m running Gentoo as always and administering it the way I like. And despite being a bit low on RAM I’m still pulling through quite nicely.

One thing I would especially like to note is that user mode Linux is free like all open source stuff. You can turn your computer into 50 virtual Linux boxes if you want at no cost. No other OS I know of has a freely available and high quality way to run multiple copies of itself on a single piece of hardware simultaneously. I know BSD has the jails, but its not the same. UML rules, this site will be hosted for a long while. Hooray and hooray.

But as you all know, Gentoo is a bitch to setup. It takes forever, and for any non-important system it just isn’t worth the time. The solution to this of course is Debian. But Debian is a pain in the ass too. The installer is perhaps the worst thing ever, other than LFS. Every other major distro suffers the disease of being non-standard. I don’t mean non-standard in the usual sense, but more of a subjective “it’s not REAL Linux” sense. That is to say that distros like Mandrake, Suse, Fedora, etc. are nice and easy, but all do things a little differently than just plain old Linux. They have their own quirks and tendencies that usually cause distro-specific issues. For example, its not trivial to build software for fedora. The complete gcc tool-chain isn’t standard kit, and even if you install it it doesn’t work perfectly. Not to mention the hell that is rpms. The yum and apt package managers for Fedora don’t really give you a wide selection of software. And trying to download rpms from the net is a nightmare.

So all the rave about this new Ubuntu Linux really seemed like it might be the final solution. Well, it is and it isn’t. Ubuntu Linux is basically Debian, plain and simple. It doesn’t have any strange quirks that make it stand apart from Debian other than the fact that Xorg, gnome, Firefox, evolution and OpenOffice are all installed by default. Debian starts you out with a minimal base system after an install. It also has a liveCD which will boot you into an environment identical to a clean install of Ubuntu. But the best part is that the installer is simple and perfect. You get all the power of a perfect Debian with less effort than a Fedora. It’s exactly what I’ve always been looking for. Something easy for most people that shows of the true quality and power of what Linux is like without the Mandrake/Fedora/Suse crap getting in the way.

But all is not perfect in Ubuntu land. The distro, while a very good and large step towards what I would say would be a good candidate for a “default” home desktop distro, is not without flaw. I recently installed it on my parents PC. In fact, I’m using that PC right now. The install was simple enough, but right away I ran into problems. First off, there was no GUI and obvious way to get the DSL network support up in the installer or afterwords. If you aren’t using DHCP, static IP or dial-up you gotta hit the Ubuntu wiki, which is great by the way, to find out what to do. So for pppoe I had to run a program called pppoeconf. It set me up with the DSL perfectly, it even configured the system to automatically bring up the DSL on boot. Now just add this to the installer and we’ll be all set.

There are some other problems too. The package manager is standard Debian apt that gets stuff from Ubuntu repositories. But by default the selection of software is extremely minimal. I had to go around the net looking for more repositories to add so I could get software like mplayer. I can understand not wanting to overwhelm lesser users with tons of software choices. However, in my eyes there are only going to be three types of people using an OS. People who only use the default software and never do anything. People who are smart enough to update existing software and not add any more. And people who will want mplayer and Xmms and Abiword and everything else. Therefore you should definitely add full software repositories of free and non-free software. Listen if its legal for me to go build mplayer and Xmms, then why can’t you just include it? I mean seriously. The people who are so crazy as to care about only using super free software will use real Debian. None of the people who need the easiness of Ubuntu care about that. They want to play any type of video file or audio file ever, perfectly, every time. Xmms and mplayer should be the default and installed with full codecs.

Another problem with Ubuntu is file associations. Even if you manage to install mplayer and such by adding repositories it is difficult to set it as the default player for all users. But this is mostly a problem of gnome/nautilus not providing an easy GUI for this rather than a problem of ubuntu.

The last problem with Ubuntu is its no-root account style. They did this on purpose by the way. Their site explains the decision and defends it very well. But the result is you use sudo for everything. So its not a plan9 style no root, its just sudo instead of su. This is fine, but becomes troublesome. I find myself typing in my password more often than on my Gentoo box for some reason. Also, sudo isn’t exactly the same as su, so sometimes things don’t work perfectly.

The last problem with Ubuntu I had is with giFT. giFT is a p2p program with a plug-in architecture. It runs a demon that connects to any network for which you have an installed and configured plug-in. Then you can search and download from all those networks simultaneously. It supports Gnutella, openFT, FastTrack, etc. But starting the daemon is a bitch. It wasn’t worth the effort and I switched to plain old gtk-gnutella. On Gentoo, which is what I have to compare it to, init scripts are already taken care of when you emerge gift. You can /etc/init.d/gift start and be on your way. Gentoo also doesn’t use System V init. Ubuntu uses System V init to a T, which pisses me off! I hate System V init, its so incredibly painful and useless. Especially if you have to write your own init scripts because the package manager doesn’t put them there.

I’d also like to note that I had a small problem getting the sun JRE to work so I could view applets in Firefox. However, a comment in the wiki fixed my problem. But there really should have just been a package in the repository called sun-Java which just worked. Even if it made me download the file from sun manually.

So in conclusion Ubuntu is definitely a huge step in the right direction for Linux on the home and corporate desktop. It gives you the full high quality Linux experience with the easiness of the major easy distros. The only problems I’ve found are lack of pppoe support in the installer, which is an easy fix, and personal disputes with the default configuration. The liveCD that is exactly like the end product is a nice touch since people can try out Ubuntu risk-free and then when they actually install it they get the same exact thing. I’m sure someone could very easily make a slight mod to Ubuntu to change the default media software, have Java and flash already in there, and make it a full and complete desktop PC from the get go. I wouldn’t use it for my PC or server, but for any desktop PC on which I want to run Linux without having a huge hassle of Gentoo or Debian Ubuntu will definitely be on top of my list. It can only get better from here.

Edit: I found out a few cool extra things about Ubuntu. The test page for the printer is a very slick ubuntu custom printer test page. Also, with xscreensaver the password entry box is a custom ubuntu box, which is infinitely nicer than the default. Little things like this are a big plus in my book.

This week, in fact right now, I am in Florida with my grandparents. I had a bargain PC shipped their via Newegg and built it when I arrived. I was going to be lazy and do another fedora core, but a bug in FC3 prevents me from installing onto a serial ATA drive using nv_sata very easily. So I took the hard and guaranteed working path of Gentoo stage 3. Emerging gnome and all its parts took the greater part of a day, but I gotta say its pretty awesome. I use fvwm myself, but damn this is the hotness. And this bargain 15 inch LCD monitor with no dead pixels is unrelated and awesome. Anyway, check out the desktop I setup for my grandparents. The typing tutor is there because neither of them can type and its rather annoying receiving instant messages from my grandmother that resemble kindergartner’s writing.

Anyway I thought I would be able to gain a lot of insight about user interfaces and learning since my grandparents don’t really know anything about computers at all. They don’t have to unlearn windows or anything like that, so I could possibly get some objective information about the ease of learning a Linux UI from scratch. Well my dreams were shattered today. And now a disclaimer before you read the rest: I love my grandparents very much and they are awesome. I mean, I came down to Florida during winter break to visit them and make a computer for them and help them for nothing. Any insults in their direction are more a result of my frustration being smashed against a reality of the world.

So after I built the system for them I said to myself OK. I only need to teach them how to use 3 or 4 programs: Thunderbird, Firefox, gaim and maybe Open Office. So I had them come over and tried to teach them first how to use thunderbird. I explained how e-mail worked and such and pointed out which parts of the UI had different stuff. Your incoming messages are here, the message shows up here, you can write new mail by clicking here, etc. Apparently this was jumping too far ahead. We first had to learn how to hold and click the mouse properly. In fact, I had to describe the entire concept of a pointing device from scratch. Also apparently the shift key on the keyboard is going to be an advanced topic too.

So, this is OK. I can handle starting from the bottom and going up. It will just take longer to explain everything. And it would be easy too, if it weren’t for the fact that old people are stubborn, impatient, ADD afflicted children with a learning disability. Its as if they got old and forgot how to learn things. They express a desire to learn how to use the computer, yet they have absolutely no confidence in their abilities and no patience, attention or effort towards absorbing information. Sometimes they get distracted and always ask “what’s that thingy over there?” pointing out some unimportant part of the UI that they shouldn’t’ be concerned with. Sometimes they temporarily stop caring and get up. It’s like they want to learn rush over to the computer poke it get up and walk away. Or like they want to learn to drive, but once they get in the seat they just play with the radio until they’re bored.

I’ve covered up as much stuff as possible to make using the computer as easy as I possibly can, but it doesn’t seem to help. Here’s a good example. My grandma tried to write an e-mail in Thunderbird. Now, this program has freaking huge icons with big text under them. She couldn’t for the life of her find the giant freaking button to write a new e-mail. Maybe it was because she was looking for a button that said send. But then she had equal difficulty finding the reply button which very clearly says reply. I wish I had some sort of retina scan to see what the hell she was looking at.

As always I think the biggest obstacle people have in learning computers is that they simply don’t read the screen. There are words, in English on the screen. If you read them and click on them they very descriptively tell you what they do. It is my experience that people just don’t do that. Even worse there are people who read too much and associate the text improperly. Thank god my grandparents aren’t like that.

Anyway, after tomorrow they’re on their own. They can probably learn more by fooling around. I threw a link to pysol (solitaire) on the desktop so maybe they will play it and learn how to use the mouse better. I mean, that was the original purpose of windows solitaire right? All I can say is two things. First, I am happy to say that at worst this problem will be guaranteed to vanish in less than 80 years. By then the oldest people will have been using computers for many years if not their whole lives. They will be like televisions where knowing how to use one does not come into question often.

Second, I can say that if I live to be very elderly I will never be like that. My learning skills are perhaps the most valuable skills I have. I mean, I learned python and ruby inside a week each simply by peeking at docs on-line and nutshell books. If I lose the ability to do that my life is pretty much worthless at that point. May my mind forever be a sponge, not fully saturated, always absorbing new information, increasing in mass and dampness, allowing the old useless dirty knowledge to slowly drip away to make room for the new. If the sponge is ever full then my mind will be closed to new information, which I view as equal to the sponge being dried up and crusty. In short, when they invent teleporters, perfect VR and flying cars I may be really old, but I’ll still be on the bleeding edge. If I ever fall off of that edge may it slit me in two.

I have posted my config file on the site here so that other people can learn from my fvwm configuring. I have also posted some more current screenshots of what my desktop looks like. Desktop 1 Desktop 2 Desktop 3 Desktop 4 Desktop 5

Here’s how my desktop works, its rather simple. I have two monitors. A 17 inch 1024×768 CRT on the left and a 1280×1024 LCD on the right. I hope to get one or two more identical LCD monitors so I can throw away the CRT. I’ll have to wait for the price to drop about $100 more or until I get a real job. Anyway, because the screens are different resolutions I don’t actually see the bottom portion of the left screen, but that’s ok because the software recognizes that I don’t see that area and acts as if it isn’t there. But scrot still takes a screenshot of it. On the top of the left screen I use torsmo to monitor my system and the time, etc. On the top of the right screen I have a taskbar and a pager in one horizontal bar. There is a panel for launching applications that appears if you put the mouse all the way in the top right of the screen. If you right click on the desktop a main menu appears with all sorts of handy options. And if you alt-tab a nice window switching menu appears. Everything behaves pretty much as you would expect. One nice thing I did was if you left click on a maximize button it causes that window to grow horizontally and vertically until it comes into contact with other windows or screen edges. Also if you right click on a maximize button it causes the window to grow to fill its entire screen. And that’s most of how my desktop works. If you really want to experience it yourself you can run fvwm and use my configuration file. I will update the configuration file on the site and the screenshots whenever I make a significant change.

So, if you don’t know me I have giant balls. I pretty much forced my parents to go Linux. I was like “back up all your files on a CD, I’m comin’ a formattin’. And that’s what I did. I was even really lazy, I did a 5 minute default fedora core 3 install. I made sure Firefox and OpenOffice were working and I made sure the gimp was working for my sister. I gave them a choice of gnome, KDE and Xfce and made sure they knew how to change between them. I upgraded all the packages to the latest versions and I set up the DSL to keep connected no matter what they did. I also set up some nice screen-savers and GDM stuffs. Then I left to go back to college giving them only the simplest of instructions.

Oh my god! You must be thinking I’m living in a world of hurt. You are imagining thoughts of parents calling with questions like “I don’t have the Internet anymore! The blue E is gone!” or “How can I get my e-mail without Outlook!”. Well I was worried too, but I didn’t care like most of you would. And you know what. Those worries were completely unfounded.

My mom called the other day and she said “the computer is wonderful.” Imagine that. In a world without spy-ware, a very limited selection of pre-installed software and a very simple default GUI my parents are getting along better than ever. And this makes me a happy camper too, for obvious reasons. Once I took away the pain of setting up the networking and printing they needed nothing more. Being able to have a fast computing experience free of spy-ware and virii was great, they just didn’t believe me until I forced it onto them.

There were two problems however, I will admit. The first problem was that their scanner did not work with sane. They have a CanoScan lid50, which is not yet supported, but the driver is under development. So when that driver is finished I will set it up for them. The second problem was that my mom has no tax software, which made her sad. At first this was her number one reason for not wanting to go when I told her there really isn’t any tax software for Linux. But now she realizes that using a friend’s computer or doing it the hard way is worth it. There was another problem, their hard drive is dying. I didn’t realize it in windows because it never told me. But smart told me about the bad sectors mighty quick. I’ll have to get them a new drive next time I go home. Sadly some gnome libraries were on top of the bad sectors so some things in gnome are kind of broken.

The moral of the story? People resist change. People don’t want to put in effort to switch from one thing to another because of perceived difficulties and consequences outweighing benefits they have not experienced. But, if you go in and force people to change they’ll thank you for it. Take as much of the effort onto yourself as possible, if you’re a nerd the effort of installing fedora is a walk in the park. Not so for others. Once its set up all nice for them everything from their on out is smooth sailing.

I would also like to point out I did this with a very lazily setup fedora core 3 install that had 3 problems. Imagine if I took the time to setup Gentoo or Debian for them on a working drive. Installing those two distros is a pain, but the finished product is leaps and bounds ahead of FC. Getting someone to install it for you is about as good as it gets. Moral of this story: grab your Knoppix Cd’s the day of victory is upon us. The way to switch the world to Linux is clear, force them into it.

The reason is this. Like fine wine, Linux gets better with age. Every day I use Linux I improve the system. Because I have the freedom to tweak and change things, I do so. And the system doesn’t degrade naturally like a windows system. As a result my computing experience is constantly evolving into a better one. And while I may dream of days when my system will be perfect, and I wont need to change anything, I know those days are far off if they exist at all.

Windows on the other hand, as we all know, degrades with age. There’s nothing quite like a fresh windows install. Everything is clean and working perfectly. The system is fast, there is no spyware, no viruses, and the registry is small and organized. But over time the computing experience degrades. It can only stay the same or get worse. Since the user has no freedom to change the system, the only chance for improvement comes from Microsoft. They wont be changing anything until longhorn in 2k6.

I used to believe that the breaking point, when Linux would blow away Windows was 2.6 and Firefox. 2.6 brought the system to a point where it really became usable and powerful for desktop computing. Firefox was the piece of software that was so obviously superior to anything before it that it would finally draw enough attention and people into the open source fold. And while the scales are tipping, there is no avalanche.

I believe now the breaking point will be something else. A fresh windows install is like a moderately priced wine. You buy it and drink it on a holiday. But if you let it sit, it will soon become vinegar. Linux is a fine wine but just squeezed. You must take it home and let it sit for a long time for its excellence to shine through. There will be a breaking point however. As the vintage of Linux rises, so does the initial quality. One day, when a fresh install of Linux tastes as good as or better than a fresh install of Windows, then and only then will it win. And this day will surely come. People are impatient and do not want to have to wait and care for their wine. They want to buy it and drink it. But they still become upset if it goes sour. Linux only becomes better with age, so when its initial quality is drinkable people will buy it. And when they see that it does not go sour, but in fact the opposite occurs, then they will cease to drink anything else.

You might be thinking what this has to do with the ultimate desktop project. Well, up until now I’ve been using Xfce4.05. It’s pretty good. It has a nice graphical control panel and simple seperate components. I don’t use the panel, but I do use xfdesktop and the taskbar and such. However, it isn’t perfect. The weak xinerama support annoys me among many other small things. The yet to be released Xfce4.2 supposedly fixes many of these things. Yes, it is much improved, but it still isn’t exactly what I want. Thinking along the Gentoo philosophy I decided that with enough time and effort spent I could get the exact desktop environment that I wanted. I could do it even if it meant making themes by hand, writing a window manager from scratch, or modifying the code of Xfree86/Xorg.

So the first step was to have a window manager rodeo. I couldn’t think of a word to use instead of rodeo that sounded good, deal with it. In the process I discovered many things. First off, very few window managers are unique. Enlightenment, ion, xfce, gnome, kde and ratpoison seemed to be the only ones that stood out among the crowd. Open/Black/Fluxbox, pekwm, fvwm, windowmaker, they all seemed the same to me. They give you a blank screen maybe with one or two small widgets. They also provide a menu when you right click the desktop. The rest is up to you to customize. I couldn’t understand why someone felt the urge to make a new wm when so many exactly like it already existed.

Then fate came to me on the Gentoo forums. There is a monthly thread where people post pictures of their desktops. In the thread someone said “isn’t taviso great?” I said “what is taviso?” I thought it was a piece of software, but I couldn’t emerge it. esearch -Sc taviso came up with no results. I was informed quickly that taviso was the “god of fvwm” and also a Gentoo dev. Apparently he used xvidcap to make a video demonstrating his desktop instead of just screenshots. I checked out his video and was blown away. When I tried fvwm2 I could only get it to look like twm plus a pager panel and taskbar with a very ugly “raw X” theme. You wouldn’t even know he was using fvwm unless he told you. According to the mother of all fvwm threads which he started he claims that “fvwm can do anything”. Ladies and gentlemen it looks like I found my solution. With considerable time and effort I can use fvwm to create the ideal desktop for me.

So here I go. I’ve created a brand new user on my machine with an empty home folder. I am also going to create a project website for my ultimate desktop experiment. This experiment will work as follows. First I will, on real paper, design my ideal desktop environment. I will not assume that anything is impossible. The only limits I put on my desires are those imposed by my computer hardware, the Linux kernel and X. Everything else will be fair game. Items in the plan will be separated by component. I will design my ideal panel, taskbar, menus, window decorations, pager, etc. After that I will go through the list and mark off which items I think are far off. By far off I mean items which are either obviously difficult to implement and/or not absolutely necessary. I will consider the project complete even if none of these items is implemented. Note, this initial plan will only contain functional requirements. e.g: there will be a menu with these items that works like this. The final part of the project will be theme. Animations, icons, colors, backgrounds, etc. All come afterwards. However, sometimes color/theme is part of functionality. Having a different color background depending on desktop and page is functional. Which background colors I choose is a matter of theme and that comes later.

After I make the plan and make web pages out of it I will put a link to the page here. My first hope is that my ideal desktop is created and I get to experience my perfect computing experience. Second I hope that other people can use the project to learn about fvwm and make their own computer experience better. I know almost nothing about fvwm right now, so other will be able to learn along with me. Third I hope that I can prove taviso wrong. I’m sure there is something I want that fvwm can’t do. Of course, this is a contradictory hope. It would kind of suck if what I wanted wasn’t possible, but slightly satisfying that I can confirm to myself that fvwm is not the be all end all of window managers. I would definitely rather have it work though. In a perfect world I would get everything I wanted but simultaneously discover something impossible. Anyway, I’m going for it, watch this space.

First, why was I doing this? Couldn’t I just continue the way things were going? Well, no. I was constantly telling people they should use linux if they didn’t play 3d games. I told them it could do everything windows could so. But I wasn’t using Linux for everything. I didn’t have the printer, scanner and joystick working. I didn’t have A lot of things working the way they should in linux. So in fact I was being hypocritical in my promotion. Also, my computer at work has linux only. It was the first gentoo box I built to perfection. And since I use it 9-5 5 days a week it is pretty flawless and slick. I figure if I can use it at work without trouble I can do the same at home. And guess what, I did. I’m typing this in Nedit right now, yay!

First I had to back up my mp3s and videos onto my new 160 gigabyte SATA drive. Not hard. I know that XFS is a very reliable file system that handles large files well. Since I’m only using this drive for videos and music I made one giant partition. Take that NTFS! Also, doing this served as a way to force myself to use Linux because now I can’t play my mp3s from windows because windows can’t read XFS. I put a picture up online that shows a nice view of my backup drive from Konqueror in Knoppix. FYI Knoppix is the greatest tool in the world. I used it to format all my drives and sort out all my data perfectly before I booted the gentoo livecd and got my groove on. Some of the files I backed up there I really should have deleted. I had some movies and other junk you can see that really was just taking up space and I didn’t need to keep it. But it was just easier to back up the whole drive and not have to pick and choose.

Then I went through the standard gentoo install process. I gave gentoo my entire 80 gigabyte SATA drive. 32MB for the boot partition and the rest for /. I still have a 20gig drive in my computer that isn’t SATA. The first 10 gigs is windows XP. Which I haven’t booted since I isntalled it. Then there is another gig for swap space. It’s nice to have that on a seperate drive. Of course, this drive has the MBR on it. I over-wrote the one that windows put there with grub. I also made a 5 gigabyte FAT32 partition on there. I need some easy way to transfer files between linux and windows. And the most efficient way is a nice FAT32 partition. The rest of the space on that drive is wide open, I’m planning on putting some sort of DOS there so I can play the old-skool games from my childhood.

Now that I had a Linux install I did my favorite xfree/gdm/xfce4 combination. Man I can’t wait for xfce4.2. I hear that xinerama actually works properly in it. Everything worked perfectly, except… Here are the problems I had. Consider this. I can now consider myself an old pro at linux/gentoo. I’ve been using linux for 6 years and I’ve been using gentoo for 1. I’ve installed gentoo many times on many machines. I’m at the point where I can do it perfectly every time. I barely look at the handbook anymore, although I still need it. Yet, I still had problems making my system exactly the way I wanted it to be. This is why linux isn’t quite ready. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shit-ton more ready than it used to be. However, I had only one problem when I installed windows XP. And it was much less difficult to fix than the problems with linux.

What was the problem with XP? Just a USB mouse trouble. After I installed the nforce drivers, which updated the USB controller drivers, my mouse stopped working. I Just had to navigate to the logitech site with the keyboard and get mouseware. Piece of cake. Other than that, windows just worked. What were the problems with linux you ask? That’s a new topic and requires another paragraph.

Ok, the worst problem was permissions. Why was this a problem? Because I previously had all my mp3s on NTFS and FAT32 partitions because they are the only ones that windows and linux can both read. Now all of a sudden I needed to chmod every mp3 I had. So I had to make a group called music and add myself to this group. I recursively chowned the entire drives to be root:music. Then I had to manually chmod, sometimes recursively and creatively every folder to be 775 and every mp3 to be 664. It wasn’t fun, but now its done. There should have been an easier way.

The second problem I had was with sound cards. They both worked perfectly. However, since I built them into the kernel (not <M> but <*>) they loaded in the order they desired. So ALSA made my on-board audio device 0 and my SBLive! device 1. I couldn’t reverse it without rebuilding my kernel 3 times to find the optimal config and without messing with /etc/modules.d/alsa until it was just right. That shouldn’t be. There is still a small problem of storing mixer settings. Good thing I don’t reboot often anymore.

Next a small problem. Joystick wasn’t working. Detected and driver loaded, but no /dev/input/js0. Oops, forgot to emerge hotplug. Getting the printer working was a snap. But it wouldn’t have been without the gentoo printing guide and xfprint4. I don’t know shit about CUPS. Other problems include the fact I can’t get silent splash to work. Frambuffer and bootsplash both work great. however, I can’t get the progress bar and logo to cover up the kernel output. I don’t want it just yet since my kernel is fresh and needs watching. But the fact that it doesn’t work is icky. Maybe I need a different initrd?

I’m going to have an adventure trying to get my cd burner to work without scsi emulation and then making the scanner work also. Other than miscellaneous unsolvable bugs in software that’s it. I’m an all-linux guy now. I figured this might be a story that can be used as evidence in any Linux arguments. Conclusion, Linux IS better than windows if you don’t want to play 3d games, and that is changing. A Linux system CAN be made to do everything you want. Easy to use distros like Red Hat will mostly work perfectly out of the box. But the one or two things that don’t work will be nearly impossibly to fix. I know this from years of Mandrake and Red Hat using. Using a more difficult system like Gentoo requires you to set up everything and takes some practice, time and knowledge. However, everything will work. Its just a matter of time and looking up stuff on forums and google. Once you have the info you can make it go easily. Easy to use distros modify the system so much from the default that things don’t want to go. Use Linux if you want to, its worth it.