The PumaCode.org Blog

You know how after you’ve been in an unhealthy relationship for a while, and you’ve decided to break it off, but haven’t actually done so yet, it still feels like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders? You’re not exactly looking forward to the breakup, and you’re a little apprehensive about how things will be afterward. But suddenly the little things no longer annoy you, because soon, you won’t have to put up with them anymore.

Maybe you even begin to notice new little quirks that annoy you, things you’ve put up with for far too long without even realizing it, but, as “How I Met Your Mother” taught us, once you notice them you can’t un-notice them. But that’s okay too, because those will also soon be a thing of the past.

My time on my home PC is split about 50/50 between Ubuntu and Windows these days while I continue to make the transition. Simply logging in to Ubuntu is great; it takes about 5-10 seconds after I type my password before Ubuntu is ready for me to be productive. The 2-3 minute startup ritual that Windows performs just to log me in doesn’t really seem as painful anymore, because it will soon be gone. Yeah, Windows runs much better when freshly installed too, but without a system registry and an arms race of apps that all try to get in your face the most by starting system tray applets and other cruft, I’m hoping Ubuntu is much better about staying quick and responsive.

Yesterday, I installed the Funambol portal plugin on my Windows Mobile 6 phone under the hopes that their “push email and PIM data synchronization” would actually work well and be useful (they don’t and aren’t). Before installing it, I decided to uninstall a few other apps I’d tried, so I opened the Remove Programs screen and picked one using the directional pad (which is easier than pulling out the stylus or trying to fingernail-tap). Then I picked another one to uninstall (or so I thought), then tapped Remove, but Windows had pulled the ol’ focus-item-is-different-from-selected-item gag! Oh, you zany Windows, I removed the wrong program!

So today I decided to remove Funambol. After I selected Remove and waited a minute or so, I got the following message: “The selected program was not fully removed. Do you want to keep it in the list of installed programs?” So I assume my two choices really are: keep it in the list of programs and have a link to a mostly-removed app cluttering up my menu forever; or remove it from the program list and forever kiss goodbye to any hope of “fully” removing it. I chose the latter, which didn’t actually remove it from the Start menu anyway, so now I have a shortcut to a program that can’t be killed once started which just displays an empty box with an “OK” button in an infinite loop. Oh, Windows, you slay me!

I’m not sure how I’ll manage without ten-minute Windows Update sessions, or being nagged every five minutes to reboot because of an update to some non-essential app which is nonetheless deeply integrated into the OS, or “requesting” a reboot of my computer only to be vetoed by a slew of userland apps that each need to ask whether I really want to quit. But I think I’ll manage.

I really don’t know why I’ve subjected myself to this crap for so long. Of course, Ubuntu’s UI is also far from perfect (why can’t I right-click a launch menu item and edit its properties?!), but I am eagerly looking forward to my breakup with Windows, as soon as it moves its shit out of my apartment and I change the locks. Maybe we can still be friends, awkwardly exchanging pleasantries when I run it inside a VM from time to time to test a website I’m working on. I guess time will tell.

So, like I said, I ordered my Linux-based Eee PC from Amazon last week. Well, not really from Amazon, but from one of their partners through Amazon’s main site. That was five days ago (granted, that included a 3-day weekend), and I hadn’t received so much as an order confirmation email.

When I logged in to Amazon to check the status, it had changed from “will ship on 5/28″ to “will ship between 5/30 and 6/3″. WTF?! I knew that demand had been really strong for the new Eee, and I was worried that they had overpromised their supply (even though it said “In Stock” when I ordered) and that I was gonna be pulled into a never-ending “just a couple more days” cycle. So I emailed the company, asking what the dealio was and whether my PC was backordered, and said if I didn’t hear back today I’d cancel my order.

A short while later, I got an email from the company, explaining that demand was very high for that model, and Asus shipped the Linux models to the resellers 3 days late, but they did have the PCs in, and they were getting them out as quickly as possible, but they first had to account for all the serial numbers and match them up to orders to activate the warranty, but I was 100% guaranteed to receive one of those, and it would ship Friday or Monday, and they’d send the tracking numbers ASAP, and thank you for your patience and understanding, and if I had an “emergency need” for my Eee to let them know. Oh, and they attached two photos to the email, one of a stack of 100 Eees sitting in their warehouse, and one of a part number sticker off one of them, I guess to assure me they weren’t just full of b.s.

I politely replied back and thanked them for the info and said I understand these things happen. But really, why don’t companies offer up that kind of info voluntarily beforehand? I would think that any e-tailer these days should know that when they are dealing with “Internet time”, people expect to get at least an email order confirmation immediately after placing an order, then be kept in the loop on status changes or delays. Three business days after placing an order is far too long to let a customer go without feedback. And especially when you’re dealing with geeky early-adopter types who order Linux-based notebooks at first launch, we get highly impatient when we log in to see our order status and find it has changed without any explanation.

So, Amazon retail partner, thanks for the status update, but maybe next time it would serve us both better, and save you a trip to the warehouse with your digital camera, to just let me know ahead of time!

I just read this fascinating yet painful attempt by CNet journalist Ina Fried to extract any information whatsoever about the next consumer version of Windows from Microsoft’s new Senior Vice President of Windows Engineering, Steven Sinofsky (who just took over from Jim Allchin). If you don’t feel like reading six pages of a Microsoft executive saying absolutely nothing, here’s Fried’s executive summary.

And here is my executive summary:

We’ve heard absolutely nothing about Windows 7 lately. What can you tell us?
It will have Internet Explorer 8. And we’re working with partners.

Apple has been eating your lunch lately with their anti-Vista marketing in the consumer space. How are you going to respond?
We’re working with partners.

We’ve heard some interesting information about the new “MinWin” kernel that will go into Windows 7; can you expand on that?
No, that’s wrong. It will have the Vista kernel. And we’re working with partners.

So what do you see as the problem with Vista’s execution?
I’d rather not dwell on the past.

OK, you mentioned that Windows 7 will build on top of the work that went into Windows Server 2008; does that mean it too will be more of a modular design?
I’d rather not talk about the future.

Don’t you think being tight-lipped about your future OS is going to hurt you?
We’re working with partners.

Ouch! This interview speaks volumes about Microsoft’s corporate mentality. It’s gonna take a lot more than a hip new ad campaign to fix that.

So after I decided to preview Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04 for my switch to desktop Linux, I spent the rest of the week and weekend playing with both. I really wanted to like Fedora better, since I’ve always been a Red Hat user (I run CentOS on all my servers) and thus more comfortable with that platform.

However, it seems I have now drunk the Ubuntu Kool-Aid. I have to admit it is very pleasing to use, and the Synaptic software manager is so simple and straightforward that it might even have me forgoing the command line for installing software! (Although I was very impressed with their bash hook which suggests a software package to install if you try typing a command that doesn’t exist. I typed svn --version and it suggested I install the subversion package… very neat trick!)

Also, Fedora 9 uses such a new version of the X server that NVidia doesn’t have optimized 3D drivers for it yet. (Of course, the fact that NVidia doesn’t release open-source optimized drivers is a big problem, so I hope ATI soon comes through on their promise to do just that, so I can get rid of the NVidia card). Plus, their new, integrated software install/update tool, while offering lots of promise, was very disappointing. It timed out for 10-20 seconds with almost each mouse click while it “refreshed repository data” or something, and even then it never seemed to work just right.

Speaking of accelerated 3D, Ubuntu’s “Full Desktop Effects” mode (using Compiz) certainly lives up to its hype. It’s amazing how far a healthy dash of eye candy can go towards making a system more enjoyable and usable. (Since I couldn’t get optimized drivers working in Fedora, I couldn’t try Compiz on it).

Ubuntu also seems to have a much better community around it. I haven’t run into a single issue yet that I couldn’t find an answer for by searching their forums, and their users are very helpful without the slightest bit of elitism.

I tried Fedora+KDE and just didn’t like it at all. I still need to try Ubuntu+KDE (Kubuntu), but I’m pretty sure I’ll just stick with Gnome.

Another week or so of playing around, and I should be ready to take the plunge!

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has just announced that they are preparing a “Netbook Remix” of Ubuntu especially made for subnoteboks such as the Eee PC I just bought! They are working with Intel, which are the ones who came up with the term “Netbook” to describe that segment.

This is great news, although not very surprising. Since Ubuntu is probably the first distro that people think of for consumer-oriented PCs, this is a very smart segment for them to target due to its explosive growth in the past year.

Hopefully it will be more than just a few UI changes to target smaller screens, but will also contain battery-saving enhancements to the rest of the system (such as minimizing disk usage, more aggressive CPU throttling when necessary, etc.)

I’ve been looking to buy a subnotebook lately. Since this is such a new market segment, the technology in this area is changing rapidly, which means it’s tempting to keep “waiting for the next big thing”. This segment was dominated in the last year (and arguably brought to the mainstream by) the Asus Eee PC, which recently launched a version with a bigger 8.9″ screen and 1024×600 native resolution.

Although I wanted to get the new Eee, a few things held me back at first. I was really looking forward to the MSI Wind, with its battery-saving new Intel Atom CPU and LED backlighting. But when I read about its long-awaited specs, I found that the Linux version would be woefully crippled with less RAM, and that the U.S. version would be available only with a 10-inch screen, which unfortunately is the same resolution (1024×600) as the smaller screen. Plus, it has a traditional hard drive rather than solid-state.

I appreciated the fact that Asus fully embraced Linux from the get-go with the Eee, even though they unfortunately chose the patent-license-encumbered Xandros distribution. So I was looking forward to see which distro MSI would choose for the wind, hoping for Ubuntu or Fedora. No dice — they chose SuSE, another distro from a vendor that entered into a licensing deal with Microsoft.

And thus the first test of my open-source pledge: do I wait even longer to see if someone would come out with a completely Microsoft-free product, or do I let practicality prevail and get what’s available today? I chose the latter. At least I can feel good about not paying actual money for Windows.

So I ordered the 8.9″ Linux Eee PC from Amazon today. I’m really looking forward to giving it a whirl.

I recently had an epiphany regarding my use of technology. I’ve known for quite a while that something about Apple makes me uncomfortable, so I’ve stayed far away from iGizmos. Yes, they are gorgeous devices that “just work” out of the box. Everything about them, from their incredibly intuitive user interface to their solid construction to their sleek look and feel, has been carefully and thoughtfully engineered down to the last tiny detail.

But Steve Jobs and the Apple corporate culture just make me nervous. Their enthusiastic support of DRM and their attempts to close and control all aspects of their devices and codecs just rubs me the wrong way. They remind me of Microsoft in the mid-90’s. I was an avid supporter of Internet Explorer back then, because it really was the best browser at the time. Little did I know that Microsoft would use IE to bring progress on the Internet to a screeching halt for five years, while negligently (although inadvertently) paving the road for a mono-cultural, horribly broken, insecure technology stack that allowed malware and identity-stealing black-market botnets to flourish.

I look at what Apple is doing these days, and it’s not pretty: locking millions of music fans into iTunes; pushing their subpar Safari browser on Windows users who mistakenly trust their auto-update software; vainly attempting to drive streaming media to their crappy Quicktime software that nags me every time I use it. So I refuse to take the shiny bait. No iPod, no iPhone, no iTunes for me. I’ll certainly test my websites in Safari but not actually use it.

Last year when it was time to upgrade my cell phone, the iPhone had recently been released, but those uneasy feelings kept me away. So I got an AT&T 8525 (a rebranded HTC Hermes) with Windows Mobile 5 (with free upgrade to 6 when it came out). I’m still no Microsoft fan, but they have been doing much better lately with the toned-down anti-open rhetoric and a renewed focus on security. I rather enjoy coding in .NET, and the thought of writing a few .NET Compact apps was appealing. The phone itself is rather clunky, but no big deal.

I’m still mostly pleased with the phone, but Windows Mobile is simply atrocious. It’s everything the iPhone isn’t. The apps are poorly integrated, it’s difficult to do many tasks w/o the stylus, apps randomly lose focus or disappear, and it starts crashing after a few days without a reboot. Of course, it’s my own fault: why did I expect anything more from something branded as Windows?

Even though Microsoft may be a slightly better corporate citizen in the technology world (of course that bar was set pretty low), they are a perpetual also-ran these days, especially in the consumer space. They are always a day late and a dollar short, following everyone else instead of innovating. Browsing the web on Pocket IE is a downright miserable experience, and it hasn’t changed in years. Again, did I really expect differently? I won’t even get started on Vista.

So it occurred to me that, even though I’ve been a huge proponent of open source and open standards for years, I rarely put my money where my mouth is. I’ve run Linux on my home server for the past decade but still use Windows for my desktop. I’ve always found an excuse to not make the switch. There’s always that one Windows-only program I feel I couldn’t do without, whether it’s Visual Studio 2005/8, TortoiseSVN, BirdieSync, games, whatever.

Earlier this week I downloaded Fedora Core 9 and created a bootable Live USB stick to give it a try. I booted my desktop with it, and everything just worked. My Turtle Beach DDL sound card, my widescreen 20″ monitor at native resolution, even the Bluetooth dongle I had forgotten was plugged in! This was the first time using any Linux distro where I didn’t have to manually edit my X.org settings to get my monitor to work at its best resolution and color depth.

So I’ve been on the fence the past few days on whether to take the Linux desktop plunge for good. Then, as I was browsing the web and reading email under Windows, the Explorer shell decided to freeze up on me. Which meant everything else froze, even though “run each Explorer instance in a separate process” (which I’ve long known has pretty much no actual impact) is checked in my prefs. I couldn’t even start Task Manager to kill it, not even from the CTRL+ALT+DELETE screen. (Of course, a Windows session has only about a 10% chance of successfully recovering from a terminated Explorer shell anyway, but there’s always hope!)

It was a sign from the gods! For all the FUD surrounding the usability of Linux as an everyday OS, Windows is no better. Linux, here I come. I’ll spend a bit of time deciding on Fedora vs. Ubuntu, Gnome vs. KDE, and the like, then I’m in for good. I sure will miss TortoiseSVN, but I’m sure I’ll find something almost as good. Not sure what I’ll do about Visual Studio, maybe just not run it or maybe dual-boot. I’ll have to figure out a way to run BirdieSync until I get a new phone.

And that brings me to gadgets. For all future electronics purchases, I hereby pledge to:

• put real openness near the top of my criteria list. I’m not gonna go RMS and insist that everything I use is pure 100% open and libre — I’m afraid that’s just not practical yet — but where an open or mostly open alternative is viable, I will choose one.
• refuse to pay a single cent, when possible, towards any technology or device that is used to perpetuate DRM (again, there are sadly cases where this just isn’t possible; for example all DVDs and players contain DRM).
• avoid paying the Microsoft Tax (or Apple tax) wherever possible. I should not be giving my money to companies that actively thwart and subvert open standards. In a way, I’m grateful to Microsoft for their recent despicable actions surrounding the OOXML “standardization process” (I use that term lightly), because it helped refocus my perception of them as an anti-open company.
• actively support companies that do support open source and open standards, both with my voice and with my wallet.

Only by actively supporting openness can we ensure that future technology will not be controlled by any one company, and that we will always be free to choose how we use it. I realize now that I’ve been part of the problem for too long, and I need to fix that. I will therefore look through the lens of openness to make all future technology purchases, and let open technologies be as big a part of my everyday life as possible.

Just spent a bit reading up some more on Google’s upcoming Android platform and reading up on the SDK. Looks really impressive; I can’t wait for some hardware to be available.

When I first heard that it would be Java based, I was very skeptical, due to the nightmare that is developing or running 3rd party JME “midlets” on phones today. However, in a brilliant move to bypass Sun’s ridiculous MIDP model and stifling licensing, Google has used Java’s syntax without the JVM: Android apps will run instead on the Dalvik virtual machine, and all apps will have equal access to the device just like the “default” apps!

To put it succinctly:

Screw the iPhone and screw Java ME with all its profiles, midlets and the stupid requirement to crypto-sign your application to run on your own phone: I can hardly wait to get my hands on hardware that can run Android… and if they can’t support multi-touch out of the box because Apple owns patents on it, I’ll download the patch that enables it from a country where such nonsense doesn’t apply.

In fact, I’m so inspired by what Google is doing here that I’m ready to do something I should have done long ago: pledge to place openness as criteria #1 when making any further technology purchases, or at least when it’s remotely possible to do so. That means no more Windows Mobile, no iPhone or iPod or iAnything, and by this time next year at least my main home PC will be running Linux. More on that soon…