Linux in Exile

Third-party drivers

2012-01-25T17:28:00.000-06:00

Let me preface this post with: I'm technical enough to understand that this problem is with a specific third-party driver. I get that. But one of the founding reasons behind the Linux in Exile blog was "I find it interesting when long-time Windows users experiment with Linux for the first time, I thought it might be equally interesting for this long-time Linux user to blog about my first experience running Windows in over 6 or 7 years." So I think it's fair to write this post with the view that "it doesn't do this under Linux."

A few weeks ago, I upgraded my smartphone from Android 2.1, to Android 2.2. Ever since, I've encountered this problem: When I boot Windows, the phone resets, and Windows stops working.

Maybe those don't seem connected. But this really does happen.

Need some more background information to debug this problem? Here you go: I have a USB-to-microUSB cable for my phone, which can let me transfer data, or just charge the phone via USB. Sometimes when I get to the office, I'll need to charge my phone, so I just connect the cable to the phone while I get my laptop set up.

For example: this morning, I plugged in my phone, and set up the laptop. I was going to attend a videoconference later that morning (which unfortunately requires Silverlight) so I booted into Windows. While Windows was coming up, my phone suddenly made a little chime, and reset. Windows froze up, and didn't finish booting. This happens all the time.

Whenever I've booted Linux with the phone connected via USB, everything works fine. This only breaks with Windows. What gives?

Here's what I think is happening: during the upgrade to Android 2.2, I had to install the phone's third-party software to let Windows directly update the phone's firmware. I suspect that when this driver gets initialized during boot, it probes the USB-connected devices, checking for the phone, which somehow causes the phone to reboot. Why Windows then hangs, I have no idea.

Yes, this is really a problem with third-party software running on Windows, but it's a problem that doesn't happen on Linux.

Windows users (who experiment with Linux) don't care that their scanner won't work because it's a "driver issue", or because "the hardware vendor doesn't want to be open." They just complain that their scanner doesn't work under Linux. In that mindset, I don't really care if this is a Windows driver issue, I only know that Windows doesn't boot (and "breaks" my phone.)

Configuring Windows updates

2011-12-15T17:58:00.000-06:00

This morning, I had an idea to boot into Windows, to make sure all my Windows patches are up-to-date before going into the holiday break. I'll admit that it's been well over a month (or has it been 2 months?) since I've booted Windows, so I expected there to be a bunch of updates.

I wasn't wrong. There were 48 updates to apply. And they were all huge. It's interesting to note the process by which Windows installs the updates:

Run Windows Update, let it download and apply the 48 updates. This takes forever and really bogs down my machine. I tried doing some email while it was working, but there was so much going on with the updates that my Dell Latitude E6410 seemed unusable at times. I don't recommend doing this when you're trying to do anything important.

After the updates are applied, they aren't really installed. You need to reboot for the changes to take effect. Sure enough, Windows applies a few of the updates as it shuts down. But we already know about that. It's been that way since at least Windows Vista.

I guess not everything gets installed at shutdown? As I rebooted my computer, I watched as Windows was "preparing" to install updates, then "configuring" Windows updates, before finally installing them. When it got to 32%, it kind of sat there, spinning the disk, like it was hung. I had enough time to get out my phone, and snap a photo, all while Windows was at "32% complete":

After all the updates were applied, Windows finally came up, and I was able to get back to work.

I never get tired of reminding that in Linux, when you reboot or shutdown, you actually reboot or shutdown. None of this "let me install a few updates before you really get to shut down your system." Reboot means "reboot", and shutdown means "shutdown".I guess I got spoiled for how cleanly Linux systems apply updates. Microsoft sure could take a lesson from that.

Gnome Shell extensions made easy

2011-12-04T18:10:00.001-06:00

My impressions still hold on Gnome 3: it is a change, but I kind of like it. I only had to tweak it a little bit to get back my blue title bars, and I'm fine. I guess Gnome 3, and specifically the Gnome Shell, is something you either love, or something you hate. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground.

If you miss the extensions and themes of Gnome 2, I thought I'd point you to where to get Gnome Shell extensions that might make you happy. We've talked about Gnome Shell extensions before, but now all those nifty extra features have been collected into a Gnome Shell extensions web site: extensions.gnome.org.

They have some neat extensions listed there. Here are a few to interest you:

Applications Menu: adds a menu that is very familiar to Gnome 2.
Connection Manager: puts an item in your top bar to quickly open an ssh (or other) connection.
gTile: lets you tile your windows in a particular way.
Window List: adds a window list in the top bar, similar to Gnome 2.

Fedora 16 impressions

2011-11-12T10:51:00.001-06:00

I installed Fedora 16 this week, onto my "test" USB flash drive. My first impressions: I really like what I see.

As promised, the login screen has received an overhaul to more closely match the Gnome desktop theme. Looks great.

Once you get into the desktop, things look about the same as Fedora 15. A few differences: you aren't available for chat by default (a welcome change for me.) And as always, a new default wallpaper specific to this version of Fedora:

In general, there aren't a lot of big changes from the previous Fedora. But we knew that. Applications are moved up to the latest releases (at the time Fedora 16 was assembled.) Firefox 7, Gnome 3.2, and so on.

Per my previous post, I was really excited to experiment with the integration with social contacts, and the support for online accounts. So once I was on the new version of Fedora, I played with that right away.

If you click on your name, in the upper-right corner, you now have access to online accounts:

It took only a few clicks to add my Google account:

As you can see, there's support for email, calendar, contacts, chat, and documents.

This means that you can now use Google as your default chat client. Clicking on my name again, I could go online with chat - with Gnome using Google Talk. In Evolution (Gnome's default email and calendar program) I could send and receive messages via my Gmail account, and update my Google Calendar. All through the native Evolution program. I haven't tried the "documents" integration yet.

This would be great if I actually used Evolution. But I don't. I prefer to stay in Google's web client for everything. So this desktop interaction, while cool, probably won't do much for me.

But if you're a desktop user who prefers Evolution to do your email and such, this will be a huge win. You can now do everything with one click. If you use Thunderbird for your Gmail, you may consider switching to Evolution, for this feature alone.

For those who wonder "what updates are already pushed out", there aren't that many updates for Fedora 16, which I suppose is a good indicator of its stability at release. My update was 55MB, and took only a few minutes while I did other things.

Fonts in kernel mode?

2011-11-07T18:19:00.000-06:00

I try not to comment on Microsoft's fumbles unless I've directly experienced it, like some functionality that seems totally broken to me, or behavior that seems inconsistent. However, I couldn't ignore this one.

You may have heard recently about the Duqu malware, making the rounds. It appeared in the guise of a specially crafted Word document that, when opened, would compromise your Windows PC. It was all over the news last week.

This morning, I received one of those "you're not really on our mailing list, but it's not really spam" emails from Redmond Magazine, "the independent voice of the Microsoft IT community". It linked to their full article, but the email summary said:

The Duqu zero-day exploit has had Microsoft twisting, turning and churning for a solution. Duqu exploits a hole in the Windows kernel and lets hackers remotely access and control your unfixed computer.

That's until Microsoft came out with a workaround last week. The stopgap solution can protect the kernel with just a few lines of code and a one click-install. That's some pretty efficient code.

(Emphasis mine)

Yes, that's some pretty efficient code, wrapping a fix into a one-click install.

I guess I'd be more impressed if I didn't know what allowed the Duqu exploit in the first place: Windows parses fonts in kernel mode. That's maybe not the best practice. Kind of blows your whole "pretty efficient code" out of the water with "spectacularly stupid security."

This, from the company who claimed in 2005 to be "investing heavily in security", focusing on the security pillars of:

Fundamentals: provide a built-in level of safety and security, improvements to the security of software code through the Engineering Excellence initiative, and investments in technologies.
Threat and vulnerability mitigation: industry-leading integrated security technologies, defense-in-depth protection.
Identity and access control: technologies that verify user identity, control what resources users are allowed to access based on policy, allow management of users, and protect access to data.

I'd say this Duqu exploit demonstrates a failure on all three levels.

Looking ahead to Fedora 16

2011-10-31T19:01:00.000-05:00

We are only a week or so away from Fedora 16, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to preview what's ahead in this release.

I happen to prefer Fedora as my Linux distro. While I usually install the "alpha" and "beta" releases on a USB flash drive, and test-drive it there, I haven't been able to do that with Fedora 16 yet. The installer for the test releases had a bug that prevented me from making the flash drive bootable. This has been fixed with an updated installer (which has been tweaked at least twice since) but too late for me to test it out here.

I'll see Fedora 16 when everyone else does, I guess.

There are many changes "under the hood", but I'm most interested in several key features for the desktop. The Gnome desktop is now at version 3.2, and includes these changes:

New login screen

Gnome updated the desktop in the previous version. In this release, the login screen has been given an overhaul to more closely match the Gnome desktop theme. This should give a more consistent feel to everything.

(an early look from live.gnome.org)

Support for online accounts

System Settings will gain an "Online Accounts" panel, which provides a central point for managing online accounts like Google, Facebook etc. For example, setting up a Google account in this panel will make Gmail, Contacts and Calendar in Evolution (the standard email/calendar desktop client) work "out of the box". The Gnome Shell Calendar (what you see when you click on the date/time at the top of the screen) will be populated from online accounts, as well. And Empathy(the standard chat client) will have Gtalk set up automatically.

As a user with several Google accounts, I'm very excited about this one! Finally, I can integrate my Google accounts into my desktop.

(early screenshot from freedesktop.org)

Integration with social contacts

We have lots of places where we can store our contact information. Many of my friends are on Facebook, or may be frequent chat contacts. Wouldn't it be great to tie into those contacts in Gnome?

Gnome Contacts uses multiple sources of contact data, linking pieces of contacts into a whole. For instance, it can get IM contacts and information about them, including presence status. It can also connect to social websites such as Facebook or Twitter.

This integrates with Empathy, Evolution and the new "Online Accounts" settings panel, pulling all your contacts into one address book.

(from Alexander Larsson)

As I said, there are lots of other changes too, but they may not be as visible. Check the feature list if you need details.

Fedora 16 is currently due on November 8.

Tweaking Gnome

2011-09-24T12:17:00.000-05:00

I gave Gnome themes a whirl, but ultimately decided that I like the default Gnome 3 desktop. Except for one thing: all windows are grey. The active window is grey with black text as the title, and inactive windows are a slightly different shade of grey with dark grey text as the title.

That's great and everything, but I do miss the blue title bars from Gnome 2.

Fortunately, there's a very straightforward way to change the title bars, or tweak other settings in Gnome: the appropriately-named Gnome Tweak Tool. If you don't have it already, it's easy enough to install via the usual method, or search for it as gnome-tweak-tool. It will show up in your Applications menu as "Tweak Advanced Settings".

Here's what is included in Gnome Tweak Tool:

Install and switch gnome-shell themes
Switch gtk/icon/cursor themes
Switch window manager themes
Change
- The user-interface and titlebar fonts
- Icons in menus and buttons
- Behavior on laptop lid close
- Shell font size
- File manager desktop icons
- Titlebar click action
- Shell clock to show date
- Font hinting and antialiasing

I was most interested in changing the window manager theme, so I clicked on "Windows". The default window theme is Adwaita, where everything is shades of grey. After a little experimenting, I decided on the "Glossy" theme, which gives me a nice blue title bar:

And that's it! I'm very happy to have blue title bars again, that seems to be all I needed as a visual reminder for which is my "active" window. Completely swapping out the Gnome theme is great, but I guess I only needed minor tweaks to what I already had.

Dual-boot joy

2011-09-01T18:49:00.000-05:00

I complained in my last post that ever since we converted Windows 7 to use BitLocker, my laptop has had problems in dual-booting. It seems clear that BitLocker and TPM require that every step in the boot process is controlled. Generally, that's a good idea for security. But in practice, it's a pain.

If something changes (say, the MBR gets updated by GRUB?) then TPM shuts off, and I need to enter a very long BitLocker key just to boot Windows.That wasn't going to work for me. I guess Windows doesn't like to play nice with other systems. I don't boot Windows very often, but I'd rather not have to type in that long key every time.

I asked you for help, and got several helpful suggestions. Thanks! I liked one in particular: put GRUB on a USB fob drive. The simplest solutions are usually best. And I happen to have a small 32MB USB fob drive that I'm not using.

So, a little fiddling around, and I now have a bootable "GRUB" fob drive. When I want to boot Linux on my laptop, I just use the USB fob drive when I boot (I can take it out once Linux has started booting.) Easy! When I want to boot into Windows, I take the fob drive out of my computer, and boot from the hard drive.

But the most important part: I haven't had any problems in the last month, since I did this.If you want to do this on your multi-boot system, you can google the steps needed to set up GRUB on a USB fob drive. But of course, it's far easier to just do this at install-time. At least with Fedora Linux, there's an option when you install to select where to write the boot loader.

Dual-boot woes

2011-08-01T18:06:00.003-05:00

Ever since we converted Windows 7 to use BitLocker for disk encryption, I've had nothing but problems. A few weeks later, I received a Linux kernel update, and I think that's when everything broke for Windows. Whenever I want to boot Windows, I am prompted to type in a very long BitLocker recovery key. It's tedious to type in every time I boot Windows, but that's what I have to do.

My laptop is dual-boot with Windows 7 and Linux. It's a fairly straightforward setup (with only a few twists to support Dell's "Instant ON" mode, which turned out to be useless because I don't use Exchange.) My drive has several partitions: a "Dell Utility" partition, Windows 7, a Dell "Instant ON" partition, and Linux. I rarely boot into Windows these days - but when I do, it's usually to attend a conference call that requires Silverlight. I never boot the "Dell Utility", or the "Instant ON".

I've tried the trick of telling BitLocker to accept the new system configuration. This doesn't fix my problem. I'm still prompted to type in the key to boot Windows.

I've also tried booting into Windows, suspending BitLocker, then re-enabling BitLocker. This also doesn't work. I can suspend/re-enable just fine, but it doesn't solve my problem.

Oddly, TPM keeps disabling itself, I don't know why. Is this part of normal TPM behavior when it detects a change in the configuration? Or is this a hardware fault on my laptop?

Frustrated, I did some research, and found lots of (albeit old) sources that discuss troubles in dual-boot with Windows/BitLocker and Linux. The description that makes the most sense to me is from this article on technet.com: Building a dual boot system with Windows Vista BitLocker protection with TPM support, by Cyril ("Voy") Voisin. In it, Voy says:

[...] Therefore if you replace Windows Vista’s MBR by a MBR that is not TPM aware, it won’t hash the boot sector before executing it and a register in the TPM won’t be populated. Same with the boot sector. Therefore Bitlocker will simply refuse to be enabled.

Since I put GRUB on my MBR, I understand this to mean that a register within TPM isn't getting set correctly, which may explain why I always need to type in that key to boot Windows.

The article then details the steps to set up a dual-boot system that uses Windows/BitLocker. In short:

Install Linux first.
Install GRUB on the Linux partition (not the MBR)
Save a copy of the Linux boot sector.
Create partitions for Windows.
Install Windows.
Configure the Windows Boot Manager to also boot Linux.
Enable TPM.
Enable BitLocker.

That's a lot of "hack" to get a dual-boot system. The rational part of me understands that TPM isn't just to encrypt data, it's meant to prevent "unauthorized" software from running on the system. And from the TPM view, my Linux install is (technically) "unauthorized" because TPM doesn't know about it.

I get it.

But at the same time, I can't help but think this is some elaborate conspiracy to prevent Linux dual-boot systems. It's as though the only way I can run Linux on this system - and keep Windows/BitLocker running happily - is to boot Linux from some other media. I tell you, I'm this close to going back to running Linux from a USB flash drive. I used to do that all the time, and it was still very fast. Software updates were a little slow, but everything else was speedy.

I don't know. Maybe I'll do that, just buy another USB flash drive to run Linux, and cede the hard drive to Windows/BitLocker. Erase the Linux partitions, and put a Windows MBR back on the disk. If nothing else, it might rule out a problem with TPM, if TPM keeps disabling itself even when Windows/BitLocker "owns" the whole hard drive.

What do you think? Other suggestions or solutions? If I can find another way to dual-boot Linux and Windows/BitLocker, I'll give it a go.

Gnome Shell themes

2011-07-22T17:18:00.011-05:00

I mentioned Gnome Shell extensions the other day. Two of the extensions supported theme management. Maybe you'd like to change the look of your Gnome desktop? Under Linux, this is a very simple thing to do. Although Gnome 3 supported themes "out of the box", including Gnome 2 themes, I'll admit that it took a little while for themes specific to Gnome 3 to appear.

The best gallery seems to be at DeviantArt.

My current favorites are Smooth Inset and Elementary.

These are some others I've tried, and really liked: Smooth Inset Small-Screen, and Adwaita-White Netbook. I'll also give a nod to Nord, which is nice, but the author advises it is beta.

Gnome Shell extensions

2011-07-20T17:34:00.018-05:00

It's been over a month since Fedora 15 came out - the first mainline distribution to include a default Gnome 3 desktop. My first impressions still hold: Gnome 3 is a change, but after a few minutes the Gnome Shell felt quite natural. I guess Gnome 3, and specifically the Gnome Shell, is something you either love, or something you hate. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground.

If you miss the extensions and themes of Gnome 2, I thought I'd point you to a few Gnome Shell extensions that are available to you. These are the package names, and a description of what they do:

Extra features

gnome-shell-extension-cpu-temperature
Adds an applet on the panel which displays the temperature of your CPU.

gnome-shell-extension-icon-manager
Allows you to add and remove icons from the top bar panel by simply editing your gsettings.

gnome-shell-extension-mediaplayers
Displays player controls, music, and music cover in the Gnome Shell.

gnome-shell-extensions-windowsNavigator
Makes it easier to use the keyboard to switch windows and workspaces. When you're in "overview" mode ("show all windows" mode) press the Alt key to show numbers in each window. Just press the number for the window you want to display.

gnome-shell-extension-workspacesmenu
Adds a "workspaces" menu to your status area, to make it easier to switch between spaces.

gnome-shell-extensions-alternate-tab
Changes the behavior of Gnome Shell back to "classic" Alt-Tab behavior. In the default Gnome 3, Alt-Tab will switch between applications, but separate windows for each application are grouped together. This extension disables grouping, so that you switch between windows rather than applications.

gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu
Adds "Suspend" and "Power Off" options to your status menu. In the default Gnome 3, you have to press Alt in the status menu for "Suspend" to become "Power Off".

gnome-shell-extensions-auto-move-windows
Lets you manage your workspaces by assigning a specific space to an application as soon as it creates a window.

gnome-shell-extensions-dock
Puts a task-switcher "dock" on the right side of your screen.

gnome-shell-extensions-drive-menu
Adds a menu in your status area to show removable media.

gnome-shell-extensions-native-window-placement
Lays out the "thumbnails" in the window overview that reflects the positions and relative sizes of the actual windows.

gnome-shell-extensions-places-menu
Adds a menu in the system status area that resembles the Places menu from Gnome 2.

Simplify your desktop

gnome-shell-extension-noim
Removes your name and IM status options.

gnome-shell-extension-noripple
Displays the "ripples" that show up when you enter the "Activities" hot corner.

gnome-shell-extension-pidgin
Integrates Pidgin chat into your Gnome Shell session.

gnome-shell-extension-remove-accessibility-icon
Removes the "Accessibility" menu from the top panel.

gnome-shell-extension-remove-bluetooth-icon
Removes the Bluetooth icon from the top panel.

gnome-shell-extension-remove-volume-icon
Removes the volume icon from the top menu.

Productivity

gnome-shell-extension-pomodoro
Adds a timer to help you track time, if you use the Pomodoro Technique for time management. (Essentially, break work units into 25-minute periods, and work exclusively on that task for 25 minutes.)

Theme management

gnome-shell-extension-theme-selector
Gnome Shell user theme selector, with preview.

gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme
Lets you select a custom theme for the Gnome Shell (from ~/.themes/theme/gnome-shell/gnome-shell.css)

Guest sessions and user management

2011-06-18T18:18:00.021-05:00

Has a friend ever asked "Can I borrow your laptop to check my email?" Maybe you're uncomfortable handing over your account to them. There's a simple answer for that: the guest account.

Guest accounts are available in Fedora 15, but are disabled by default. You can activate this feature by installing the xguest package, which is easy enough to do by going to Activities - Applications - Add/Remove Software.

The Guest account doesn't have a password. Also, any files created there (including saved passwords from the browser) are deleted automatically after they logout, so it's great for short-term use like checking email or quickly updating their Facebook.

There's more about guest sessions and user management on Fedora 15, at LinuxBSDos. The article has a lot of information about account management in general. It's pretty straightforward, but screenshots are always good.

Windows killed my laptop, again

2011-06-07T17:59:00.074-05:00

I mentioned last week that my office is moving to Active Directory. All our Windows PCs needed to get reconfigured to authenticate through AD. At the same time, I asked that we apply encryption to every desktop.

As the central IT office, my group went first. I'm one of 3 people in our office that dual-boots Windows and Linux, and I was not alone as we witnessed Windows break because it was not the only operating system to control the hard drive.

Here's the process:

We configured TPM in the BIOS, then booted into Windows. As usual to start Windows, I selected "Windows" from the Grub boot loader.
Configured Windows to use the built-in BitLocker disk encryption. Interestingly, Windows doesn't actually complete this step, instead it needs to reboot for the change to take effect. Okay fine, it's a filesystem change.
When I reboot, and select Windows from the Grub boot loader, Windows complains it cannot find the BOOTMGR. Unable to go on, it only lets me "Ctrl-Alt-Del" to reboot - but after rebooting, selecting Linux from the Grub boot loader still worked fine.

Not sure how Windows kills itself, but Linux continues to work fine. I'm reminded how Windows killed my laptop, under different circumstances.

We mucked with it for a while, trying various Grub boot options, whatever. After about 10 minutes, we gave up, and booted from a Windows 7 recovery bootable CD. That let us run some commands from a terminal window (bootrec /fixmbr, and bootrec /fixboot) in the recovery environment, to reset the boot sector and the master boot record.

Of course, Windows seems to assume that Windows will ever be the only operating system, so the tool doesn't take any precautions for a multi-boot environment. My Linux environment was no longer usable, but at least we got Windows to boot back up.

After letting BitLocker fully encrypt my Windows data, I looked into the damage to my Linux installation. The partitions were still there, but the Grub boot selector was gone. I could have restored my Grub boot selector - I've done that before (thanks again, Windows.) But today, I thought it might be easier to just re-install Fedora 15 on my laptop, and restore my data.

Thank goodness that backup and restore is so easy in Linux. Déjà Dup has been part of Fedora for about a year. Installing Fedora 15 took about 15 minutes, then I just needed restore my data. It was easy!

And yes, re-installing Fedora also put Grub back as the boot selector. And Grub now lets me dual-boot (again) into Windows + AD + BitLocker, or into Linux.

I lost my morning to a mess caused by Windows, but regained my afternoon thanks to Linux!

But I guess my "lesson learned" is that Windows really wants to be the only operating system on the computer. Be warned.

Multiple reboots

2011-06-03T18:41:00.025-05:00

I am always amused by the need for Windows to reboot after making a run-time change. Or what should be a run-time change.

My office is starting our migration to Active Director, so today I booted into Windows to let our PC support folks do their thing to hook up my laptop. I just sat back and watched. It took two reboots to configure Windows to use Active Directory for login. Apparently this is the standard "Windows way" to do it - one reboot to reset the "hostname" (to a standardized name) and another reboot to connect it to the AD domain.

And given how much longer it takes Windows to boot, compared to Linux, it felt like I was waiting around a long time just waiting for Windows to come up, only to watch them reboot again.

I'm shocked by Windows' design. Okay, I can understand how Windows would need to reboot to get the network and all the services configured for a new "hostname". And I can (sort of) see why Windows might need to reboot to change the authentication service to AD.

But why can't these changes be wrapped together into one reboot? Why does Windows always assume a reboot is the right way to apply a change?

(There's more drama with configuring this laptop for Active Directory. But I'll save that for next week.)

Fedora 15 impressions

2011-06-02T17:11:00.022-05:00

Back in April, I installed the Fedora 15 Beta release. My quick review at that time: it took a little time to get used to Gnome 3, but I liked it.

Last week, Fedora 15 was officially released. I installed a copy on my laptop, and quickly got back to work. The install process was the fastest I've seen for any Linux distro - about 15 minutes to install the complete operating system from the LiveCD installer.

The big, new feature in Fedora 15 is the Gnome 3 desktop. Read my preview of Fedora 15 for screenshots. Gnome 3 takes a different view on the desktop, based on user experience and feedback. The default Gnome Shell has a single menu bar, which lets you launch programs and quickly access settings.

The "Activities" menu helps organize everything. To start an application, click "Activities" and you can select from a "Favorites" list, or a full list of installed programs. Applications are sorted by category, or you can scroll through "All".

Instead of a separate panel to show your available applications, you click "Activities" to see what's going on, even if you have programs running on a virtual desktop. I suppose Mac users will find this "Activities" view similar to that of Exposé.

I guess Gnome 3, and specifically the Gnome Shell, is something you either love, or something you hate. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground.

Gnome 3 is a change, for sure. But I quickly got over it, and after a few minutes the Gnome Shell felt quite natural.

I helped my wife install Fedora 15 over the weekend. She's not really a "techie" user, but my wife has been a big Linux fan for many years now, having dropped Windows. She has moved from Gnome 1 to Gnome 2, without much trouble. But now that her laptop is running Gnome 3, she's not so much in love with the new interface.

As I said, you either love it or hate it.

I can see why: Gnome 1 was a big step forward for the Linux desktop. Gnome 2 made major improvements on the desktop, making everything easier and more integrated. The user interface was fairly similar to Windows, making it a little easier for Windows users to switch to Linux. But Gnome always took its own spin on the "Windows" interface, moving to the "two-panel" approach: one to show things you can do, another that shows things you are doing.

Gnome 3 is a deviation from that progression. The Gnome Shell looks more like Mac OS X than Windows. That's fine if you're a Mac user looking to move to Linux, but it requires some re-learning of the user interface. Mac OS X is quite different from Windows, and a desktop environment that takes cues from Mac will operate differently than one that borrows from Windows.

I like the new interface. I guess my only complaint is that I don't like the wide title bars on Windows, and that everything looks sort of grey. I understand you can customize the Gnome 3 shell, but the process to do that requires some manual editing. I'm sure this will get easier in later releases, and Fedora is supposed to be a "cutting edge" distro. (If you are looking for long-term stability, I point you to Red Hat Linux - Fedora is generally considered to be the "testing ground" for new features in Red Hat.)

If anyone has suggestions for how to add themes to Gnome 3, specifically how to set the appearance to look more like the Bluecurve interface from Fedora 14 and previous releases, please let me know in the comments.

The flexibility of Linux

2011-05-19T18:05:00.000-05:00

I'll admit, I'm somewhat interested in Google's Chromebook concept. The Chromebook is Google's spin on the "netbook". Announced in May last year, Chromebook goes on sale in mid-June.

The Chromebook runs Google's Chrome OS, which is based on Gentoo Linux. While Linux has appeared on netbooks in the past (and were the only option on the very first netbooks) this is another example of the flexibility of Linux. You can use Linux as a base for almost any computing platform - it's small, fast, and supports a variety of hardware.

When I first heard about the Chromebook, I started thinking about how you might go about "building" a Chromebook-like netbook. Now that Chromebooks are about to go on sale, I thought I'd revisit this idea here.

First, let's understand the concept of the Chromebook, what makes it different from other netbooks.

The idea is that you have a netbook where all your data is stored in "the Cloud" (Google Docs, etc.) so that nothing of value is really on the netbook. There's no "desktop" concept, you can't really save anything to your Chromebook. You do everything (including documents, email, games) via a web browser. This potentially makes for a very secure computing environment.

(image credit: Google)

Starting from that, the Chromebook is essentially a mobile web computer, under the assumption the Internet is "always on" (or at least, "mostly on" - leveraging Google Chrome's support of HTML5 offline mode to continue working.)

Google Chrome is already available for Linux. And that's all we need to start "building" a Chromebook-like netbook:

Start with a "bare" version of the "X" Window System. Imagine a "window manager" that doesn't really manage any windows. If the Chromebook doesn't support a "desktop", then your "window manager" doesn't need to do much. In the simplest case, you need an "action bar" that lets you connect to open wi-fi networks, displays battery, and lets you logout.

The Samsung Chromebook sports a 1280x800 display. Here's a mock-up in those dimensions. I'll fill in the pink area next.

In this mock-up, maybe clicking on the user's name will bring up a simple dialog with "logout". The icons on the right could be clickable too, to join a network or to put the netbook to sleep. There's no option to bring up local applications - because you do everything in "the Cloud".

The "window manager" only has to keep track of one window: Google Chrome. The "window manager" doesn't need to support features such as virtual desktops, because Chrome supports tabbed browsing on its own.

You won't have the option of a file manager or a terminal program ("shell" window) in such an environment, but neither does Chrome OS. This is really intended to get you online, for you to do your work there.

How fast could such a system boot up? I installed a minimal Fedora Linux on an old laptop to test. This machine only takes 9 seconds to boot into text mode on a 2GHz single-core CPU with 1GB memory, no services running. Assuming a graphical environment like I've described above, this system might take a total of 11 seconds to boot up into a "login" screen.

Once you've logged in, probably another 2 seconds to bring up the "window manager" and start Chrome.

That's not very different from what Google is claiming for the Chromebook: about 8 seconds to boot. I'd guess that's the time it takes to get their "login" window, which is pretty bare:

(image credit: Google)

So there you have it - all it takes is a "window manager". I used to have the programming madskillz to write such a thing, but my C is a bit rusty these days. I haven't looked around, but I'd bet someone has written a minimal "window manager" like the above. Maybe someone can point me to a link in the comments.

Linux to the rescue

2011-05-10T12:41:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, I wrote that Windows killed my laptop. A few updates, and my laptop wouldn't boot anymore - not to Windows, not to Linux, nothing.

Fortunately, I have a USB flash drive with Fedora 15 beta, so I was able to boot from that and get back to work.

A few of you suggested that one of the Windows updates had messed up the boot sector. I thought that sounded a likely culprit. A little googling, and I quickly found several suggestions to restore the Linux "GRUB" boot selector.

So, now my laptop boots again! That's Linux to the rescue.

Windows killed my laptop

2011-05-09T12:19:00.048-05:00

Our office isn't on Active Directory yet, so when I changed my network passwords this morning, I had to go through the ritual of booting back into Windows to change my password there too. As I watched Windows "preparing to install updates", I was reminded that yeah, I had let Windows install some updates last week after I attended a webinar (I attend a virtual meeting about once a month, and the other end requires Silverlight.)

It took only a few minutes, but I watched as Windows installed all its updates, then shut down. That was odd, I thought. But maybe it required a reboot for the updates to take effect.

I rebooted back into Windows - or tried to. After the BIOS screen, nothing happened. My laptop just sat there, blinking that underline cursor, doing nothing.

I tried rebooting. It did the same thing, just blinked that cursor at me. I let it sit that way for more than 5 minutes. Nothing.

A few more reboots, and I managed to convince myself that my laptop just won't boot anymore. My laptop will successfully make it past the BIOS screen, then blink the underscore at me. I can't even get to the Grub boot selector, to boot into Linux. Windows killed my laptop.

Gee, thanks, Windows.

I'm not sure what happened. I watched Windows install the updates, and everything seemed okay. I didn't see any error messages. And Windows shut down just fine, and rebooted the laptop, so it's not like the updates or the shutdown/reboot process was interrupted.

Fortunately, I have a USB flash drive with Fedora 15 beta, so I'm running that at the moment. That's Linux to the rescue.

Thanks, Linux!

Scanner support

2011-05-05T12:15:00.015-05:00

At work, we're planning to re-organize our storage area, and "clean house" on some dead/old items. So today, I was looking through what's in storage, and happened across a neat find: a scanner.

It's a UMAX Astra 2100U, so a USB scanner. From what I could find, this dates back to 2001. While this is a 10-year old device, if a 600x1200 dpi scan is what you need, it would be nice to have a working driver.

But according to UMAX, the 2100U scanner is supported only under Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP and Mac OS 8.0 to 9.1. Confirming this, the UMAX support download page doesn't have drivers available for Windows Vista or Windows 7. Mac users are also out of luck, as MacOSX drivers aren't available, either.

But Windows and Mac support may not be all that great, anyway, even on the versions officially supported by UMAX. This review from 2001 warns about driver compatibility:

This tempting scanner can give great scans, unfortunately the software required to run it crashes both Macs on which I tried it, and it rewrote system files on the Win2000 PC I on which I tried (unsuccessfully) installing it.

It is incompatible with a Mac running iTunes 1.1 software. UMAX says they are working on this as of March 2001. Good luck!

It also made a 350MHz iMac completely unstable and unbootable. It took over an hour for of one of the most kind-hearted Mac specialists in San Diego to get it running again.

Another reader in Chicago wrote ME trying to get my help in getting her system to run. UMAX couldn't get it to go. That's too bad, because I gave up myself. Hopefully UMAX will take back her scanner.

Maybe that's why this scanner was in our storage area, with a note taped to it reading "No longer works - cannot find working driver."

Out of pure curiosity, I plugged the scanner into my Linux laptop. A few clicks in "System - Administration - Add/Remove Software" and I had installed Sane and the plugins for Gimp. So about 2 or 3 minutes.

Sure enough, the scanner works! I scanned a few test images, whatever I had around the office, and loaded them directly into Gimp. Works great! Another example where Linux support is ahead of the competition.

Still Linux in Exile

2011-05-02T12:34:00.000-05:00

I really appreciated hearing the positive comments to my question, if Linux in Exile is still needed. Sounds like my blog fills a need, tells the "other side of the story" about how Linux users view the Windows world (rather than the other way around.)

So, I've decided to keep blogging. Someone needs to keep pointing out that Windows operates in a kind of weird way, and demonstrating (sometimes by counterpoint) that the Linux desktop is a mature, stable platform. Linux is no longer the bare-bones desktop platform of the mid-90s.

I'll keep the Linux in Exile name, even though I'm no longer (technically) "in exile". The name is catchy, and I like it.

Like kicking a puppy

2011-04-28T18:16:00.006-05:00

It's getting harder to write for Linux in Exile these days. Not because I am running out of topics - in fact, it's quite the opposite. But as Linux Foundation chief Jim Zemlin says, writing these posts almost feels like kicking a puppy.

Linux has "won", in pretty much every category except the desktop. Microsoft relies on desktop PC sales too much to let it go.

But the desktop is becoming less important anyway. The platform matters less when the next generation of computing focuses on the handheld device. And Android (built on Linux) captured the lead in market share for the mobile device platform, even over iPhone. The future is looking bright for Linux.

And on a personal level, I haven't been (technically) "in exile" for a while now. I'm at a new organization, the senior-most IT officer, and Linux on the desktop is part of the culture here.

So I don't know if Linux in Exile is needed anymore. What do you think? Is this blog helpful to you, to the Linux community? Or is it too much like kicking Microsoft when they're down? Leave your comments below.

Preview of Fedora 15

2011-04-21T18:36:00.002-05:00

Updated: I've added more screenshots of the default desktop.

I'm closely watching the Fedora Project for the next release of Fedora Linux. Fedora 14 has been great, but what does the upcoming Fedora 15 have to offer? I downloaded the Fedora 15 Beta to find out.

As usual for testing a new Linux release, I installed this on a USB flash drive. While it's a little slow in running updates (that's due to the nature of flash) this is a great way to experiment with the Beta version without installing over my existing system. The install took about 20 minutes, from start to finish, using the Live CD. For those who are curious about the technical details, I manually partitioned the flash drive with a very plain layout, and let the installer encrypt my filesystem automatically.

The biggest difference is that Fedora 15 has upgraded to Gnome 3, which uses the new Gnome Shell interface. It's a change, for sure. But I quickly got over it, and after a few minutes it felt quite natural.

To compare: Gnome 2 (basically, what you see in Fedora 14 and earlier releases) used a menu "panel" at top with a "Start" menu and other shortcuts, and a different Gnome "panel" at bottom that shows your running applications and available virtual desktops. I usually describe this as "things you can do" (top panel) and "things you are doing" (bottom panel). This isn't too different from the interface used by Windows - which was probably intentional - but at the cost of having two panels taking up "screen real estate" - not a problem on typical desktops, but can get cramped on small netbook displays.

Gnome 3 takes a different view on the desktop, based on user experience and feedback. The default Gnome Shell has a single menu bar, which lets you launch programs and quickly access settings. Here's my default desktop on Fedora 15 Beta, using the Gnome Shell:

(That screenshot is extra wide because I have a second monitor attached to my laptop - the desktop at right - and I wanted the screenshot to show everything.)

The "Activities" menu helps organize everything. To start an application, click "Activities" and you can select from a "Favorites" list, or a full list of installed programs. Applications are sorted by category, or you can scroll through "All":

Instead of a separate panel to show your available applications, you click "Activities" to see what's going on, even if you have programs running on a virtual desktop. I suppose Mac users will find this "Activities" view similar to that of Exposé.

And a view of the file manager:

Other differences:

Firefox is now version 4. This is an obvious update. I also installed Google Chrome separately.

LibreOffice replaces OpenOffice. You may remember that some of the OpenOffice folks split off when Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems (the "sponsor" of OpenOffice.) Since OpenOffice is open source, the developers "forked" the project and created a new office suite based on OpenOffice, plus some updates. LibreOffice is the result of that new community. While I haven't used it yet (I prefer Google Docs) I understand LibreOffice has folded in some new features that make it easier to use.

And of course, Rhythmbox (music player) and Shotwell (photo manager) are still there. I love these applications.

And while I can't find mention of it in the Release Notes, I'm positive Fedora 15 updated the font rendering. Everything looks so smooth and easy to read. Even Google Chrome, which uses an outdated font method, now looks great!

I haven't had time to poke around with all the new features yet. I've only been running the Beta for a few hours. I don't have any complaints so far.

Fedora 15 is due out at the end of May.

No unified software update?

2011-04-20T12:07:00.001-05:00

I promised I would come back to this topic, so here it is. Fortunately, I don't have much installed on my Windows system. It's basically a platform that I use when I attend an online meeting that requires Silverlight or some similar Windows-only plugin. (These are rare, but they do happen...) As a result, essentially, I only have web browsers installed.

When I check for updates on Windows, I have to do so in a number of places:

Windows Update
Mozilla Firefox
Google Chrome
Adobe Reader (PDF)
Adobe Flash

It's a problem that I have to check each software package individually to see if there are updates. Why a manual process? What if I forgot to check one of these applications for new versions? My system would be left vulnerable.

Yes, a few Windows applications are "well behaved" and look for updates on their own. But that's just a "band-aid" fix to a larger problem. What a hassle.

I know these are third-party applications, and I know it's odd to suggest that these get folded into some kind of "system-wide" patch process. But that's what Windows really needs.

Linux has a unified software update. On Linux, software packages can include an instruction that adds itself to the software update list. In technical terms, it adds an entry for the "software repository" so that the system-wide software update knows to check that location for new versions.

For example, when I installed Google Chrome on Linux, I did so by downloading the "RPM" file - the software "package" file. Installing the RPM was as simple as clicking on it, entering my password, and letting the software installer do the rest. Automatically, this process created an entry under /etc/yum.repos.d for Google Chrome's software repository.

Now, when Linux checks for patches, the unified software update also looks for new versions of Google Chrome, and downloads and installs them with everything else. It's easy!

Why can't it be that easy on Windows?

Windows Update still owns my machine

2011-04-15T12:26:00.032-05:00

Ok, I mentioned that I rarely boot Windows these days. Pretty much, it's just to watch a webinar that requires some silly Windows-only software like Silverlight. But when I do boot into Windows, I always take the opportunity to install updates.

I attended 2 webinars yesterday. During the first meeting, I got that little pop-up that there were updates available for Windows. So I started Windows Update, and let it do its thing while I finished my meeting.

That was a huge mistake. But I didn't realize this until much later.

You see, Microsoft has this concept called "Patch Tuesday" where they dump a whole bunch of patches together and release them on the second Tuesday of each month. Apparently, this was a really big "Patch Tuesday".

The first meeting ended about 10 minutes early, and Windows Update said it was finished - I figured "hey, I'll reboot and let those changes take effect." I rebooted Windows, and got the message that Windows was finally going to install those patches. As I watched the progress indicator slowly count its way up I got that sinking feeling. This was going to take forever.

About 10 minutes roll by, and Windows had worked its way to about 30% complete. Then, it rebooted.

But Windows wasn't done installing updates. Again, I watched the progress indicator slowly count up from 30%.

Keep in mind that my second meeting was starting about now. But I couldn't join, because I foolishly assumed Windows "only" needed to reboot for changes to take effect.

Another 10 minutes went by, and and Windows had reached about 75% complete. Then it rebooted again.

I thought, "How many times does Windows need to reboot just to install some patches?" But fortunately, that was the last reboot, and the progress indicator eventually reached 100%, and I could finally login to Windows.

So 15 minutes late, I joined my second online meeting. For those keeping track at home, that's 25 minutes and 2 reboots (3 if you count the first reboot that started this) for Windows to install updates.

Again, I'm reminded how Windows Update owns my machine. This was true in Windows Vista, and it's still true in Windows 7. Microsoft needs to fix this bug! And I do consider it a "bug" because other operating systems don't require this kind of nonsense to install patches.

On Linux, most patches don't require you to reboot your computer. Sure, some patches may not take effect until you logout, and login again. A kernel update won't take effect until you reboot. But most patches just get installed, and you don't notice anything.

And in Linux, when you reboot or shutdown, you actually reboot or shutdown. None of this "let me install a few updates before you really get to shut down your system." Reboot means "reboot", and shutdown means "shutdown".

I guess I got spoiled for how cleanly Linux systems apply updates. Microsoft sure could take a lesson from that.

Comments are broken

2011-04-06T13:27:00.003-05:00

I tweaked the blog's XML theme a few weeks ago. In the process, I wiped something that was needed for comments. So comments are broken now. My bad!

I'll try to get this fixed very soon. I might have to roll the blog theme back to some "vanilla/plain" style in the meantime.

Where's my window?

2011-04-06T12:08:00.002-05:00

I don't often boot my laptop into Windows, preferring to run Linux pretty much all of the time. These days, I only boot Windows when I watch a "webinar" that requires Microsoft's Silverlight plugin. And that's rare enough, thankfully. But on the few occasions that I boot Windows, I always make sure to check for updates.

Last week, I booted into Windows while sitting in our conference room. And I immediately fired up Chrome, Firefox, Adobe Reader, etc to check for updates.

(Yes, it's a problem that these common third-party applications aren't included in some kind of system-wide update process, like they are in Linux. But I'll leave that for another time.)

My problem was when I clicked on the system tray icon for my anti-virus program. The program window didn't appear. So I clicked it again, nothing happened. I clicked the icon a third time, and paid very close attention.

You know how Windows (and Linux, by the way) will show the outline of the window as a program is launched, or reduced to the task bar? I could see the outline of my anti-virus program window as it moved off my screen.

I usually keep my laptop docked, with a second display. The last time I'd booted into Windows, I must have moved the anti-virus window onto the second display - probably to keep it out of the way while I did something else, but where I could keep an eye on it. And I guess Windows remembered that. I mean, really remembered it.

Normally I'd say that automatically remembering your last-used preferences would be a good thing. Except for the obvious exception when I don't have the second display plugged in. I wasn't docked! I wasn't even in my office - I was on another floor, in a conference room. My only display was my laptop screen. So I couldn't use the program, because I couldn't see it.

Why Windows does this, I have no idea. Eventually, I booted into Windows when the laptop was connected my second display, and updated the anti-virus program then.

In Linux, windows and multiple displays make much more sense. When I boot without the second display, Linux doesn't try to launch my windows in a non-existent display. Program windows appear in the only display that I have - my laptop display.

Windows users: it's your problem now

2011-02-15T18:24:00.002-06:00

Microsoft Vice President Scott Charney, a longtime advocate of a coordinated approach to cybersecurity, describes a vision of Internet health:

"We broke Windows. It's your problem now."

At least, that's how I interpret his comments. Charney wants to have users pass a kind of "health test" for their computer before they can use web services.

"Security is not a problem that can be addressed fully by individual consumers, or even individual companies or governments. That is what led to the development of my public health model proposal, which calls for collective defense against cyber threats," he said.

Charney uses a public health model to support his new idea. Basically, in order to access web services (say, your bank - or cloud services, maybe even social networking like Facebook) you first need to let the provider run their virus check on your computer. Intrusive? I think so. Would you let a web site run their code (virus scan) on your machine before you are allowed to use their web application? I think I smell more malware coming.

Let me take the "health" idea in a different direction: it's like safe sex. Previously, wise PC users used a sort of "computer condom" (anti-virus software, firewall, etc.) That worked pretty well, and was really aimed at preventing infection. Like a condom, see? Microsoft's Charney now wants to change that, so that you can go play with whomever you like, but you should make a "good health" claim first. Charney suggests you can opt out of a scan, but there will be consequences.

Yeah, right.

To me, this is just passing the problem on to the consumer. That makes me wonder - does Microsoft even intend to address the gaping security holes in Windows anymore? Maybe the Corporate Vice President for Trustworthy Computing should suggest a different approach: make Windows more secure, more "trustworthy".

But maybe that's just me.

Instead, I see Charney's statements as raising the TCO for running a Windows system. Corporate IT can probably absorb this without too great an additional cost, but home users may quickly find the constant barrage of "let me scan your PC before you can access our web site" to be annoying. That would make for an interesting sea change.

Open Source Replacements

2010-12-14T16:59:00.003-06:00

A friend shared this link with me: 56 Open Source Replacements for Popular Web Development and Design Tools by Datamation. It's an interesting read. Geared for the web developer, there's some neat stuff in there for general users, too.

And best of all, the list breaks down the platforms supported by each tool. So you don't have to be a Linux fan to benefit from the open source goodness.

Some of the picks are pretty obvious, ones you could guess would be there. Let me share a few:

Wordpress and Movable Type for blogging
Firefox and Chromium for web browsers
Media Wiki for collaboration
MySQL and PostgreSQL for databases
GIMP and Inkscape for graphics
Apache/Tomcat for web servers
Eclipse for web development

If you've been around an open source environment for very long, these should be very recognizable names. Some may argue the feature-for-feature comparisons between, say, GIMP and Photoshop don't really stack up. But these are all very powerful tools that have certainly made their mark.

Using Rhythmbox

2010-11-13T16:05:00.006-06:00

I haven't done much with digital music on Linux, at least in recent years. I also have a Mac Mini at home, and I own an iPod - so figured my music options were already covered. But I thought I'd give it a try under Linux.

I mentioned in my Fedora 14 mini-review that I'm really enjoying Rhythmbox, the default music management application for GNOME. The other day, I decided to install the MP3 libraries for Rhythmbox. This is one of those unfortunate areas, where MP3 music is not supported "out of the box" on most Linux distributions, including Fedora. That's because MP3 is patent-encumbered, so technically Linux distributors can't include it without paying a license.

But you can add MP3 support easily enough from a number of other places. You'll have to use your own judgment and preferences here. RPM Fusion has packages available for Fedora 14. Their Configuration page has instructions to get set up with their repository, then it's a matter of installing a few packages. On the whole, it's about as "difficult" to add MP3 support on Linux as it is for a Windows user to download and install iTunes; it's easy!

Now, when I plug in my iPod, Rhythmbox comes up, showing my iPod and all my songs. I get cover art, playlists, the whole deal. I can even play music I purchased from iTunes using my Mac! Right now, I'm listening to some of my favorite tunes, played directly off my 32GB iPod Touch.

Here's a screenshot of Rhythmbox, also showing part of my desktop. I have Rhythmbox running in a smaller window than usual, so I could grab the screenshot without covering the whole desktop.

What's really nice is that Rhythmbox adds itself automatically to the top panel. Click the icon to hide Rhythmbox, but keep the music playing. Click it again to bring up the window, maybe select a different song or playlist.

So where does that leave me? Our Mac Mini is well over 5 years old now. It's hooked up to our TV, and sometimes we use the Mac to watch videos from the Internet. But to be honest, mostly it's just there to act as a "gateway" to my iPod. And here's another secret: I haven't bought much from Apple's iTunes Store in the last year. I've switched to Amazon's MP3 Music Store. By volume, the vast majority of the content on my iPod is MP3, either purchased on CD and ripped, or purchased online through Amazon's MP3 Music Store.

My wife and I have been debating whether we really need to buy another Mac Mini when this one dies. Since Rhythmbox works so well, we're now thinking about just ditching the Mac altogether, and running all of our digital music through Linux instead.

Fedora 14 mini-review

2010-11-07T08:36:00.017-06:00

As you know, Fedora 14 released this week. I prefer Fedora as my Linux distro, so I downloaded the new version right away. Here is my mini-review.

I freaking love it.

Here is my slightly longer mini-review:

Installation
When I do an upgrade, no matter the operating system, I prefer to blow everything away and install the new version from scratch. I've done straight upgrades, and they run fine, but I find every upgrade leaves some "cruft" from the old system. So I always reformat and reinstall.

Backing up my data was pretty straightforward, just saved it to a USB hard drive. I had burned a Fedora 14 install LiveCD, but also created a LiveUSB version of the CD using LiveUSB Creator onto a spare USB flash drive. I installed from the LiveUSB, the default (GNOME) version. Your timings may vary if you use the LiveCD, or a different "spin" (for example, KDE).

Installation took 15 minutes, including reformatting my Linux partitions and answering the pre-install questions. Encrypting my hard drive was as simple as ticking a checkbox and typing in a password. Once you answer the pre-install questions, then click the button, the rest of it is entirely automated.

When the install is done, I rebooted, copied back my data, and I was back to work. From the moment I booted into the LiveUSB installer, to when I finished restoring my data, was probably 30-40 minutes.

From there, it was a simple matter to let the system install a few updates that came out in the days following the Fedora 14 release. But with Linux, you can continue to use your system even while it installs updates.

Graphics support
I mentioned in my Fedora 14 preview post that I'd been running the beta for a little while (via my USB flash drive) and noted that Nouveau now supports my nVidia GT218 / NVS 3100M graphics card. I get full features, too, including dual-monitor support. All without having to install the nVidia proprietary driver.

I'm still in love with this upgrade. The nVidia proprietary driver got the job done, but since it didn't install itself into the pre-boot environment (there's some technical info for you, there) my laptop never booted with the graphical screen. Instead, I always watched Fedora boot using a text-mode interface, blue progress bar at the bottom of the screen before the nVidia driver could take effect and the screen would flip into full graphics mode.

But now that Nouveau has better support for my Nvidia card, I get the graphical "F" logo during the boot. It's very nice. By itself, that was enough reason for me to upgrade.

GMail integration
Now, GNOME can integrate with GMail using Gnome GMail. It allows GMail to be selected as the default mail application for the desktop. Unlike other solutions on the net, Gnome GMail supports "To:", "Subject:", "body", "CC:", and "BCC: fields.

You have to install it (not provided as part of the default install?) but once there, it's easy to select GMail as my default mail handler under "System - Preferences - Preferred Applications". Click on an email address (say, in a web page, or in GNOME) and it brings up my web browser with a GMail "compose" window. There's a process to configure it for a Google Apps account, but I prefer to use my default GMail account for this.

Music player
I haven't used the new Clementine music player yet. I went into "Applications - Sound & Video" and got distracted playing with Rhythmbox, the default music management application for GNOME. I've known about this app from previous versions, but hadn't used it much. Right now, I'm writing my blog post while listening to great 80s music, streamed from Absolute Radio. So maybe I'll get to Clementine later. Maybe.

Other stuff
One other neat feature I noticed was when I started OpenOffice (now at version 3.3) it added a "Quickstarter" into my top system tray. So when I quit OpenOffice, the next time I need to open an office document, things start up almost immediately. If you don't want the Quickstarter there, you can disable it, or right-click and select "Exit".

Also, the GNOME file browser reverted from a spatial interface back to a browser navigational model by default. So when you open a folder, you don't get a new window, it just opens in the current file browser. This reduces desktop clutter, which I very much appreciate. You can always open up another file browser if you want to click & drag files to copy or move them.

Fedora 14 preview

2010-10-25T15:09:00.002-05:00

You may have noticed that Fedora 14 makes its release next week. Curious to see what was going to be in the new version, and on a suggestion from pyxie, I grabbed a copy of the beta and installed it on my USB flash drive.

I have been booting into this, off and on, for a few days now. And it runs great! One thing I noticed right away (aside from the new desktop artwork, typical for a new release) is that Nouveau now supports my nVidia graphics card (GT218 / NVS 3100M). I get full features, too, including dual-monitor support. All without having to install the nVidia proprietary driver.

That alone is enough for me to upgrade to Fedora 14 next week.

But there are other new features, too. A quick list of some features that interest me:

Faster JPEG handling
These days, I have a huge collection of personal digital photos. I post some of them to share with friends and family, but I keep the original versions as a sort of digital portfolio. Flipping through the photo albums should be noticeably faster in Fedora 14, with the replacement of libjpeg with libjpeg-turbo. You should get about 25% increased performance when dealing with JPEG photos. And since many applications rely upon libjpeg, this should be a global improvement.

Remote desktops
In my role, I may not manage servers anymore. But whenever I see a new remote desktop tool, I have to see what's up. Remmina is a remote desktop client written for GNOME, aiming to be useful for system administrators and travelers, who need to work with lots of remote computers in front of either large monitors or tiny netbooks. Remmina supports multiple network protocols in an integrated and consistant user interface. Currently RDP, VNC, NX, XDMCP and SSH are supported.

Integration with GMail
I've commented previously that I no longer use a desktop email program, such as Thunderbird or Evolution. Both of those applications are great and all, but I've grown very fond of checking my email via a web browser, using GMail. All my email lives on the server, so if I go on vacation, or visit some remote office, I can just hop on a web browser to read my email. And it's all in once place. Now, GNOME can integrate with GMail using Gnome GMail. It allows GMail to be selected as the default mail application for the desktop. Unlike other solutions on the net, Gnome GMail supports "To:", "Subject:", "body", "CC:", and "BCC: fields

Support for Amazon's MP3 Music Store
I'll admit it, I have a Mac Mini at home. It's hooked up to our TV, and we use it to watch videos from the Internet. But mostly it's there to act as a gateway to my iPod, which I also own. And here's another secret: I haven't bought much from Apple's iTunes Store in the last year. I've kind of switched to Amazon's MP3 Music Store. By volume, the vast majority of the content on my iPod is MP3, purchased on CD and ripped, or purchased online through Amazon's Music Store. So I'm excited to see Clamz in Fedora 14, a little command-line program supporting Amazon's Music Store. It is intended to serve as a substitute for Amazon's official MP3 Downloader, which is not free software (and therefore is only available in binary form for a limited set of platforms.) Clamz can be used to download either individual songs or complete albums that you have purchased from Amazon.

Music player
Sure, Fedora has had music players for a while: Amarok, Audacity, etc. But I am interested in the new Clementine music player. It is a multi-platform music player. It is inspired by Amarok 1.4, focusing on a fast and easy-to-use interface for searching and playing your music. You can copy songs to your iPod, iPhone, MTP, or USB mass storage device. If it works as advertised, I wonder if I'll need that Mac Mini anymore as an iPod music manager appliance.

Windows 7 is still slower

2010-10-23T09:42:00.003-05:00

I've run this comparison before, Windows v Linux boot times. The deciding factor is: how long does it take to boot, login, get a desktop, launch Firefox, and view my first web page (www.google.com)? And every time, Windows boots slower than Linux: two minutes slower (Win 7), a minute slower (Vista), about a minute slower (XP). But there's always been that small, but important, difference in how they boot up. Does Linux have an advantage by booting from a USB flash drive, with lower latency on reads?

Now that I've moved to a new organization where running Linux on the desktop is not just okay, but common, I'm running Windows and Linux on the same laptop. This seems like an excellent opportunity to re-compare the boot times for each operating system, on the same hardware, both booting from the hard drive.

First, let's talk about the system. This is a Dell Latitude E6410 laptop, our standard model for laptops at this organization. It has these specs:

Intel Core i5 CPU
4GB memory
160GB hard drive
nVidia graphics card GT218 [NVS 3100M]
Intel 82577LM Gigabit ethernet
Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 wireless

Not a bad system, as laptops go. I mentioned in my last post that the only thing I don't like about this laptop is the nVidia graphics card, since I have to use nVidia's proprietary driver for graphics to work reliably. Windows is also running nVidia's driver, so both operating systems are running with the same configuration.

My last post covered the installation details pretty well: over 6 hours to get Windows working from a fresh install (not including applications such as Office), about 20 minutes to install Linux (including bundled applications, like OpenOffice.) What I failed to note in that post, and it's important here, is that the Windows side is not encrypted, but the Linux side is (you can select that at install-time.)

So for the purposes of this test, Windows will have a slight advantage in that none of its operating system files are encrypted. Windows can just read the data from disk, and go. But Linux will have an extra step to decrypt each bit of data. Finally for you Windows fans, if there's any question of one side having an advantage over the other, it's Windows that gets the benefit of the doubt.

Since I'm running a dual-boot configuration, it's easy to be consistent about when to start the timer, when booting the system. After the laptop is powered on, it goes through a Power On Self Test cycle. The time to complete the POST may vary slightly. After the POST, the multi-boot screen comes up. I select the operating system to boot, press Return, and simultaneously start my stopwatch. I keep the stopwatch running while the system boots, until the www.google.com front page comes up in Firefox.

Let's get to the numbers:

I booted each system twice, to make sure my timings were consistent.

Windows 7
Total: 1 minute, 55 seconds (115 seconds). And 1 minute, 52 seconds (112 seconds).

Linux (Fedora 13)
Total: 48 seconds, and 44 seconds.

It's hard to argue with numbers, people.

Windows v Linux on a new laptop

2010-10-04T16:37:00.003-05:00

So I've moved on to a different organization. Once at the new office, I received a new laptop: a Dell Latitude E6410. This is a pretty nice machine. A bit heavy and bulky for my tastes, but more than enough power for the things I need to do (write documents, edit spreadsheets, read e-mail, browse the web, etc.)

It came from the factory with Windows Vista Basic pre-installed, but of course I wanted to put Linux on it. Our standard here is Windows 7, so it needed to be re-installed anyway.

What a perfect opportunity to compare the ease of installing Windows on a new laptop, versus installing Linux!

Knowing that Windows would try to clobber any pre-existing Linux installation, I let my tech support team install Windows first. I'd install Linux afterwards. All I asked was that they leave about half the hard drive space unallocated, so I could install Linux later.

Windows:

We haven't ordered very many laptops before this (most of our users have desktop PCs) so our tech support team didn't have a Windows 7 image to lay down. Instead, our tech person had to install from scratch - and experienced a nightmare in getting Windows to run on this laptop.

First, the Windows 7 installer refused to recognize the nVidia GT218 [NVS 3100M] graphics card, and would only drive the system in standard VGA mode. Not exactly easy to use. The solution should be simple, though - right? Just download a new driver from nVidia's web site, and you're up and running. Except that the Windows installer also failed to recognize the Intel 82577LM Gigabit network adapter.

So he had to use another machine to download the network driver from Intel's support site, copy to my new laptop via a USB flash drive, and install it. A few reboots later, he was finally on the network.

Only then was he finally able to download the nVidia driver, to get video working on my new laptop.

From start to finish, installing Windows 7 (from scratch) on this laptop took over 6 hours. And that was just for Windows 7. I still don't have Microsoft Office installed, but since I rarely boot into Windows (and use Google Docs for most everything anyway) I doubt I'll bother.

Linux:

Installing Linux was pretty straightforward for me. First, I used my bootable USB flash drive to boot the laptop into Fedora 13, to verify that everything worked. I immediately got on the network, and had access to full resolution via the Nouveau driver (an experimental open source software driver for nVidia cards.)

Satisfied that everything was compatible, I rebooted the laptop using a bootable USB live installer (thanks to LiveUSB Creator) and immediately proceeded to install Fedora 13.

Installation took about 20 minutes from start to finish. And that includes all the bundled applications, such as OpenOffice suite, too.

Issues:

Easily, I'd say Linux "won" this one. But it would be dishonest of me to ignore that I've had some issues.

To be honest, I'm not all that impressed with the graphics on this system. I have the nVidia graphics card. The free Nouveau driver gives me video, and it drives my second just monitor fine. But very occasionally it has problems initiazing itself during boot. My temporary solution has been to reboot, and that seems to work. I sort of blame nVidia for that; the error message indicates the card wasn't ready for use by the time Nouveau loaded itself.

Eventually, I installed nVidia's proprietary driver. Actually, that was painless, but I did need to install the C compiler. Reboot your system into text mode, then run nVidia's install script. It does everything for you, and sets up the configuration for graphics to display properly.

The only thing you'll need to do is disable the Nouveau driver. The easiest way to do that is by passing these options at boot time:

rdblacklist=nouveau nomodeset

Unfortunately, this has the side-effect of disabling the graphical boot. Rather than seeing the nifty Fedora "F" logo at boot time, you'll see a text-mode multi-coloured progress bar at the bottom of the screen. It's a decent compromise for working video.

You may need to re-install the nVidia driver whenever you update your kernel package, but that's pretty rare. Aside from that, it's worked out pretty well.

I'll add that all this would be completely unnecessary if nVidia would wake up and support open source software. Release the specs, and let the Linux developer community write their own free driver. The Nouveau driver is a great effort, but they'll never be able to support all the features of the hardware without knowing how to program for them.

Chrome on Linux, and fonts

2010-09-28T16:57:00.001-05:00

I really like Chrome as a browser, but I just haven't been able to use the thing on Linux because the fonts never looked right. I set my system for one font rendering, to make my Linux (GNOME) fonts beautiful and easy to read. But Chrome never picked up the new preferences.

I googled it today, and found a discussion from earlier in 2010 (sorry, lost the link) that mentions the problem, and the solution.

The problem: Chrome uses a different method to get font preferences. It uses a method that no other Linux (really, GNOME) apps use. So changing your font preferences in GNOME do nothing for Chrome.

The solution: Edit your ~/.fonts.conf file (this is probably a new file for you.) Add these lines:

<fontconfig>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias"><bool>true</bool></edit>
<edit mode="assign" name="hinting"><bool>false</bool></edit>
<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle"><const>hintnone</const></edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

You may need to edit the settings manually to match how your GNOME preferences. But after I did this, things looked a lot better for me.

YMMV.

Windows v Ubuntu

2010-09-20T17:25:00.002-05:00

PC Pro ran an article recently that I found very interesting: Windows 7 vs Ubuntu 10.04. It's a good comparison of two desktop operating systems. I happen to prefer Fedora, but Ubuntu is a very nice distro as well.

I'll give PC Pro this: they give credit where credit is due. From the intro:

However, something rather extraordinary is happening in the Linux world. Amid all the distros that have come and gone over the years, one finally has the potential, the momentum and the commercial backing to at least challenge the Windows hegemony.

Ubuntu 10.04 is the most mature, user-friendly and feature-packed Linux desktop OS to date. From the Wubi installer – which installs the operating system with the ease of a regular Windows app – to the built-in music store, online backup service and comprehensive driver support, Ubuntu 10.04 has the unmistakable demeanour of a mainstream OS. It even looks nice.

The review compares entertainment and bundled apps, performance and mobility, drivers and compatibility, and suitability for business.

If you don't want to read the whole thing, I'll spoil the ending:

Linux: 38/50

Windows: 41/50

Windows just barely squeaks ahead, only 3 points ahead. The tone of the article's conclusion is very encouraging, as well:

Our overall scores show a narrow victory for Windows 7. Does that mean we urge you to remain firmly entrenched in the Windows camp? Most certainly not.

[..] And with a new version of Ubuntu never more than six months away, more new features are just around the corner.

Ubuntu is clearly an operating system on the rise. If we repeat this feature in a year’s time, will it have closed the gap? We wouldn’t bet against it.

Microsoft hates "open"?

2010-09-17T17:43:00.000-05:00

You may recall from 2001 when Microsoft CEO referred to Linux (and open source in general) was a "cancer". Remember a few weeks ago, when Microsoft reversed this position and declared they love open source. Microsoft had finally come to its senses in regards to Linux.

In an interview with Network World, Microsoft's general manager of their interoperability strategy team said: "We love open source [...] We have worked with open source for a long time now."

That was quickly reversed.

Brazil's Folha.com ran an article last week in which president of Microsoft Latin America, Hernán Rincón, was quoted saying:

"When you can not compete, you are declaring open. This masks incompetence. [...] When convenient, the companies say they are open. They use it for their own benefit." [translation]

Oops. Seems like this guy didn't get the memo.

Linux in Exile is not dead

2010-09-16T17:16:00.001-05:00

My last post on Linux in Exile was 2 months ago. You may have wondered if the blog died out, maybe I stopped writing new entries. It hasn't, and I haven't. However, my activity was necessarily "paused" while some important events happened

I have moved on to a new organization.

What with interviewing, transitioning my old role to someone else, moving out of the old house, relocating the family to a new city, settling into the new home, and starting my new role at a new organization - Linux in Exile dropped in priority a bit. But I'm back.

However, things have changed slightly.

What would you call the senior-most IT officer at a "satellite" location, with lines of authority back to (but not reporting to) the Chief Information Officer? Different organizations refer to this position in different terms: "CTO", "Assistant CIO", "IT Director", etc. However you'd refer to that position title, that's me in this organization. I manage my own IT staff, and direct the IT strategy for this organization.

I also set IT policy for this location. We're a fairly independent branch, effectively our own shop. The "lines of authority" to the CIO basically are there to effect organization-wide IT decisions, but otherwise the IT strategy here is my responsibility.

People running Linux on the desktop is part of the culture, here. Looking across the organization, Linux is definitely part of the desktop IT ecosystem. So it's no surprise that as soon as I arrived, I installed Linux on my laptop - dual-boot with Windows 7. Finally, I'm running Linux at work again, rarely booting into Windows. So I guess you could say that I'm no longer "Linux in Exile", the original reason for starting this blog.

However, I do plan to keep writing new blog entries. I'm dual-boot with Windows 7, so I still notice lots of things in Windows that just seem out of place from Linux. And I intend to keep writing about them.

Expect more updates from me very soon. Please be patient if new posts aren't exactly timely. I'll try to get back on a schedule, but blogging may be erratic until I'm truly settled in.

Why platform matters less, part 2

2010-07-13T13:21:00.000-05:00

There once was a time when computers were available only to a select few. Often working in specialized offices, operators used a terminal at their desk to access a central time-share system. Computers were big and expensive, not generally thought of as a general-purpose tool.

In January 1977, Commodore released the PET - and the world was introduced to the first widely-sold personal computer. This was soon followed by the highly successful Apple ][ which quickly became the most popular computer for the home. IBM responded with the IBM-PC, running Microsoft's DOS.

In the span of a few years, not only had the computer market been turned on its head, but the race was on for bringing users to the personal computer.

We're seeing a new turning point now in computing. Things are about to change.

Since about 2000, technologists have talked about "Web 2.0", where the Web transformed from simple pages and forms, to more of an application platform. Broadband was certainly a player in "Web 2.0", but really it was the feasibility of technologies like AJAX that made "Web 2.0" possible. The browser was powerful enough to become a competing platform in its own right. I talked about the Web platform in my "Part 1" post.

I believe the next generation of the Web, or "Web 3.0", will be focused on the handheld device. We've seen a build up to this over the last year or so. Actually, I've been riding this wave for a few years now. I used to bring my PSP everywhere I went - not (so much) to play video games during idle time, but to browse the web using open wifi. The web browser on the PSP is serviceable for that, and many tech-oriented web sites have had a mobile-enabled version of their site (if not mobile browser detection) for a while now.

But today, if I want to browse the web (IMDB, GMail, etc.) and I'm not at my computer, I'll just use the browser on my smartphone. Welcome to the future!

I think Steve Jobs sees that mobile/handheld computing will be the next Big Thing, so it's not a coincidence that he's betting so much of Apple on the success of the iPad. And given the success of the iPhone and iPod Touch, it shouldn't be a surprise (from an engineering standpoint) that that iPad is basically an iPhone with a larger screen.

The future of computing will focus less on the desktop and laptop - and the operating system - and will emphasize handheld "appliances".

And yes, other IT players are trying to break into the non-phone handheld device market. Microsoft has been touting their "Microsoft Courier" mobile platform for a while now - and just recently killed it. But doubtless we'll see other large-format mobile devices hit the market soon. The Kindle was there first, but they targeted only the book market - I'll be interested to see what device comes next.

If iPad devices are successful (and I think it's safe to say they will be) personal computing will look a lot different in another 5 years. How do you think computing will change?

Young developers do not like Microsoft

2010-07-08T09:50:00.003-05:00

There's a great article on the New York Times about how Microsoft is losing touch with the younger market. And that's going to cause problems down the road for the software giant.

My favorite bit from the article:

Part of its problem may be that its ability to intrigue and attract software developers is also waning, which threatens its ability to steer markets over the long term. When it comes to electronic devices, people writing software have turned their attention to platforms from Apple and Google.

Meanwhile, young technology companies today rely on free, open-source business software rather than Microsoft’s products, so young students, soon to be looking for jobs, have embraced open-source software as well.

[Update: removed quote by Tim O'Reilly, since he says he was misquoted.]

Here's the problem, as I see it: the general idea for Microsoft is to get access to university students, indoctrinate the computer science majors with cheap developer tools, and get mindshare with the other students through inexpensive software. We've seen this with other companies before (why do you think Apple gives discounts to students?) so this is nothing new.

The concept is that these students will eventually enter the workforce, and will advocate for the tools they find most familiar - the software they used at university. In theory, the computer science graduates will want to develop software for Microsoft Windows, using Microsoft developer environments. The other students will want to use the other Microsoft suite software. Thus, Microsoft can expect to draw in huge corporate sales later, by offering discounts to universities and colleges. Usually, this works.

But in the last generation of students, Microsoft was not successful in getting access to university students. And we're now seeing the effects of that.

Where did that mindshare go, if it didn't go to Microsoft? It went right where Microsoft didn't want it to be: to Free and Open Source Software. In short, the Linux market.

This is a very real example why it's important to have a Free Software option. The students who graduate today are more inclined to use Linux and other open source software. Those who become developers will tend to use an open source software base. And that's only a good thing. I can't wait to watch the current generation of students graduate, and see how this further changes the market in a few more years.

Why platform matters less, part 1

2010-07-06T12:33:00.000-05:00

Recently, I discussed web applications as one way to simplify an environment in preparation for moving an organization to Linux. People sometimes forget this option. Do you have applications that can run via the web? Maybe you have a group calendar system that also has a "web client". This can be an easy way to remove an obstacle to your Linux migration. If you have any applications that are "Windows only", check if there is a web option available to you.

This raises an issue that Microsoft feared back in the late 1990's. It's why Microsoft fought so aggressively to get into the web browser market after first ignoring it. The operating system platform matters a lot less if people consume applications via the web rather than through the desktop. It's awfully hard to lock users to Windows when they don't run any Windows apps per se.

In one example, when I first ran Linux at work in my current organization, our groupware application was advertised as "Windows-only". But I found the web version worked perfectly on Linux using Firefox, so I got along fine and had no problems interacting with my co-workers via the groupware.

A glaring example today is Google Docs. Available via the web to any capable browser (including some mobile platforms), you can edit documents, work on spreadsheets, and create presentations. It has the look and feel of previous versions of Office, without that Ribbon interface.

Sure, your very advanced users will find certain "power features" missing from Google Docs. But it does the job well enough for today's office environments. My work adopted Google early this year. After experimenting these last few months, I found myself gravitating to Google Docs for all my work. I'm a manager, so most of my office work is writing strategy documents or managing budget spreadsheets, with an occasional presentation. Surprise! I can do all that from within Google Docs. And it doesn't matter if I'm running Windows or Linux.

As an added bonus, many of us at work now collaborate remotely when working on documents and spreadsheets. The other person might be in another building or another state, but we can still have the same document open to add our changes, and use a text chat system to ask questions. It was a little odd when I first did this, but now it's become the new norm.

This scares Microsoft to death. I'm sure there are lots of meetings in Redmond that ask the question, "If people can use all these apps from a web browser, why do they need Windows?"

Newspaper tries free software for a day

2010-07-04T14:51:00.000-05:00

The Saratogian tried an experiment for Independence Day - run free software for a day, to produce the July 4 2010 issue of their (web and print) newspaper. They called it the Ben Franklin Edition *. The free software experiment is part of the Ben Franklin Project of the Journal Register Company, which owns The Saratogian.

The Ben Franklin Project’s one-shot deal is the preparation of all daily newspapers in the Journal Register Company using free software for publication on the Fourth of July, a symbolic declaration of independence from proprietary software.

Their conclusions at the end of this one-day experiment?

It was hard work. The proprietary software is designed to be efficient, reliable and relative fast for the task of producing a daily newspaper. The free substitutes, not so much.

So, staff at The Saratogian have used Windows software for years and years and years. They moved to Linux for a day and found that things were different, and "different" was hard to learn. Why am I not surprised?

To make it happen, staff had to change behaviors, and learn software that replaced the proprietary systems they had used for every other edition. An example of their work:

News Editor Paul Tackett has been working days and nights, on top of his usual job, to set up most of the day's pages in a layout program called Scribus. [...] For today's print edition, Tackett has duplicated the familiar components of The Saratogian from scratch, with the goal being that you won't know the difference between the look of today's paper and tomorrow's.

To be sure, that was a major effort. Tackett had to spend days to reproduce templates and layouts that have been built up over years in another program. But doing that kind of work would be hard for anyone. It doesn't matter if you move to free software or just another proprietary software package, changing everything is going to be hard. I give this guy huge credit for accomplishing it on time. But I also give kudos out to Scribus for being able to support what he was doing.

You know, moving from one environment that you know really well to one that you don't - it's always hard. We Linux users have trouble, too, moving from Linux to Windows. After all, that's what this blog is about. I did it for my work, and I'm constantly finding things in Windows that just don't work right or work stupidly. Or where features are missing entirely.

Linux is just easier for me. But I've been using Linux at home since 1993, and running Linux at work since 2002. Until 2009, that is, when I was "asked" to move to Windows for work.

This whole "try free software for a day" thing is a neat "publicity stunt within the journalism industry" (their words) but migrating in that short a time is very very hard to do. If you're going to move an organization to free software (or to Linux), there are ways to do it so you won't stress your users too much.

Overall, I'm very glad the editors gave a forum to demonstrate how free software is just as capable as proprietary software in publishing a newspaper. Hopefully, enough of their readers will see through the difficulties in pulling off the "stunt" to recognize that if free software can work for a newspaper, it can work for me.

The post I almost wrote

2010-07-01T09:45:00.005-05:00

I found my old 5th generation 30GB iPod yesterday. It still worked, so the geek in me thought, "I could probably make this into a 'combo' iPod/drive, an iPod that also boots Linux". Basically, repartition the device to be a (smaller) iPod, with a partition where I could install Linux. Maybe someone out there would find that useful and interesting, worth a blog post.

I tried a couple of experiments. First, if you delete all the partitions on the iPod and repartition it for Linux, there's some basic firmware on the device that displays an error message. But it's easy enough to use iTunes to restore the iPod to factory default. So that's one test down.

I found a web page about how to put a different partition on an iPod, like to use for Linux. The guy even showed the commands to run, to create a separate partition for Linux, and still leave a usable iPod data partition. He claims it worked on his device. It didn't work on mine. Now, my iPod just boots, shows an Apple logo, clicks, reboots, shows an Apple logo, clicks, reboots ... Or it did, until the battery died a few hours later.

I bought this iPod in 2005, about a month after its debut. It's 5 years old, definitely outside the service period. Apple says they will charge me $25 just to look at it. (It's safe to assume they'd charge me a lot more to fix/replace it.)

And no, it doesn't present itself to a computer, like for me to restore it using iTunes. It's too busy rebooting. It's a dead device. End of experiment, and end of blog post idea.

But why would you want to go through the trouble to make a "combo" iPod/drive anyway, when you can just buy a new drive? So let's take a quick look at the market:

The iPod was 30GB. You can get a new 32GB flash drive for about $60. I'm already running Linux from a flash drive (8GB "Pico" drive, about $25) and it works fine, but it's a little slow when running a bunch of updates.
Or you can buy an external USB hard drive that's 10 times the size, for the same cost. I actually have one of these for keeping backups, and it's great. (For comparison, that's a slightly better deal than at Best Buy.)

Unless you happen to have an old 5th generation 30GB iPod. Then you could just repartition the iPod for Linux, and accept that it will show an error message - like I should have done. Ah well.

Office 2010 not worth the upgrade

2010-06-29T13:02:00.000-05:00

Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post wrote a great item about Microsoft's Office 2010. His conclusion: Office 2010 is not worth the upgrade. Sure, there may be some neat stuff in there (as is always the case in an upgrade) but mostly it's just window dressing for the same old, tired back-end.

From the article:

Unfortunately, Outlook 2010 -- like Office 2007 and, for that matter, much of Windows 7 -- reveals the same old cluttered, confusing dialogs and menus once you dig a layer or two into its interface. This is a generic, maybe genetic defect with Microsoft: The company changes the facade of a program enough to confuse veterans and then fails to fix problems underneath that continue to stymie beginners.

And he ends with:

When Microsoft can bring OneNote's desktop-to-Web continuity to the rest of Office 2010 -- better yet, with mobile access too -- this could be a worthwhile upgrade. Until then, most home users can leave this one on the shelf.

Trying to get back on a schedule

2010-06-29T12:19:00.001-05:00

It's been a hectic couple of weeks here. Sorry some of the posts have been a little late. I'm trying to get back on a schedule so I can write more regular updates.

Moving to Linux

2010-06-26T11:24:00.006-05:00

Several organizations have been successful in moving to Linux. I'd like to discuss this topic again.

How do you move an organization to Linux? What's the process? It's not as simple as coming in over the weekend, re-installing everyone's desktops with the latest Linux distro, and hoping things go for the best. You need a real transition plan, a strategy to move the organization.

Here's what I would do to ease a transition to Linux:

1. Take an inventory

The first step in any transition is to understand what you're working with, and what your obstacles might be. The key here is to be brutally honest. Why is the organization running Windows? Are there applications that are only available for Windows? Do any of your "power users" require obscure features in, say, Microsoft Office to do their job? Maybe your users need to work with an outside web application (perhaps a vendor web site) that requires IE.

Is your hardware Linux-compatible? In my experience, wireless network cards and high-end video cards are the areas that tend to cause problems. You should also check your printers to make sure that Linux can drive them (typically, HP laser printers and any Postscript printers work fine, but many Canon desktop inkjet printers will not work.) If you find anything that's not 100% compatible, look for workarounds. For example, you may consider the Nouveau driver for NVIDIA cards.

Also understand your budget. Will you need to purchase new software for Linux that replicates features and functionality from the Microsoft platform? And how much budget is available to you to cover migration costs?

Most importantly, understand why you are moving to Linux. For many organizations, cost is the #1 driver. It's expensive to run a Windows environment, moreso if you also run Microsoft applications on the back-office (think MS Exchange and MS SQL Server.) Why are you making the move? If you don't have a good answer to this, you're going to have an uphill struggle the rest of the way.

2. File formats

If everyone in your organization creates Word documents in DOC format, and Excel spreadsheets in XLS, then consider yourself lucky. But Microsoft has since introduced DOCX and XLSX as their "Office OpenXML" format. Your organization will likely have a mix of these file extensions floating around. Note that OpenOffice can read and write all of these formats.

Look at what other files your organization produces and consumes. Can Linux work with them all? What applications read and write them? This may have been covered in step #1, but match them up anyway.

Where possible, define a standard for your users that happens to work well with Linux. The obvious choice is ODF: the OpenDocument Format. Microsoft Office 2010 or Office 2007 SP2 can read/write ODF files, as can OpenOffice.

But, as is the case when making any change, you should be sure to test a reasonable sample of real files from your organization to ensure that nothing is lost (for example, special formatting?) if you save the document in ODF format.

3. Web applications

People sometimes forget this option. Do you have applications that can run via the web? Maybe you have a group calendar system that also has a "web client". This can be an easy way to remove an obstacle to your Linux migration. If you have any applications that are "Windows only", check if there is a web option available to you.

In my case, when I first ran Linux at work in my current organization, our groupware application was advertised as "Windows-only". But I found the web version worked perfectly on Linux using Firefox, so I got along fine.

As in #2, be sure to test that the web application does everything that the desktop version can do - or at least, that it covers all the functionality that your users will need. I'll assume you'll test again at each of the steps below.

4. Desktop applications

Your users haven't moved to Linux yet, so everyone is still running Windows. To help with the future migration, start moving your desktop applications to versions that also run on Linux. For example, replace Microsoft Office with OpenOffice for Windows. Make sure Firefox is installed on everyone's PC, and that your users know to use it.

Moving your applications now means your users have time to become familiar with the new environment - while having that "buffer" of still running on Windows. And it reduces the anxiety that may develop when you eventually migrate your users to Linux.

5. Protocols

Do you have any Microsoft-specific protocols running on your network? Are you running Active Directory? Microsoft Exchange or Novell GroupWise? The thing to look for at this stage is that Linux can talk to all your back-office applications.

Note that GNOME Evolution includes support for Exchange 2000/2003 and GroupWise. And Linux can talk to an Active Directory network, but you may be unable to manage profiles on Linux through AD.

6. Early adopters

Once you have set up your users to use web applications and open desktop applications, it's finally time to start migrating users to the Linux platform. But don't expect to move everyone at once.

In making a major transition like this, I have found it easier to move groups of people at a time. There's no sense in migrating everyone at once. After all, they're all using the same applications now, so you don't have to worry about cross-compatibility. Your biggest worry at this point should be adoption and acceptance.

Pick a smallish group of users, but one that's self-contained. Ideally, the people in this group should already be excited to make the switch - these are your early adopters, and who (if you do things right) will soon become your allies. Maybe this is your server support team, or your database administrators, or some other "technical" team.

Do training with your users, and set expectations appropriately. Show lots of screenshots of the Linux desktop, give a live demo of running Linux on your own system. This takes the "fear" out of doing a move, by seeing that Linux looks and works just like Windows. Be careful about showing off too many "geeky" things - stick to the functionality that your users will find familiar, and introduce only a few new features like virtual desktops. In particular, avoid showing off the desktop effects - your users may not find "wobbly windows" or "workspaces on a cube" as impressive as you do.

Agree to a migration schedule with these users, and make sure their migration is flawless. You don't want any hiccups with your very first migration, so make sure all your bases are covered.

Plan ahead for problems and workarounds. You might dual-boot their laptops or workstations, so they have a quick and easy way to boot back to Windows if they run into problems on Linux.

Stay visible to your early adopters, and respond to questions or concerns right away. There is no such thing as "too much communication" at this stage. Hang around their offices, if you can, so you are immediately available if people have issues.

If all goes well, this group of early adopters will become your allies in future migrations. When things have settled down, meet with the next group you want to move, and repeat. Encourage your early adopters to share their experiences, good and bad. As you continue to have success with each group, your momentum will increase, and you will find much less resistance from the rest of your organization in migrating to Linux.

Finally, in doing your migration, you can't forget your desktop support. Previous to this, all your support staff have been trained in managing Windows desktops. Supporting a Linux environment will be different for them. Train your desktop support staff to run Linux. If you deploy new systems by installing an image, make sure you have a Linux image available to use.

Above all, be realistic with expectations. Not just managing what your users will think of using Linux, but in how quickly you can move people to a new platform. My advice is to take the time you need in preparing, so steps #1-5 should take the longest. And give your early adopters in #6 time to adjust, as well. Don't give users an excuse to complain that you are forcing this migration; let each step take the time it needs.

That's my experience, anyway. How would you manage a Linux migration?

Command line Google

2010-06-20T11:02:00.003-05:00

I've you've ever wanted to run scripted actions to update your web photo album, or post a blog entry, or do any number of other things, you may be interested to know that Google has released a command line client, only for Linux. Some examples from the article:


$ google picasa create --title "My album" ~/Photos/vacation/*.jpg

$ google blogger post --blog "My blog" --tags "python, googlecl, development" my_post.html

$ google calendar add "Lunch with Jason tomorrow at noon"

$ google docs edit --title "Shopping list" --editor vim

This has great potential to "power Linux" users. Personally, I'm interested in that last example, where you can run a command to edit a Google Docs document using offline tools. That has potential to extend how I use Google Docs.

But I also want to play around with that first example - uploading a bunch of photos to Picasa Web Albums. I mentioned before about how I've switched to Shotwell for managing and publishing digital photos. But sometimes you might have a bunch of digital photos that aren't managed by Shotwell (for example, I have old family photos, archived on CD) that you might want to push to a web photo album. This tool should make doing so a lot easier.

Why open source makes sense

2010-06-04T15:02:00.003-05:00

A friend at work shared this link to me. It's an interesting video/animation that fills in a presentation about what motivates workers. While the video is fairly short (about 10 minutes) it feels much longer because there's so much content there.

I saw something very similar in the Harvard Business Review a few months ago, drawing pretty much the same conclusion: if the work is strictly mechanical, money is a motivator. If the work requires any cognitive skill, money is no longer the motivator.

This is exactly what we see in the IT industry today. Linux and Apache are huge forces, yet in most cases, the people who develop Linux and Apache aren't doing it for the money. But look at Microsoft - I wonder, is it really so surprising that Microsoft seems sluggish?

Fedora 13 is out

2010-05-25T12:31:00.000-05:00

If you have been following my recent posts about Fedora 13 beta, you may be interested to know that Fedora 13 is out now!

Looking through the list of changes for desktop users in Fedora 13, everything I've talked about in my other posts is there. I'm planning to install it on my laptop (really, my USB flash drive) later this week.

It's called sudo

2010-05-20T17:42:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, I get email spam that is too interesting to delete immediately. Here's one that arrived at my work account, advertising a free "webinar" about a security product:

Organizations can no longer tolerate the security risks posed by intentional, accidental or indirect misuse of privileges. However, organizations need to provide the extended enterprise with necessary privileges within specified guidelines to do their job safely.

You will learn how to securely delegate privileges and authorization without disclosing the root password, including [...]

Maybe I wasn't aware that people didn't know how to do this already, so I'll explain it here. In Unix and Linux systems, this is managed using the "sudo" command.

With sudo, a systems administrator can delegate the ability to run certain commands as though the user were root. (In Unix, root is the administrator of the system.) Only certain commands are allowed, as designated by the real systems administrator. You can even specify which command line options are permitted.

For example, in a corporate environment, a systems administrator often just manages the operating system, and a separate web server administrator is in charge of managing the technical components of a web site. We do this where I work. So root can set up sudo so the web server administrator can start, stop, and restart the "httpd" service. That's all the web server administrator can do - they can't do anything else as root.

Most importantly, sudo allows you to share access to specific users. So users ben and mike can restart a web server, because they're the only people on the web server administrator team - but not users fred or sharon.

The ben user would type this at the "$" command line prompt:

$ sudo service httpd restart

Or maybe the systems administrator set up a single command to restart the web server. In that case, the command might be:

$ sudo web-restart

On my personal Linux system, I never login as root anymore, so I use sudo for those (rare) times that I need to do something "administrative" at the command line. (I don't often work at the command line these days, but sometimes I like to exercise my "sysadmin" background.)

In my case, I configured the sudo command (/etc/sudoers) to allow my general user login to run any command as root, but only if I provide my password. It's easy! You can also set up sudo to not require a password for certain users or for certain commands, but I prefer to require a password - if only to remind me that I'm about to become the root user.

For when you're working in the GUI, Linux uses PolicyKit to do something similar. That's why you can change the date and time on a Linux desktop without having to login as root.

Note that Windows has something similar to sudo, called runas ("Run As"). In Windows Vista and Windows 7, this is User Account Control, or "UAC". But runas (or UAC) is actually less secure than sudo. When you want to run an "administrative" command using runas, you will be prompted to provide the password for Administrator. So to delegate authority and privilege to your users, everyone needs to have shared access to the Administrator password.

I guess that's another way in which Linux does things a bit better.

About openness

2010-05-15T12:12:00.006-05:00

While I've been away these last 2 weeks, I've watched the Apple/Adobe fight very closely. At issue: Apple doesn't support Flash on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. Adobe, the parent company behind Flash, isn't at all happy with Apple's decision. So they fight it out in the press. In the latest move, Adobe ran "We ♥ Apple" ads in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, pressing their side of the argument.

If you want to read Apple and Adobe's opinions directly: Steve Jobs posted his thoughts on Flash, and Adobe shared their thoughts as well.

I find it very interesting to note what both sides claim is the core issue: Openness.

Steve Jobs leads with this issue, saying:

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. [...]

John Warnock and Chuck Geschke (Adobe) directly address Openness too:

If the web fragments into closed systems, if companies put content and applications behind walls, some indeed may thrive — but their success will come at the expense of the very creativity and innovation that has made the Internet a revolutionary force.

We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs. No company — no matter how big or how creative — should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web.

Both companies are being one-sided here, but Apple's response annoys me. Steve starts out by talking about how proprietary/closed products are bad, then in the next paragraph twists his case into a web context.

But isn't it interesting that these two companies can talk so baldly about Openness, without addressing the question: "Can it really be 'open' if the source code remains closed?"

Actually, Adobe did briefly address this in another post, but it didn't get much press. Here's what they say about it:

The core engine of Flash Player (AVM+) is open source and was donated to the Mozilla Foundation, where it is actively maintained. The file formats supported by Flash Player, SWF and FLV/F4V, as well as the RTMP and AMF protocols are freely available and openly published. Anyone can use the specifications without requiring permission from Adobe. Third parties can and do build audio, video, and data services that compete with those from Adobe.

There are no restrictions on the development of SWF authoring tools, and anyone can build their own SWF or FLV/F4V player.

Flex, the primary application framework for the Adobe Flash Platform, is also open source and is actively maintained and developed by Adobe and the community.

Finally, the Flash Platform has a rich developer ecosystem of both open and proprietary tools and technologies, including developer IDEs and environments such as FDT, IntelliJ, and haXe; open source runtimes such as Gnash; and open source video servers such as Red5.

So Adobe can get some credit, here, for their claim of Openness. It's not a full pass from me, but the "core engine" and an open spec are notable steps.

If we're going to make serious arguments about Openness, we really need to talk about "Free / Open Source Software." It's not just about choosing between option A and option B, where you can't really modify either to suit your needs.

The basic definition of Free / Open Source Software is that the source code must be made available for others to see it. A necessary side-effect of this condition is that anyone who uses the program has an opportunity to make improvements. A well-managed project will accept any improvements in the form of patches, which modifies the program to solve someone else’s slightly different (but similar) problem. Releasing new versions of the software with the new features ensures that everyone benefits from these changes.

That's why I prefer to use Free / Open Source operating systems such as Linux. The user community has total freedom; the software can never turn against you. It only takes one person with enough vision and motivation to deliver another option that benefits everyone. And since the source code remains open, it continues to benefit the community after that person is done.

In a prettier-but-closed system, à la Apple's "walled garden", you are subject to the whims of whoever brings you the software. Mac users and developers who may be unhappy with Apple's decision not to support Flash will just have to wait for Apple to change their minds. But they may not want to hold their breath.

GNOME Shell preview

2010-04-29T17:17:00.001-05:00

I mentioned earlier that GNOME 2.30 includes a preview of the upcoming GNOME Shell. To get this working under Fedora 13beta is very simple: you just select the GNOME Shell package via the standard "Add/Remove Software".

Since it's intended as a preview, not as a standard desktop replacement, you need to run this manually from GNOME (via a terminal window, for example.) I've experimented with it, and I like what I have seen, so far.

The GNOME project has screenshots, and a few videos, showing the new GNOME Shell in action. The version that I have is pretty close to these; the screenshots and videos are up to a year old now.

The GNOME Shell will be part of the standard desktop when GNOME 3 is eventually released, currently scheduled for September 2010.

Fedora 13 coming soon!

2010-04-26T12:05:00.003-05:00

If you have been following my recent posts about Fedora 13beta, you may be interested to know that Fedora 13 is coming soon! The final release is currently due on Tuesday, May 18 2010.

A peek into Fedora 13beta

2010-04-25T13:06:00.006-05:00

It's been about a week since I wrote my Fedora 13beta mini-review. A user asked for screenshots of Shotwell and Déjà Dup, so I thought I'd oblige with this post.

First, a few notes:

I reported in my mini-review that the beta is using GNOME 2.29. The day after I wrote that, I installed a bunch of updates to my system, and GNOME 2.30 was among them.

Color profile support still requires a calibration device to generate a profile for you. One that has been recommended to me is the Datacolor Spyder, to create a color profile of your monitor. The Spyder 3 Express costs around $90. It is useful to calibrate your monitor at least every 6 months or so, since the cold cathode backlight on your LCD changes color as it ages.

Managing digital photos:

In previous releases, I'd used GIMP to edit all my digital photos (remove red-eye, etc.) Now, I'm switching to Shotwell. It's that good. Here's a sample album, showing some photos of my cat:

Someone posted a comment earlier, expressing concern that Shotwell requires importing your photos before you can edit them. This is not the case. You can right-click on any photo in GNOME, and "Open with Shotwell Photo Viewer". From there, you have access to all the photo editing tools, and I used this feature to crop a photo a friend had taken of me.

It's easy! You can choose the crop to be unconstrained, or you can use a pre-set aspect ratio and resize the range appropriately.

Note there is no "resize" function in Shotwell. That's a function of the "export". When you publish your photos online (Shotwell supports Facebook, Flickr, Picasa) you can choose a size for your photos.

Backing up your data:

I was really excited to try out Déjà Dup. It's a new backup tool that should make life a lot easier. With it, you can backup to any storage that GNOME can use (local disk, external hard drive, SSH/SFTP, FTP, Windows share, WebDAV, etc.) or directly to Amazon's S3 cloud storage. Everything is encrypted and compressed, and backups are such that you can restore from any particular snapshot.

Déjà Dup has an interface that's simple to use:

Once you have made a successful backup, Déjà Dup asks you if you want to schedule this backup for another time. I have my backups set for "weekly", to an SSH/SFTP host on my home network. It just runs on its own, and GNOME gives me a small warning beforehand so I can opt to cancel the backup if I'd prefer.

Restoring files is very straightforward, although it lacks the really cool interface from Apple's Time Machine. You can choose to overwrite your existing files with the backup copy, or restore to a new location:

There's even an option in GNOME to right-click on a file and revert to a previous version (via Déjà Dup.)

Making Linux act like Windows

2010-04-17T18:35:00.003-05:00

It's as easy as a cron job.

Although to be honest, Windows hasn't randomly rebooted on me in a very long time. I don't recall seeing this behaviour in Windows 7. But it still happened a few times in Windows Vista, and of course in Windows XP.

These days, to get Linux to better mimic Windows behaviour, you'd need to write a mod to the software update tool - so that between downloading the patches and actually installing them, you were forced to shut down and reboot.

Fedora 13beta mini-review

2010-04-16T12:37:00.004-05:00

Fedora 13beta was released a few days ago, and since I'm on vacation this week, I grabbed it right away and installed it on my USB flash drive that boots Linux. I thought I'd post my first impressions:

First, the install process:

The installer has gotten some major improvements, which now give you more options for how to install on a hard drive with another operating system. This should make it easier for current Windows users to try out Linux.

In previous releases, you only had the option to use the space from a previous Linux install, use just the free space on the drive, or blow away everything and use the whole disk. Now, you can also opt to shrink an existing operating system and use the space that's left over. Basically, this uses an NTFS tool to non-destructively resize a Windows filesystem, [hopefully] leaving enough room to install Linux.

But in my case, I already had Linux installed to my USB flash drive, so I just re-used the space on that. Actually, I did a "Custom" install, and told it to re-use my existing partitions (but not to reformat my encrypted /home partition, but to use it as-is.)

The install process is very fast, even though the Fedora 13beta LiveCD is a bit bigger than will fit on a CDROM (this will be fixed by the time Fedora 13 is officially released, in May.) From start to finish, it took about 15-20 minutes to install Linux.

And the changes:

The user interface has gotten an update, as well. One thing that became immediately obvious is the resizeable mouse pointer. I recall that, with previous releases, you could choose between a "normal size" mouse pointer, or a larger one (for example, if you had poor vision.) Now, the mouse pointer is customizable as part of the theme (under "Appearance - Customize - Pointer") and you can scale it to the size you want. I prefer the smallest pointer size, in white. The default is a sort of dark grey.

The desktop icons have also been refreshed. The icons are similar to the previous releases, but have a more modern look to them. I like it a lot:

(Click to enlarge)

Note that I haven't created a "Demo User" account for taking screenshots, so this is using my own desktop. I've hidden my username, but otherwise this is the standard Fedora 13beta desktop. I'm using all the defaults.

The beta is using GNOME 2.29, not GNOME 2.30, but it's been very stable so far.

New features:

There's a new color profile tool available, where you can install an ICC file to set the color profile for your display, scanner, or digital camera. My laptop screen seems to do okay, so I haven't installed an ICC file, but I did experiment a bit with the provided presets, just to see what it did. Sure enough, it adjusts the color displayed on my screen. This will probably be very useful to people with displays whose colors tend to drift, or for those who do professional work with digital media (photos, video, etc.)

If you use an NVIDIA card, there's experimental 3D support via the Nouveau driver. But I have a different video card, so I'm just commenting on that for you.

For me, one of the most interesting features is the new photo manager. GThumb has been replaced by Shotwell. To test, I took some pictures of my cat, and easily imported them from the camera into Shotwell with a single click. From there, I could edit the photos, crop, resize, etc. Here's the feature list:

import photos from any digital camera supported by gPhoto
automatically organize events containing photos taken at the same time
use tags to organize your photo collection
edit non-destructively when altering photos, without ruining originals or using disk space for each copy
publish photos to Facebook, Flickr or Picasa
one-click auto-enhancement
rotate, mirror, and crop photos
reduce red-eye and adjust the exposure, saturation, tint, and temperature of your photos
edit any photo, even if it's not imported to the Shotwell library

Most impressively, after editing a few photos, I was still able to go back to a photo I'd worked on earlier, and undo some of the changes I'd made without undoing any of the work on the other photos. When I was done, Shotwell let me automatically publish my photos to my Facebook and Google Picasa web albums.

In previous releases, I'd used GIMP to edit all my digital photos (remove red-eye, etc.) Now, I'm switching to Shotwell. It's that good.

But looking through the list of changes in Fedora 13, I'm really excited to try out Déjà Dup. It's a new backup tool that should make life a lot easier. With it, you can do local or remote backups, including to Amazon's S3 cloud storage. Everything is encrypted and compressed, and backups are such that you can restore from any particular snapshot.

If Déjà Dup sounds familiar to you Mac users, it should. I have a Mac at home, too, and Time Machine has helped save me from myself more than once. "I really need that file from 6 months ago." It's there. I'm curious to see how Déjà Dup fares.

On Virtual Desktops

2010-04-15T17:42:00.000-05:00

Virtual desktops can help reduce desktop clutter, where you have too many windows open to keep track of them all. Each virtual desktop becomes a separate workspace, to help you organize your work tasks more effectively.

When I ran Linux at work, I used to open my email client on one virtual desktop, my web browser in another, and my OpenOffice documents in a third desktop. This was especially useful when writing a document that required referring to other Word or Excel files. I could open all the files at once, and keep them open on the same virtual desktop, making it much easier to switch between them.

Even Mac OS X supports virtual desktops natively, through Spaces. This is basically the same thing as on Linux, except you have to press a hotkey to select a different virtual desktop.

So why is it that Windows still does not have a virtual desktop manager? I'm currently running Windows 7, and this very useful feature is missing. I've been using virtual desktops under Linux since 1993/1994, and Apple has supported them since Mac OS 10.5. But Microsoft hasn't gotten there yet, I guess. It's 2010, but still no virtual desktops in Windows?

Windows 7 won't power off

2010-04-09T17:24:00.000-05:00

Maybe I'm bitching about a bug, but this one happens often enough that I don't think it's intermittent behavior, so it's fair game. Most times (read: not all the time, but a lot of the time) I try to "Shutdown" my Windows 7 laptop, Windows goes through the motions - but doesn't actually power off. I have reached the point where I watch for when Windows should have powered off, then just pull the plug.

Note that I don't usually leave the battery in the laptop when I am at work. This is a Dell D430 laptop, and it's connected via a mini-dock when I'm at the office. There's not much ventilation in the dock, so when the battery is left in, the system gets really hot. Easy solution: I take out the battery when I put the laptop into the dock.

But Windows only fails to power off since I moved to Windows 7. This wasn't a problem with Windows XP or Windows Vista. And it is never an issue when I run Linux (from a USB flash drive) on the same hardware.

People sometimes complain that Linux doesn't support this or that hardware feature on their computer, so that's why they don't use Linux. But why does the latest version of Windows not work with this basic feature of laptops?

So I'll ask you guys: What is going on here? Any suggestions for what Windows is (or is not) doing, that I can fix?

Restart to finish installing updates

2010-04-06T12:22:00.000-05:00

I got one of those "Click here to install important updates" in Windows today, and since it said I could continue using Windows while it installed the patches, I went ahead and clicked on it. I've mentioned before that I'm confused about how Windows installs updates, because sometimes it can install updates with me using the system - and sometimes it lies to you and isn't able to install updates because you are still using Windows.

Now I'm confused again. If Windows Update said I can keep using Windows while it installs updates for me, then why does it tell me I need to "Restart now to finish installing updates"?

This doesn't make any sense. I have complained in other posts that there should be a "flag" in the updates to say you can only install such-and-such updates when you shutdown. Now I think there needs to be a "flag" that says you will need to reboot to install an update.

Linux has a neat feature in the update program that flags which patches will require you to reboot afterward (like, for a kernel update) and which will require you to logout before the change will take effect (some GNOME updates, for example.) This is very basic functionality, and has helped me decide maybe to delay installing an update until I'm ready to shut down.

But on Windows, I guess I'm supposed to reboot. Maybe it's been long enough that I should take this as a given with Windows.

You know, I'm only trying to get work done here.

GNOME 2.30

2010-04-04T06:32:00.002-05:00

For those of you following GNOME, the new GNOME 2.30 is now available. I'm looking forward to trying out some of these new features: the file manager has new improvements, including a new split view mode; the updated Epiphany browser; remote connections; and iPod device support, via the libimobiledevice library ... and of course the preview for GNOME Shell.

Microsoft fails the standards test

2010-04-02T16:30:00.001-05:00

There's an interesting post over at Alex Brown's blog: Microsoft Fails the Standards Test. Alex discusses the Microsoft Office Open XML ("OOXML") file format in the forthcoming Office 2010 suite. In brief, Microsoft promised that Office 2010 would implement the ISO-approved standard for Open XML - that is the "Strict" version. Alex responds:

On this count Microsoft seems set for failure. In its pre-release form Office 2010 supports not the approved Strict variant of OOXML, but the very format the global community rejected in September 2007, and subsequently marked as not for use in new documents – the Transitional variant. Microsoft are behaving as if the JTC 1 standardisation process never happened, and using technologies (like VML) in a new product which even the text of the Standard itself describes as “deprecated” and “included […] for legacy reasons only” (see ISO/IEC 29500-1:2008, clause M.5.1).

Ctrl-backspace still inconsistent

2010-03-30T17:42:00.000-05:00

I know this is mostly a repost from something I wrote long ago, but it's still happening in Windows 7. Apparently no one at Microsoft noticed the Ctrl-backspace behavior in Windows is very annoying.

Under Linux, Ctrl-backspace always deletes the previous word. It always does that, no matter what application I am using. For example: I have a long passphrase (about 10-12 characters long.) When typing my passphrase under Linux, if I get 8 or 9 characters in, then mis-type a key, I just hit Ctrl-backspace and start over.

Under Windows, this doesn't work! At login (or when unlocking the screen, etc.) Ctrl-backspace inserts a Ctrl-backspace character.

Yet in other Microsoft apps, Ctrl-backspace works "properly", and deletes the previous word. It works that way in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint (but not Microsoft Excel), and Microsoft Internet Explorer. In Notepad, Ctrl-backspace inserts a Ctrl-backspace character - but Wordpad works "properly".

These are all Microsoft apps, but they don't act the same. Why the inconsistent behavior!? How confusing!

Opening files still broken

2010-03-26T18:56:00.001-05:00

Last year, I wrote about broken behavior in Windows Vista when trying to open multiple Excel files: if you selected a group of Excel files, sometimes you could right-click and "Open" then. But sometimes you couldn't.

The problem was that Vista would only let you "Open" multiple files at once if all the files had the same extension. For example, if you selected just a group of "DOC" (Word 97-2003) files, Vista would let you right-click and "Open" then. But if you selected a few "DOC" files and some "DOCX" (Word 2007) files, Vista panicked and wouldn't let you "Open" them.

I can report that this broken behavior is fixed in Windows 7. Sort of. I can now select several different file types (say, DOC and DOCX) and if I right-click, Windows 7 gives me an option to "Open" them. Just like you'd expect. Also works for DOC, DOCX, and ODT (probably because they are all handled through Word 2007.)

But it's still kind of broken in Windows 7. And in a fairly major, obvious way. Let's say I select a bunch of files that I need to review, like to write a single strategy document. I might highlight 3 DOC files, a DOCX file, and a PDF file. (This isn't an imaginary example - I'm trying to do this now.) I can't "Open" them - when I right-click, there's no menu option to "Open" them.

Oh wait, Windows Explorer put a little "Open" button in the toolbar when I selected those 5 files. Let's click that. Only the first file opens.

To me, this is very broken behavior. Doesn't anyone else need to open multiple files at once? How am I the first to find this bug?

To compare: in Linux, you can always select multiple files of different types (DOC, XLS, PDF, ...) and "Open" them. Linux is smart enough to understand that each file type has a different associated application, and calls each program to open the files. It's easy.

Liquid Rescale

2010-03-24T18:25:00.001-05:00

For those of you who use Adobe Photoshop on Windows, you may be looking forward to the new feature in the forthcoming CS5: Content-aware Fill. When I saw this announcement, it reminded me of a similar feature already present in GIMP on Linux: Liquid Rescale.

Not sure what this does? Take a look at some of the Examples. Liquid Rescale is very impressive, and has been around since about 2007. And it's dead simple to install on Linux. From the command line, as root, just type: yum install gimp-lqr-plugin. Or, you can install via the "Add/Remove Software" menu dialog.

GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, and is a graphics program very similar to Photoshop. Most Linux distributions include GIMP.

Updates with yum-presto

2010-03-21T12:39:00.005-05:00

I have known about this for a long time, but I realized I haven't shared it here. In typical Linux distributions, each feature of the operating system is provided via a "package". (Of course, you can always install programs on your own, if a package is not available) I use Fedora Linux, so packages are distributed as "rpm" files, and the package manager is "yum".

Packages make software installs and updates a lot easier. With packages, everything you install is atomic. If you have something like Abiword, that's in a package. When an update is available, you install the package for the new version. No "updates", no "patches". Just a whole new version.

That may seem like it could eat up a lot of bandwidth, right? But Linux distributions now use a system to reduce the update size. On Fedora Linux, that's done via yum-presto.

From the description:

Yum-presto is a plugin for yum that looks for deltarpms rather than rpms whenever they are available. This has the potential of saving a lot of bandwidth when downloading updates.

A deltarpm is the difference between two rpms. If you already have foo-1.0 installed and foo-1.1 is available, yum-presto will download the deltarpm for foo-1.0 → 1.1 rather than the full foo-1.1 rpm, and then build the full foo-1.1 package from your installed foo-1.0 and the downloaded deltarpm.

But the key thing to remember is that you're still installing an rpm package. All that's changed is that you download a "diff" between one version and the next, and your system creates the rpm from the "diff". And you don't have to know anything about it to use yum-presto; it just there by default whenever you do an update.

Here's an example: I installed updates for my system yesterday, and (demonstrating the process for someone) happened to run the update from the command line. So I saw this message:

Presto reduced the update size by 77% (from 48 M to 12 M).

Rather than have to download 48 MB of packages to update, I only downloaded 12 MB. That saved me quite a bit of bandwidth - which is important, since I'm on vacation and the Internet connection here is very slow.

A minute slower

2010-03-14T14:01:00.004-05:00

In my last post, I asked if Windows 7 boots slower than Windows Vista. It seems slow to me. So this weekend, I tried a few experiments with booting Windows 7.

First, a comment: I learned something when doing these boot tests. The more you boot Windows 7, the faster it boots. For example, in my tests, Windows prompted me for "control-alt-delete" to login after about 2 minutes. After a few tests of "boot, login, shut down, power on, boot, login, ..." Windows took less than a minute to prompt me to login. That's very interesting.

It's odd, but I suspect it's marking something as recently-used and is effectively able to "cache" stuff even though it's coming up from a cold boot every time. A neat trick - but if my suspicion is correct and Windows is relying on some flag to indicate something can be loaded without processing (or whatever it's doing) I wonder if this could be used to hijack a Windows system.

But let's get down to business - how long does it take Windows 7 to boot?

My method: Our desktop support folks at work installed my laptop with a "standard" image of Windows 7. It's the same config that just about everyone in our office uses for Windows 7. But I'm doing these boot tests when I'm at home, over the weekend. The system has previously been booted, so if there are any one-time scripts that the system needs to run, I suppose Windows has already done so.

I used a digital stopwatch to record my timings. To remove the question of how long it took the laptop to check memory (POST at boot) I always started the timer from the BIOS "select my boot device" menu, starting the stopwatch at the same time I hit Enter on the boot device I wanted. I'm most interested in how long it takes to boot the system (from BIOS), login, bring up Firefox, and display a web page (Google).

Here are the major milestones for Windows 7 (Dell D430, booting from the hard drive):

From BIOS to login prompt: 2 minutes, 3 seconds
Login prompt to desktop: +53 seconds
Desktop to web page: +15 seconds

Total: 3 minutes, 11 seconds

That means Windows 7 takes about a minute longer to boot, login, and get to work than Windows Vista - say, for the first time you login each morning.

From an earlier post, here are the times for Windows Vista (same hardware, same hard drive):

From BIOS to login prompt: 36 seconds
Login prompt to desktop: +42 seconds
Desktop to web page (Firefox): +46 seconds

Total: 2 minutes, 4 seconds

And to compare, the same for Linux (same hardware, booting from a USB flash drive):

From BIOS to login prompt: 40 seconds
Login prompt to desktop: +15 seconds
Desktop to web page: +12 seconds

Total: 1 minute, 7 seconds

To answer my question from the previous post: Is Windows 7 slow? The answer is definitely yes.

Is Windows 7 slow?

2010-03-11T17:11:00.002-06:00

I haven't timed it (yet), but Windows 7 just seems to take longer to boot than Windows Vista. I thought it was just me, until I checked with a few other Windows 7 users and confirmed this is the experience others have. What has been your experience in booting Windows 7?

Since Linux booted about a minute faster than Windows Vista, I wonder what the Linux advantage is compared to Windows 7? I'll probably do a boot comparison this weekend.

To remind everyone: Linux (Fedora 12) takes about 1 minute 7 seconds to boot from a USB thumb drive, login, launch Firefox, and display a web page (Google). Vista took 2 minutes 4 seconds on the same laptop, but from the internal hard drive.

The secret origin of Windows

2010-03-09T17:02:00.002-06:00

Did you realize that Windows will be 25 years old this year? The "Premier Edition" of Windows 1.0 was released to vendors and partners in summer 1985. That fall saw the release of the first retail edition: Windows 1.01.

In The Secret Origin of Windows, Tandy Trower writes about his time at Microsoft, including working to bring Windows from (essentially) vaporware to a product in about a year. It's an interesting read.

While this was a monumental effort, and my hat is off to the guy for pulling it off, I sometimes wonder how many programming hacks and bugs from Windows 1.01 still persist in Windows 7?

Bluetooth on Windows

2010-03-02T12:46:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Bluetooth on Linux. My Dell D430 laptop was purchased without a Bluetooth card, so I bought a third-party USB adapter to provide Bluetooth. With Linux, it was as easy as plugging in the adapter, and it worked immediately.

I tried the same test under Windows 7. To give Windows credit, the Bluetooth adapter worked, and it really was just a matter of letting Windows do its thing to load support. But it wasn't immediate.

Upon plugging in the adapter, Windows popped up a little information balloon in the lower-right corner of my desktop, telling me it was loading support for a new device, and I could click on the balloon to see details. Curious to see what Windows was doing, I clicked the information balloon (just in time, right before it faded away) and saw this:

I'm not sure where "Generic USB Hub" or "USB Input Device" come from, but I'm guessing Windows probably thought the adapter was a kind of USB hub, like for keyboards and mice (typical input devices over Bluetooth.)

After a few minutes (and I'm not exaggerating) Windows finally finished loading support for this little adapter, and I saw this:

My desktop's top bar then sported a Bluetooth icon, just like Linux. So while Windows supported my Bluetooth adapter like Linux did, the process took a long time. If I hadn't clicked on that information balloon at the beginning, I would never have known what was happening, and probably would have assumed Windows didn't support the adapter.

Windows 7 and Flower

2010-02-28T16:54:00.002-06:00

I suppose Microsoft didn't intend for me to laugh every time the login screen comes up on Windows 7. It's just that it reminds me of the splash screen to Flower, for Sony's PlayStation3.

(No, I'm not saying that Microsoft modeled their login screen from Flower. Windows 7 and Flower came out within months of each other, so they were definitely in development at the same time. I just find the coincidence a bit humorous. Laugh.)

Windows 7 first impressions

2010-02-25T12:19:00.001-06:00

I've only used Windows 7 for a short time, but it's time to share some first impressions.

GUI

The desktop has gotten a facelift from Windows Vista. Overall, it seems eerily similar to KDE 4 on Linux, except for the obvious stuff like the clock and the specific window decorations (the red "X", etc.) I think it's fair to call the Windows 7 GUI a clone of KDE 4, especially since KDE 4.0 was released 11 January 2008 (KDE 4.0 Alpha1 was released 11 May 2007) and Windows 7 launched on 22 October 2009.

Don't believe me? Let's compare:

I say this because if you are a hard-core Windows user, and you find yourself thinking "I could never try Linux, it's too different" - think again. Linux isn't that different from Windows.

Or maybe I should say, Windows isn't that different from Linux.

Library

Aside from the GUI, the Library concept is a bit confusing. It's a deviation from previous versions of Windows, where there were definite locations to save your data. Now with the "Library", that's changed. I'll have to re-train myself to use the "Library".

Shutdown

Something I noticed last night when I went to shut down the laptop - there doesn't appear to be a simple way to quickly shut down the system without installing a bunch of patches. I've discussed before that Windows wants to force users to install updates as they shut down. (In contrast to Linux, which lets you install updates any time you like, and you can keep using your system during and after installing patches.)

In theory, it's a good idea. You're shutting down your PC, probably going home (or to bed, if it's a home PC) and that means you won't need the computer for a while. So letting Windows Update install a bunch of patches would be a good idea, right?

Except we live in an age filled with laptops. And when I shut down my system to go home, I take the laptop with me - or risk having it stolen or lost. That means I need to be able to quickly shut down the system.

In Windows 7, if you click the "Windows" icon, there isn't an item in the menu to just shut down. Instead, the "shut down" link has a little "shield" icon on it, and if you hover over that you get the message "Installs updates and then shuts down your computer."

Last night, I left the office a bit late, around 6:30PM. I didn't want to wait for Windows to install a bunch of updates - I needed to leave immediately. In the end, I had to log out, then shut down the system from the login screen. Not exactly "easy".

Moving to Windows 7

2010-02-24T12:08:00.000-06:00

My Windows Vista laptop got nailed by a virus the other day. My Vista session went all funny, so I called our friendly desktop support folks, described what I saw, and they said it was almost certain I had been nailed.

Turns out, I'm not alone. A local newspaper's web site served me a third-party ad with a malware payload. Lots of other people in the area also got infected.

Thank you, Windows UAC. You did nothing to help me. Great.

Unfortunately, that means I've been moved to Windows 7. Even though I advised against Windows 7, at least the move provides me an opportunity to compare Linux against the current version of Windows.

Like before, I'll be curious to see if this fixes any of the problems I've seen in Windows since Windows XP and Windows Vista: printing, confusing dialogs, broken ctrl-backspace, to list a few. We'll see.

Bluetooth on Linux

2010-02-18T16:27:00.000-06:00

My laptop (Dell D430, purchased 2008) doesn't have a Bluetooth card. This hasn't been a problem until recently, when I decided it would be nice to use a regular-sized wireless mouse when using the laptop at home. (Normally, I use a wired "travel" mouse, which is a bit small and so makes my hand cramp if I use it for any length of time.) So I needed a Bluetooth adapter.

My criteria were simple: (1) it shouldn't cost a lot, and (2) it shouldn't be too obtrusive. I asked our desktop support guys at work, and they pointed me to the Belkin #F8T016 USB adapter, which I ordered elsewhere for about $15.

It was remarkably easy to get working under Linux:

Insert the USB adapter
Boot the laptop using Linux

My desktop's top bar then sported a Bluetooth icon, up next to the wireless network icon. Clicking that, and selecting "Set up new device..." I was able to quickly "discover" my Bluetooth mouse, and pair it with my laptop. Easy!

For the curious: this works exactly as you'd expect if you boot Linux first, then insert the adapter. Linux loads support for the adapter behind the scenes, and the Bluetooth icon appears on the desktop, like magic. You can remove the adapter at any time, if you are done using it.

Where's my stuff?

2010-02-12T17:58:00.017-06:00

Stop and think for a moment - Where is your stuff? Your data, your photos, your games, your music? If you run Windows, I'll bet it's on the "C:" drive.

But what does "C:" really mean? Why does Windows put your important stuff on a drive named so cryptically, "C:"?

This is because of drive letter assignment. It's a process by which Windows picks letters to represent a drive (such as a CDROM or USB fob) or a partition on a drive. Drive letters date back to the days of MS-DOS and CP/M.

The first two drive letters ("A:" and "B:") are reserved for floppy disk drives. I'd be really surprised if your computer still has a floppy drive. Dell stopped selling systems with floppy drives in 2003, for example, and other vendors quickly followed. But Windows reserves letters for floppy drives anyway, for backwards compatibility.

So "C:" is the first hard drive that's on a Windows computer, which is why Windows always boots from "C:". If you have more than one hard drive on your system, and any CDROM or DVD drives, you'll see them show up as "D:", "E:" and so on.

Plug in a USB fob drive, and it will show up in the first available drive letter. Maybe that's "F:" or "G:".

If you are on a managed network (like, at the office) you likely connect to a shared network server, and Windows assigns drive letters to these spaces too. In our office, my network "Home" directory is the "H:" drive. We keep other things on the "O:" and "S:" drives.

One thing becomes clear - all these drive letters make it really hard to keep track of my documents. Where's my stuff?

But Linux makes it really easy to find your data. Drive letters simply don't exist under Linux. Instead, USB fob drives, DVD drives, and shared directories on the network are all referred to by a path in the filesystem. And the GUI makes it all easy to find.

Let's say I plug a USB fob drive into my Linux computer. Linux identifies the drive for me, makes it available to me, and creates a desktop icon so I can quickly access the files there:

These screenshots were taken using a "demo" user I set up on my laptop, hence the "demo's Home" folder.

Easy, isn't it? This USB fob drive happens to have a volume name of "My stuff", so that's the name Linux gives it.

If I'm in an application, this USB fob is always accessible as "My stuff". It's also conveniently located under the "Places" menu:

That screenshot shows the "My stuff" USB fob drive, but also a few other drives that are on my system because Windows is installed on the hard drive - my laptop actually boots Linux from a fob drive. On a system that just runs Linux, you wouldn't see the "Bitlocker" or "2.6 GB Filesystem".

Also in that list is something else that's cool with Linux - bookmarks to servers. You can easily create a connection to another server over a standard network protocol (Windows share, SSH, FTP, etc.) In my case, I've set up a bookmark ("Project web site") to access the web site for a project I run outside of Linux in Exile. If I click on that item, Linux opens a file manager window right to that location.

In a managed Linux desktop (say, an office that runs Linux) the administrator can set up access to network servers. I used to be a Unix/Linux systems administrator, long ago, and we set up file access to central servers in a very transparent way. For example, your home directory might look like it's on /home, but really it's on a central file server. And we had network shares available under /net.

You can do the same thing under Linux today, but a desktop administrator would also set up bookmarks for you automatically so you always have a quick way to access those resources. To me, a shared file area called "Software projects" (which points to /net/projects, on a network server) is more meaningful than calling it the "P:" drive. And my home directory in /home makes more sense than the "H:" drive.

When backwards compatibility bites you

2010-02-08T12:43:00.001-06:00

Microsoft likes to talk big about backwards compatibility in Windows. Those Windows apps you bought for the previous version of Windows, they'll say, will work fine in the current version of Windows. Programs you buy for this version of Windows should be ok for the next version of Windows.

The problem is: when does backwards compatibility become a hindrance, rather than an advantage? At some point, isn't it just better to move on, and put the past behind you?

Not for Microsoft. They work hard to maintain that backwards compatibility. IMO, this will one day be their downfall.

Take, for example, the discovery of a 17-year old Windows bug, which Microsoft is only now addressing in February. Reported to Microsoft in June 2009, the bug is in code that supports old, legacy 16-bit applications. The effect: an attacker can run any code on your system. The exploit has been verified on XP, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2003/2008.

I'll go easy on Microsoft about their response in releasing a patch .. this time. 7 months (June 2009 to February 2010) is probably an appropriate amount of time to unwind a bug that's been in the operating system for 17 years. Probably.

OpenOffice gains market share

2010-02-07T12:30:00.000-06:00

A study from Germany reveals that OpenOffice now holds 21.5% of market share, for users in Germany. That's an increase of 3 points compared to last year. Considering the hold Microsoft Office already has, seeing OpenOffice installed on 21.5% of computers is amazing!

The study analyzed fonts in documents published over that time. For example, OpenOffice documents include the Open Symbol font, making them easy to recognize. However, I don't know how precise by analyzing fonts - especially since it's not hard to install Microsoft's fonts on Linux, and configure OpenOffice to use them by default (this is what I used to do when I ran Linux at work, for example.) So I consider this to be at least 21.5%, not an exact number. The study itself puts its margin of error at ±10% for correctly detecting Microsoft office.

Why can't I print?

2010-02-05T12:19:00.003-06:00

I am stymied why Windows occasionally decides I should not be able to print anything. This is really getting in the way of my work!

Previously, I'd discovered that if my USB printer was connected but turned off, Windows would decide my network printer was "offline" (despite it still being usable by others.) I reported I'd "have to unplug the USB cable to the local printer until I get a new ink cartridge." That didn't solve my problem. But I eventually got a new ink cartridge from our desktop support folks.

At random intervals, Windows just decides the network printer definition is "offline". That is happening to me right now. I tried to print out a (long) document to our network printer, but Windows tells me the printer is "offline". Maybe it's just Office? I convert the file to PDF, then try printing from Adobe's PDF viewer. Same problem, Windows says the network printer is "offline".

The network printer is just outside my office, and as I write this someone from two cubes down from me just sent a job to the network printer, and picked it up. But I'm not able to print.

I guess I'll have to have someone else print that document for my meeting today.

Even our desktop support is confused by this. Please help me. What "fix" can I do to get Windows to let me print to the network printer?

Windows 7 on laptops?

2010-02-04T12:55:00.000-06:00

Are you running Windows 7 on a laptop? You may be interested to know that there's a problem with Windows 7 on laptops, where Windows effectively kills your battery. And I don't mean, "my battery just got drained to 0%, time to recharge." Instead, Windows 7 may permanently damage (2) (3) (4)your laptop battery. Even if you roll back to Windows XP - which many people have done.

Microsoft Technet has a forum thread on this topic, where users report problems with many different brands of laptops. The thread dates back to June 5 2009 - when Windows 7 was still in "Beta" - and continues to be updated with more comments. That's at least 8 months, and no fix yet from Microsoft! (Sound familiar?)

Microsoft is convinced the problem relates to a BIOS problem, but several comments in the forum suggest not.

I hope you bought a spare laptop battery.

Enough is Enough

2010-02-02T17:42:00.000-06:00

I had this link to LinuxLock sitting in a bookmark folder, meaning to post it last year when it was originally written. Enough is Enough. Higher Education..? Wake up. But it is just as relevant today as it was a year ago. Even moreso since we recently discussed a NZ school moving entirely to open source software.

The LinuxLock post (more of a "rant") brings up several good points about Linux on the desktop. We've discussed this at Linux in Exile before, and it's the main reason I started this blog. Linux isn't just for the server, it's also a fine desktop operating system.

The free software way

2010-01-27T18:30:00.002-06:00

Red Hat just opened a new community-driven forum, opensource.com, to discuss open source software issues. An interesting article posted there is The Free Software Way by Richard Fontana, who you may recognize as a co-author of the GNU GPL version 3.

Richard talks about "open source" from a legal point of view, which seems appropriate as he was Counsel at the Software Freedom Law Center, and is now Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel at Red Hat.

The most important part of his post is this:

To me, then, open source is not a development methodology, let alone a distillation of broadly-applicable principles seen as underlying such a methodology. Rather, open source is a specific legal model of property rights transfer. To put it differently, open source is about freedom to use, modify, and share creative material that could otherwise be severely legally restricted by the author. (Source code availability is relevant because otherwise the freedom of modification would be practically impossible to exercise.)

Read his article for yourself. What do you think?

Going completely open source

2010-01-25T07:01:00.002-06:00

I'm pleased to bring you this story: A New Zealand high school converted entirely to an open source software platform, both server and desktop. By doing so, the school has slashed its server requirements by a factor of about 50 - despite a government deal that effectively mandates Microsoft software in all schools.

This was a bold move, since (as we too often see, unfortunately) a national contract with the government means Microsoft gets paid anyway, even though the school doesn't run any Microsoft software.

The school runs Ubuntu on the desktop, and Mandriva on 4 servers: firewall, storage, and 2 virtual host servers (KVM). They also use Mandriva Directory Server to manage the school's LDAP directory, OpenOffice and Google Docs for documents, Moodle for education, Mahara for student portfolios, etc.

Good job!

Microsoft knew of flaw in September

2010-01-23T14:17:00.003-06:00

Remember all the recent fuss about the critical flaw in IE that led to the attacks against Google? At the time, it seemed to be just another example of buggy IE. But it was important enough for Microsoft to step up its patch cycle, and release an emergency fix.

Turns out, Microsoft knew about the vulnerability since September.

Microsoft security program manager Jerry Bryant wrote in a blog posting this week:

When the attack discussed in Security Advisory 979352 was first brought to our attention on Jan 11, we quickly released an advisory for customers three days later. As part of that investigation, we also determined that the vulnerability was the same as a vulnerability responsibly reported to us and confirmed in early September.

(Emphasis mine.)

So this critical security issue was reported to Microsoft 4 months ago, but sat on it. Microsoft says they originally intended to release the fix in February, and only moved it up because of the attack on Google. Giving Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on that one, that means the bug would have sat exposed, unaddressed for 5 months, waiting for an attacker to use it. Which they eventually did.

To compare, Free / open source software has bugs too. Sure, some open source projects may have certain bugs sitting in them for months before someone gets around to them. To be fair, though, critical bugs (like security) get fixed pretty damn fast in F/OSS.

I think I found another reason to recommend Linux.

Command not found

2010-01-18T16:19:00.004-06:00

Most of the time, I try to live within the Linux GUI, so I can write about the experiences that any average user will have when they first try out Linux. But I've mentioned before that my background is UNIX systems administration - although now I'm in management. Still, I sometimes like to do some things at the command line, just to remind myself that I still can.

If you also like to work at the command line, you'll be interested to know about a feature in Linux that's just for you: "Command not found".

That's right, it's a feature now! But rather than just blandly tell you that your command isn't installed, Linux gives you the option to install that program.

Think of it this way: when you type a search into Google, but mis-type your query, Google recognizes that you probably meant to type something else. Google gives you a link to try your search again, with the correct text. That's pretty much what happens here - Linux recognizes that your command doesn't exist, and (after finding what you were trying to do) offers to install the right package.

For example, let's say you are at the command line, and you want to resize a digital photo to be more appropriate for displaying on a web site. So you type the "convert" command, part of ImageMagick. But your system wasn't installed with ImageMagick on it. You briefly see a "Command not found" message, then after a moment Linux asks if you want to install the ImageMagick package on your system. Answer yes, the package gets installed, and your command continues as though nothing happened.

This only works at the command line, of course. And it doesn't happen when running a script - if you mistype a command in a script, you'll get the "Command not found" message, and nothing gets installed.

This feature is provided by PackageKit-command-not-found, part of PackageKit, so standard PackageKit rules apply.

Maybe you don't want this behavior on your Linux system? Feel free to uninstall the package, and that feature just goes away. To uninstall, just go into System - Administration - Add/Remove Software, and remove the PackageKit-command-not-found package.

Printing is offline

2010-01-14T16:57:00.005-06:00

Here's an interesting problem that I've recently experienced on Windows. Let me tell you my story:

At work, I have a little desktop USB Canon inkjet printer connected to my laptop, which I primarily use to print quick items like an agenda for a meeting I'm in. For big print jobs, I have a Windows print queue definition that points to the network HP laserjet printer in our office.

One day when printing to the local printer, Windows warned me that one of my color ink cartridges was running low. Ever the lazy person, I just clicked the "print in greyscale" box whenever I printed to the local printer.

Eventually, my black ink cartridge ran empty. About to go on vacation for the holidays, I didn't order a replacement, and just printed everything to the laser printer.

When I got back to the office, I figured there wasn't a point in keeping the local inkjet printer powered on if I wasn't going to print to it, so I turned it off. The next morning, I wasn't able to print to our network printer. That meant I couldn't print anything! Every time I tried to print, Windows said the printer was "offline". Ouch!

If you can see the problem, you are smarter than I am.

Through many iterations of experiments, I've determined the following:

If the local printer is off when I boot Windows, the network printer appears to be "offline".
If the local printer is on when I boot Windows, I can print to the network printer.

I'd love to have someone explain this to me!

Why does Windows seem to care about the local printer, when trying to print to the network printer? Linux doesn't care about these things. These printers are defined on different queues - or at least, Linux puts different printers on different queues. I assume Windows does that. Does Windows do some kind of weird print-fu where the local printer matters, even when printing to a network printer?

I guess I'll have to unplug the USB cable to the local printer until I get a new ink cartridge ...

There's a problem on your computer

2010-01-09T16:19:00.004-06:00

..but Windows doesn't tell you about it.

Whenever I boot my laptop with Linux (using my USB flash drive) I get this interesting warning message on my desktop:

I suppose the laptop's internal hard drive is due to fail any time now, taking all my work with it. (Fortunately I save all my work on our file server, and keep my email on the mail server, so I'm not likely to lose much of anything.)

But thanks to Linux, I do know that the hard drive is reporting health problems. So if this were my own system, I'd make sure my backups were up to date, and start shopping around for a replacement hard drive.

I find it interesting that I've never seen a similar hard drive warning message under Windows. I've discussed before that I can only compare the default behaviour between Windows and Linux. Maybe Windows saves this warning to a log file, instead of showing it to me? I wouldn't know. I also wouldn't know that my laptop's hard drive is going to die soon.

I think a real strength behind Linux, and any open source software system, is that it's driven by real people - not corporate entities. As a result, Linux and other open source software works in a way useful to real people. It just makes sense that a desktop environment would alert me when my hard drive is due to fail. Thanks!

Similarly, my wife's laptop - also running Linux - is over 5 years old now. The battery no longer holds a full charge anymore. So when she logs in, Linux warns her that her battery may be broken. Except I think she has the option to disable the battery level warning, but prefers not to. The message tells her what is her maximum battery capacity, and she decided we'll replace the laptop when the battery reaches a certain level. (And that's coming soon.)

Making Linux look like Windows

2009-12-28T15:08:00.004-06:00

A great thing about the Linux desktop is that it's so easy to apply different themes to it. You can make Linux look like anything, so it suits your particular needs.

Taken to an extreme, a group of users in China have applied a theme to Ubuntu Linux that makes it look almost identical to Windows XP. Why? Because apparently this group was previously responsible for releasing a pirated version of Windows XP, which is now being cracked down on by Microsoft.

But themes that make Linux look just like Windows are not all that new. For example, check out this how-to video showing a theme kit that makes a GNOME desktop look just like Windows XP.

(Note: re-using the Microsoft Windows logo and icon set is still copyright infringement. I do not endorse these themes.)

I wonder how many Windows users will be fooled? But more to the point, how many of these Windows users will realize that Linux is just as easy to use as Windows? Perhaps some good will come out of this.

Switching to Linux

2009-12-18T18:09:00.002-06:00

Photographer Scott Rowed has penned an excellent essay on his experience in switching to Linux, and has posted it at ScienceBlogs. You should read it.

It's an interesting read. Scott acknowledges that "Changing operating systems is not a task to be taken lightly." But after experiencing a crippling Windows virus, he decided to give Linux a try. Scott expected some complaints from the rest of the family, got some, but looks like things settled down fairly quickly.

I think this sums up Scott's experience pretty well:

Yes, there were complaints. "It looks different." "My teacher can't open the report I wrote in Open Office". But after a couple of weeks the issues faded when everybody got used to the different style and realized that you could "save as" to Microsoft Word format.

I anticipated problems connecting other hardware, so it was a pleasant surprise when our printers, scanners, MP3 players and digital cameras (from the kids' Coolpixes to my pro Nikon D3) were recognized and functioned normally.

Then I was asked to present a slide show with a rented projector. I booted into Windows XP and connected the projector. Nothing. For over two frustrating hours I tried everything I could think of to make XP talk to the projector. The rental shop was closed so there was no tech support. Desperate, I booted into Ubuntu and to my shock the image instantly projected onto the screen. No keys to push, no drivers to install - it just worked.

So basically, Scott had heard that "Linux won't work" as the standard Microsoft mantra, and assumed he'd experience hardware incompatibilities. But when it came down to it, Linux worked fine with his peripheral devices. And everyone was happy with it.

What is Windows doing?

2009-12-18T08:00:00.000-06:00

Under Linux, if you launch an application, a helpful item appears in in your program list (what you might call the "Start bar" in Windows) that says "starting Firefox web browser.." You get the same thing if you double-click on a Word document, and get "starting OpenOffice Writer.." But with Windows, you get nothing. I've mentioned this problem before, but it's an issue that keeps coming back to bother me. There's just no feedback that I've started an application under Windows.

For example: this morning, I came into the office, booted my laptop. When the Windows Vista desktop appeared, I clicked on the quick-launch icon to start the Firefox web browser. Nothing happened. After a few seconds, I realized I must have clicked an edge or something, didn't really click the Firefox icon, so I clicked it again.

Again, nothing happened. My hard drive light was indicating a lot of activity, but Windows clearly wasn't launching Firefox. Maybe the quick-launch bar isn't working, for some reason? I tried double-clicking the desktop icon for Firefox, to launch the program that way. Still, nothing happened. In an act of desperation, I used the Start menu to launch Firefox that way.

When Firefox still hadn't appeared, I decided Firefox must be aborting when it tries to start. Fortunately, my laptop also has Google Chrome installed on it, so I clicked on that to start Chrome.

About 10 seconds later, 4 Firefox windows suddenly appeared, quickly followed by a Google Chrome window. WTF!?

Windows really did launch Firefox that first time I clicked on it, but because there was no feedback to let me know Windows had done something, I didn't know that.

What every Linux user should know

2009-12-17T12:19:00.003-06:00

ScienceBlogs is running an item about using Linux. In his post, Greg Laden talks about "topics that a savvy non-techie yet still geekie desktop/laptop Linux user should know", including:

Introduction
OS, Distribution, Kernel, Windows Manager, Desktop
The file system, with a focus on home, but including useful information like dot-files.
The Gnome Desktop
What is on the hard drive?
Backing Up
Users, permissions, sudo.
Packages
Making WiFi work and the problems of freedom and drivers
Firefox, Flash, DVD's and ISOs
Upgrading/updating.
Linux/OSS equivalents to commonly used apps (OpenOffice, The Gimp, Xara Xtreme, and Gnumeric)
File based and command line processing of photos/graphics.
Old fashioned text processing: Gedit
Old fashioned text processing: Emacs outline mode, LaTeX, RegEx, and Sed

I agree with most things, but these days I don't know that a non-technical user needs to know the command line to do anything with Linux. Those days are long gone. While the command line is definitely useful (and I cut my budding admin teeth on the command line) I prefer to recommend new users explore the more-familiar GUI.

So, allow me to make my own list of things a non-technical user should probably see:

Introduction to Linux
How to install Linux
The GNOME desktop
Navigating folders
Backing up & restoring files
How to install extra software
Wireless networking
Linux equivalents to commonly used apps (OpenOffice.org, GIMP, etc)

It's a shorter list, to be sure. And to be honest, the first 4 items are pretty basic stuff. Those last 4 topics can be more advanced, depending on the user.

On a related topic: My wife and I recently discussed upgrading her laptop to Fedora 12 over this coming weekend (she's still running Fedora 11.) She is not a technical user at all, but is comfortable installing Linux on her laptop all by herself. The bit where she gets a little worried is backing up all her data, then putting it back after re-installing her laptop.

While my wife has run the install process previously, I've always done the backup beforehand, and restored her data afterwards. Her data won't fit on a USB thumb drive, so I create a compressed tar file ("tar.bz2") of her home directory, copy it over our home network to another computer - then back again after she re-installs. It's easy to do, but kind of hard to explain to someone who doesn't know "tar" and "ssh".

When DRM breaks

2009-12-14T12:20:00.004-06:00

This isn't standard fare for Linux in Exile, but it falls under the general category of "closed source is bad."

Microsoft has a technology used in their Office products called "Rights Management Services" (RMS). With it, you can encrypt Office files, and (hopefully) limit what and end-user can do with the file - such as printing, copying, editing, and forwarding.

Basically, RMS is a form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) applied to documents. I suppose this is targeted at people in the publication business, sharing a Word document with someone, and want to limit the chances information will get leaked. (But really, once you share a document with anyone else, it is out of your control.)

It's dangerous to rely on a third party to protect your information for you. Imagine what might happen if RMS stops working. You may suddenly find that Word has locked you out of your own documents. That's exactly what has happened.

Office 2003 users get "Unexpected error occurred, please try again later or contact your system administrator" when they attempt to open (or save) protected documents. The bug affects Office 2003 products including Excel 2003, Outlook 2003, PowerPoint 2003, and Word 2003.

That's gotta suck if you're trying to get work done. Imagine all those people realizing their own work has been locked away from them.

Microsoft released a hotfix a few days ago, but I'm amused by this note in the hotfix:

This hotfix might receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by this problem, we recommend that you wait for the next software update that contains this hotfix.

So basically, it's not fully tested. And I wonder what "severely affected" means if you can't even access your own documents?

Same boot time

2009-12-13T09:59:00.004-06:00

I promised to talk about the boot time in Fedora 12. It's still very fast, but I hadn't recorded how long it really took to come up. So I ran that test this weekend.

I used a digital stopwatch to record my timings. While this is not exactly scientific, I repeated the tests over several boots and got similar numbers. To remove the question of how long it took the laptop to check memory (POST at boot) I always started the timer from the BIOS "select my boot device" menu, starting the stopwatch at the same time I hit Enter on the boot device I wanted. I'm most interested in how long it takes to boot the system (from BIOS), login, bring up Firefox, and display a web page (Google).

To compare, Fedora 11 took about 1 minute 7 seconds from a USB thumb drive. Vista still takes 2 minutes 4 seconds on the same laptop, but from the internal hard drive.

Things are the same after moving to Fedora 12. I timed my Fedora 12 system at the same 1 minute 7 seconds to boot, login, bring up Firefox, and display the Google front page.

If you're keeping score: There's a slight difference between how Fedora 11 and Fedora 12 were installed on this USB thumb drive. In Fedora 11, I encrypted the whole volume. But when I installed Fedora 12, I only encrypted the "/home" filesystem.

Fedora 12 mini-review

2009-11-29T08:39:00.005-06:00

I've actually been running Fedora 12 for a week now. It's a nice update - but to be clear, this is mostly an updated version of Fedora 11. No "must have" tools in this release, at least for how I use Linux.

First, the install process:

The installer is very easy to use, and has gotten a few improvements that help streamline the process. For example, in previous versions, you had a separate step at the end to specify how to boot your system (MBR, or some other method.) In Fedora 12, you do that at the same step where you tell the installer what disk(s) to use to set up your system.

I always reinstall my system from scratch, rather than upgrade. I did that again this time, which was important since I wanted to manually re-do my partitions. When I installed Linux on a USB thumb drive last time, I set it up as a single filesystem - almost like how the installer would have done it. (The difference was that I didn't use volume management, since I don't expect to extend the filesystem on a thumb drive.) The entire filesystem was encrypted, in case my thumb drive was ever lost or stolen.

This is a USB thumb drive, so reads data at up to 30 MB/s, and writes at about half that. Updates take a long time. But I figured part of that slowness might also come from encrpytion - so for this install of Fedora 12, I manually set up my partitions so my "/home" was a separate filesystem, and only "/home" was encrypted. (Yes, all filesystems use "noatime" and I back up my stuff regularly.)

So all my personal info is still safe. Updates don't seem to bog down the system so much, although it definitely takes longer to run system updates - compared to my wife's Linux laptop, which boots from a hard drive.

The entire install process was quick and painless. It took about 15-20 minutes to boot the LiveUSB and install everything. After that, I was up and running in Fedora 12.

And, the changes:

In the comments on my previous post, "some guy" pointed out:

F12 changed how users can install packages. In F11 and earlier releases, users needed the root passwd to install packages. In F11 for example, PackageKit prompted you for root's password (as a GUI).

But in F12, they've changed it. Still not clear why this was a good idea to someone - but in the desktop version only general users can install any signed package without root's password.

If you don't like this behavior, it's a simple [conf file] fix to change it back [...]

You don't need to edit any conf files to change this behavior. As I mentioned in the other comments, the Fedora guys listened to the feedback, and updated the system to require the root password to install any package, signed or not. All you need to do is let the system update process automatically update your system - that's it. After that, when I installed a package using "System - Administration - Add/Remove Software" (which uses packages from the [signed] Fedora software repository) I was prompted for the root password before it would actually install anything.

Aside from that, no major changes to report in Fedora 12. The default window controls have changed a little, and the default desktop background, but that's about it. The Linux desktop still looks like it has in previous releases, where the top bar shows things you can do, while the bottom bar shows things you are doing.

I am a typical "general user", so I can't comment on the software development environment. I spend most of my time in Firefox or writing docs, and that is still very familiar.

In my next post, I'll talk about the boot time in Fedora 12. It's still very fast, but I haven't run a stopwatch against it. To compare, Fedora 11 booted in 1 minute 7 seconds from the same USB thumb drive, about a minute faster than Vista on the same laptop.

Fedora 12 is out

2009-11-18T12:31:00.000-06:00

Fedora 12 is now available!! Get it here.

There are some new features in this release, but mostly it's improvements like better graphics support, performance, NetworkManager, OpenBroadcom. For details, see the documentation, or just read the 1-page overview. Also check the list of known bugs if you think you've found a problem - but these should be weird "edge" cases.

I figure I'll probably wait until next week to install Fedora 12 (while I'm away for Thanksgiving) so expect a mini-review then.

Linux on USB

2009-11-17T12:03:00.002-06:00

When I installed Fedora 11 on my wife's laptop back in June, I really grew tired of not being able to run Linux anymore at work. I still can't run Linux at work, but I figured out I can run Linux at home. I realized that if I can boot a LiveUSB on this laptop, I can certainly boot a USB drive with Linux installed on it.

And that is what I have done. I am using an 8GB USB flash drive, about the same capacity as you'd find in a netbook, for example. (I boot into Linux on weekends, on my own time.) Works great!

It occurs to me that this may not have been an obvious solution to everyone, so I'd like to talk about it.

Maybe you're in a similar situation as me, where you want to boot Linux but aren't able (or allowed) to install another operating system on your computer. Or maybe you just want to install Linux on a PC you own, but don't want to mess about with the sometimes-scary task of resizing a Windows hard drive so you can dual-boot. Or perhaps you just want to be able to bring your own Linux installation with you, so you can boot it anywhere (in an Internet cafe, friend's house, etc.)

One obvious way to do this is to convert a LiveCD version of Linux into a "LiveUSB". That's how I originally did it, and it worked well.

I wanted to have a full install of Linux, something that was just the same as installing on a hard drive. But without actually installing to the hard drive. So I picked up an 8GB USB drive (to compare, same capacity as many netbooks) and installed Linux on that.

Was it easy? Yes, it definitely was! Just booted my laptop using the LiveUSB that I'd used to install Fedora 11 for my wife, and told the installer to install Linux on the USB drive. It's exactly the same as installing on the hard drive, but you do need to pay attention at two points in the installation process:

When you let the installer create the partitions, make sure to specify the USB drive. Check the capacity of the drives it presents to you, and that should be an obvious clue which one is the USB drive. (The hard drive on my laptop is 80GB.)
When the boot info is installed, make sure to select the USB drive, not the hard drive. Again, check the capacity of the drives it shows you, and you'll be sure to pick the right one.

I manually created my partitions, but you can let the installer do it for you. It's your choice.

In case I ever lose the flash drive, I made sure to encrypt my data. Just as in previous releases, the Fedora 11 installer makes encrypting your system very easy. During setup, just check the box to encrypt your hard drive, type in your passphrase, and the installer does the rest!

That was it. It took about 20 minutes to install everything - and it doesn't touch the hard drive, so Windows remains completely unaffected. Now, when I'm at home and want to run Linux, I just boot from the USB drive. When I'm at the office, I boot from the hard drive and run Windows.

To be honest, there is a side effect from running Linux from a flash drive: Typical flash drives read at up to 30 MB/s, and write at about half that. On the other hand, because all my data lives on the USB drive, the hard drive never spins up. The trade off is longer battery life (the hard drive can spin down if it's never used) but writing files is slower. It's unnoticeable when doing "everyday" activities (writing docs, browsing the web) but it definitely takes longer to run system updates - compared to my wife's Linux laptop, which boots from a hard drive.

Move your family to Linux

2009-11-13T13:49:00.003-06:00

In a future post, I'll talk more specifically about how to be a good "Linux at work" advocate, but for now let me talk about how to move your family to Linux.

I've been a Linux user since 1993. But it was a few years before my wife decided that Linux was something she could use for herself. I helped my wife migrate to Linux (from Windows) after she finished her Master's thesis. Before, on Windows, she experienced regular crashes and lock-ups, and other weird behavior. Now, on Linux, everything runs fine. My wife uses her laptop to do email, write docs, browse the web, that's it. Not very complicated, so for her it was an easy move.

I did the same for my mom several years ago. My step-dad thought himself a great PC technician, despite knowing nothing about computers other than "point and click". So the PC was often hosed, usually through some malware problem. They used the computer just to browse the web, check email, write docs, do spreadsheets (home finance), play solitaire and freecell, play Flash games, watch Youtube. It was an easy move for them to migrate to Linux, and they've been problem-free on Linux.

The key in making the transition easy is for you to understand their computer use, what they use the computer for. In my experience, people who are "casual" PC users aren't doing anything that couldn't be done on Linux. Note "casual" ... with the people I support, that means no World of Warcraft, no Half Life 2. Just basic computer use, and simple "diversion" games. (PC gamers find it more difficult to move off Windows, because the hot games aren't available for Linux.)

The next step is for you to show your audience that Linux is okay, that it will meet their needs. My wife was an easy convert because she saw me use Linux every day, to do the same things she did. My mom was a little more difficult because I wasn't over there all the time. But if you can sit down with the family and show them how Linux is really just the same as Windows, then you may be in luck. If you have a Linux laptop, bring it with you when you visit for Thanksgiving. If not, consider running a "'live CD" version of a popular distribution, such as Fedora or Ubuntu.

Don't push it too hard, and don't expect to change minds right away. May take several visits, with casual demonstrations of what Linux can do.

When you demo Linux, don't tweak out your desktop. Let it be pretty much default. No odd themes, no cute backgrounds, no desktop effects turned on. That "geek stuff" kind of freaks out your potential audience. You'll note that the screenshot I used to talk about the Linux desktop used default settings.

Show that the same applications exist under Linux, but with a different name. OpenOffice versus "Microsoft Office". Firefox (same). Or Firefox vs IE. Make sure to install the Flash plugin ahead of time, so visiting Youtube is the same experience. I'd turn off Flashblock or not install it, so it's as close to the Windows experience.

If you do this, you might be able to make your family tech support easier. I find Linux harder to break, and certainly it isn't vulnerable to the Windows malware that's out there.

The Linux desktop

2009-11-05T14:55:00.010-06:00

I'd like to switch gears for a little bit here, and talk about the Linux desktop. This is a topic I'd like to return to on this blog, from time to time.

I've been a Linux user since 1993. While the Linux desktop was very immature at this point, I was drawn immediately to the concept of virtual desktops. This allowed me to keep my work separate and organized - rather than cluttering up a single desktop with lots of application windows, I could put related programs on their own virtual desktop.

If you followed the "virtual desktop" link above, you can see a tour of some older Linux desktop environments. Many people who dismiss Linux on the desktop may have had their first experience on TWM or FVWM. I'll be honest - looking back, those were not great window managers. They were good for the era, but they don't age well compared to modern desktops.

So I'd like to introduce you to the Linux desktop today. I've been using Fedora 11 since June (but Fedora 12 is due soon.) Here is what my desktop looks like: (click to see larger version)

I created a "demo" user to take this screenshot, so that all the settings are at their default values. This is what a fresh install of Fedora 11 would look like.

Looks kind of like Windows, right? It's not too far off, although there are some differences:

The "Start" menu is at the top of the screen (Windows puts this at the bottom.) The Fedora logo is that blue-circle "F", so you click that (labelled "Applications") to launch programs. That top bar also has menus with bookmarks to folders, or to run system tools (like, to add a user or change your password.)

At the bottom of the screen, you have a window list (shown empty in my screenshot, because I'm not running any applications) and the workspace switcher (virtual desktops!) By default, Fedora 11 gives you 4 virtual desktops.

I usually explain the two "task bars" as: the top bar shows things you can do, while the bottom bar shows things you are doing.

By the way, making that screenshot was dead simple. Press the Print Screen key (may be labelled "PrtScr" on some keyboards) and Linux saves a screenshot of your desktop to a file: (click to see larger version)

If you don't want to save a file, you can choose to copy the screenshot to the clipboard, and paste it into a document later. Or to grab just the active window, use Alt-PrtScr.

Not what they get

2009-10-29T12:07:00.001-05:00

Recently, I had a discussion with someone where I related how a single Word doc printed differently across different versions of Microsoft Word. The person I was talking to responded (quite seriously) that WYSIWYG means "What You See Is What You Get", not "What They Get", that Word actually renders the document on screen based on the capabilities of the default printer on that computer, so that you should expect the same document to print differently on different computer+printer configurations.

Whoa, it is really sad that it's not only accepted, but expected behavior for a word processing document to look vastly different (note my example: wrapping text around a table, page breaks, etc.) depending on the printer Windows was using. I might understand if the text were rendered a little different due to fonts (installed on the printer) being slightly different from the fonts Windows is using. But I find it hard to believe that text flowing around a table should be any different on one computer+printer vs another computer+printer. If that's really how Windows works, I think I'm even less of a fan.

And yet, Microsoft makes a big deal that if you run Microsoft Office, you will be able to share your documents with others running Office. Apple makes a point of that too in some of their ads. The Microsoft ad copy on Apple's Online Store says:

The latest version of the industry standard for productivity software on the Macintosh platform. Microsoft® Office 2008 for Mac is more powerful and easier to use. Office 2008 combines Microsoft Word for Mac, Microsoft Power-Point® for Mac, Microsoft Excel® for Mac, Microsoft Entourage® for Mac, and Microsoft Messenger for Mac and lets you easily create high-impact documents and seamlessly share your ideas with others, whether they are on the Mac or Windows® platform.

(Emphasis mine.)

And yet, if you cannot guarantee that your document on a Mac (in my example, at least one person printed their copy of the doc on a Mac) will look the same as on Windows, how is that seamless???

On the other hand, Linux/Unix systems expects the application to generate a Postscript document, which is then sent to the print driver, and it's the driver's job to turn that into a printed page on the specific printer. A document should look the same printed on a laser printer vs an inkjet printer. Isn't that the whole point of a printer driver? I think the Linux/Unix method makes more sense.

5 things to know

2009-10-24T05:40:00.002-05:00

Windows 7 has only been out for a few days now, so maybe now is a good time to start looking at what the press is writing.

The Washington Post has an article today about 5 things you should know about upgrading from XP to Windows 7. It's a great topic, since so many people opted to skip Vista entirely, and are (were?) still running Windows XP. The WP's article is not that long, but the slant struck me, so let me put it in plainer terms:

Microsoft didn't make an XP to 7 upgrade tool, despite the fact that so many people avoided Vista and stuck with XP, so you need to blow away your system and re-install.
Or, upgrade from XP to Vista, then upgrade from Vista to 7. Says the article: "It doesn't even have to be licensed since you won't be activating it and won't have it loaded for more than a few hours". Yes, I think the Washington Post just recommended software piracy to make the Windows upgrade easier.
If you have older hardware, you will have a tough time finding drivers in 7. But Microsoft has software to help you find software.
You may lose settings when you upgrade to 7, but Microsoft has more software for that.
Your Windows security software won't work in 7, so you'll have to buy new versions. Yay! More software to make the software you already own work better.

The WP article concludes by recommending you just toss out your existing system, and buy a new one with Windows 7 already pre-loaded. Shocking advice, considering you could buy XP until very recently, and even a few weeks ago Windows XP still had better adoption than Windows Vista.

Fedora 12 Beta

2009-10-22T12:55:00.002-05:00

In case you don't follow the "Beta" releases, I thought I'd let you know that Fedora 12 Beta was just announced. Compared to Fedora 11, this release contains mostly hardware compatibility and virtualization. Check out the Feature List for full details.

I'm pretty excited about Multi-Pointer X. This extension provides a new client API for handling input devices and also Multi-Pointer X (MPX) functionality. MPX functionality allows X to cope with many inputs of arbitrary types simultaneously, a prerequisite for (among others) multitouch-based desktops and multi-user interaction on a single screen.

I am also looking to try out GNOME Shell "preview". Fedora 12 includes an early version of GNOME Shell, which will be the new way to launch applications, access documents, and organize windows in GNOME 3.0 (expected "sometime" in 2010.) I'm interested in GNOME Shell because it seems like a great way to separate the idea of "this is my desktop" from an application launcher. You may, at first, think it's an odd way to launch programs, but check out the Screencasts and you may agree that it makes things a lot easier.

GNOME Shell is still "preview", so not installed by default yet. Install the gnome-shell package, and use the Desktop Effects configuration tool to enable it.

What are the reviews saying?

2009-10-21T12:04:00.002-05:00

Windows 7 comes out tomorrow, and I thought this would be an excellent time to look back at the Windows Vista launch.

As we know now, Vista made a poor showing for itself when it was released, and performance issues and other problems dogged it for the last 3 years. But how was Vista reviews on the eve of its release? Tech writer Harry McCracken gives us a recap of the very positive reviews of the then-upcoming Windows Vista.

The reviews for tomorrow's Windows 7 launch are looking great. People are saying that Windows 7 runs better and is more stable than Windows Vista. Lots of people are waxing poetic about Windows 7.

But the reviews for Windows Vista were similarly awesome, yet the OS was a huge disappointment. What to think about Windows 7? Color me skeptical; I'll wait to see proof.

Microsoft attacks Linux at the retail level

2009-10-18T11:59:00.004-05:00

I meant to post this a month ago when it first came out, but when the site was slashdotted I put it on hold and forgot to come back to it.

Overclock has a series of screencaps from someone who works at Best Buy. This person was going through the Microsoft ExpertZone training, and was presented with a section on "Windows 7 vs Linux". I immediately spotted many "untruths" in Microsoft's "Linux Compare" slides.

The Microsoft anti-Linux slides mention several things that were blatantly untrue. Allow me to chime in:

iPods
I haven't used Windows at home since 1998, and even then I only used it for games. When I bought my first iPod several years ago, I didn't have a problem using GTKpod to connect my iPod, and transfer my MP3 collection to it. I managed all my songs and playlists using GTKpod, and it was easy! (Since then, I bought a Mac and reformatted the iPod to work with that - call me a sellout, but iTunes has a ton of audiobooks I like.)

Cameras
I have never had problems connecting my digital camera to my Linux PC. Everything just works for me. But if I did have a problem, I'd probably just solve it by taking out the memory card, and using a USB adapter. Then it's just USB storage.

Printers
Whether at work or at home, my printing experience under Linux has been "plug and go". Especially in recent years, just plug in the USB printer (I've used Epson, Canon, HP, ...) and Linux identifies it, configures the print driver, and you're done. When I used to run Linux at work, and got a new desktop printer, I didn't even think about it - just plugged it in, and got back to work. Printing to network printers requires knowing the IP address for the printer, but the Linux print configuration tool does the rest.

WindowsLive Essentials
The "Essentials" includes a bunch of stuff that is already included in most Linux distributions by default: email, chat, blogging, photo gallery, etc.

Support
It's all about vendor support. I work at a large organization, and my teams support over 1,100 servers (over half run Unix, most of which is Linux.) We don't go for "community support" here, although I know some smaller organizations that do. Instead, we purchase and run Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This provides access to an online support center (basically, a knowledge base) and call-in phone support. That's the only way I'd run our servers at work.

Support may be different on the desktop, of course. There's Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop, and you can certainly run that. I run Fedora on my laptop. For Fedora, there's no one to call if things break, and I would have to rely on "community support" for any problems. If this scares you, ask yourself: how many times have you called Microsoft for help on your Windows PC? No one really calls Microsoft for home desktops; there's a reason people like Geek Squad are in business. (BTW, I just called Geek Squad to confirm, and they do support Linux on the desktop.)