Is the time approaching when Linux has standards for fonts, color management, printing, etc.?

What’s all this then?

• Fonts: Freetype
• Color Manaegment: OpenIcc
• Printing: CUPS

Is the time approaching when Linux has standard APIs beyond POSIX? (in other words: Linux is just the kernel, it’s all the other stuff that makes it useful. But all that other stuff varies from distribution to distribution.)

Hm, I count over 30 at Freedesktop.org, and don’t forget the work that is coming out of the Portland Project.

Is the time approaching when Linux has standards for a GUI? (anything based on X WIndows does not qualify… Been there, bought the T-shirt, still got the books, but ain’t goin back)

Sorry guys! You won’t see photoshop on linux until the Y Window System hits 1.0!

A few years ago there was this big movement started by a lot of people people who didn’t know what the hell they were talking about (me included, I admit) spreading the word that X windows had to go. Projects like Y and PicoGUI showed up and quickly faded away into vaporware.

Fortunately, some people stayed on course and forked the horribly mislead XFree86 project creating Xorg, which quickly reduced XFree86 into nothing more than a terrible repressed memory. Since then, the code has been refactored, and it is now much easier for the Xorg project to release updates (an updated driver doesn’t require you to rebuild the entire tree), and (they claim) easier for new developers to get involved.

More important to most users is of course all the eye-candy that X now supports thanks to the Xgl and AIGLX projects. Developers were able to implement effects that make both OSX and Vista feel old-fashioned — without major architectural changes. Remember that Vista has a completely new driver model.

And I have to throw this in .. X provides network transparency, meaning that an application can execute on one system but be displayed on another. This is very useful when combined with SSH (look up the “X11 Forwarding” section in the ssh man page), and has made projects like LTSP possible – something that has proved to be extremely valuable in the third world, where many new computers for a school is not financially feasible.

Like everything, X it has it’s downsides. But I think it’s future is bright, and there’s no reason to start over now.

Is the time approaching when Linux has real desktop applications and not just command line apps, one-off ports and server products?

Wow, nobody is going to take offense to this…

Some of my favorites:

• OpenOffice
• Firefox
• F-Spot
• Tomboy
• Liferea
• Azureus

And don’t forget…

• The 1500+ applications at GnomeFiles.org
• Adobe’s own Reader, which had an “overwhelming response from customers” when the version 7 beta for linux was launched

And most importantly: is the time approaching when Linux desktop users are willing to pay for commercial software?

Yes, here are a few examples:

• From a novell press release:
  “During the third fiscal quarter 2006, Novell reported $12 million of revenue from Linux* Platform Products, up 30% year-over-year.”
• I wasn’t able to find any numbers, but I know that many people have puchased VMware Workstation for linux
• Both CodeWeavers and Transgaming sell products that make it possible for users to run commercial windows software on Linux. C’mon guys, it’s not all piracy. People are buying stuff here.

Sure, there are people will will only use software that is both free as in beer and freedom, but there is a growing number of people who are just fed up with windows, and want something else, wither it be completely “free” or not.

Let me know when you have a serious answer.

Will do.

Certainly not all of the standards/specifications listed above at completely mature as of yet, but I think that seeing this reaction from someone at Adobe very clearly outlines the difference between traditional proprietary software companies and open-source friendly companies.

This developer claims that until they feel that the linux platform meets 101% of their requirements, they wont even consider porting Photoshop to linux. End of story. Forget what the market might say in a few years (I personally think the linux desktop will continue to gain marketshare at a faster rate than ever before), it still wont be ready!

In contrast, companies that develop open-source software are willing to contribute to the platform, and help get it ready for their application, and at the same time, improving it for everyone.

A few examples:

• Google contracted CodeWeavers to get Picasa running under WINE. This doesn’t mean that CodeWeavers hacked Picasa to death so it would work, but rather they fixed 255 bugs in WINE, all of which clearly benefit the community at large, as well as any other companies that might want to use WINE to bring their windows software to linux.
• Fluendo has contributed a lot of work to the Gstreamer project – which is very bleeding edge – and based several commercial products around it
• Imendio (GTK on OSX) and VMware (libview) contribute to the GTK and GNOME projects.

A friend of mine said “it’s like this guy is living 5-10 years ago”. So, in conclusion, Chris, I have to ask you….

Fitzgibbons [the defending lawyer] said in July that plea negotiations had broken off because prosecutors insisted on prison time, which he said would be too dangerous for someone as attractive as Lafave.

I really hope that didn’t have anything to do with the judge’s desicion… would be a very sad day for the judicial system.

And you’ve really gotta wonder about some of these cases… I know the kid is 14 and all… but did anyone actually ask his opinion on what happened? Did this incedent actually do more pshycological harm to anyone other than ruining an (already broken) marrage and make someone look like a pervert?Does this even effect the sentance? I’m not condoning having an affair with someone who is possibly young enough to be your son (although not in this case…25-14=11…you get the point)… I think anyone who does have one is a pretty fucked up person…but I do wonder if some of these sex-related laws (such as strip club restrictions) are in place to serve as an example to the rest of society of what the lawmakers think is “right” or “moral” rather than actually keep people safe.

Before going into any detail, I feel like I need to re-state this fact in bold text because it appears to be something that people forget: LINUX IS NOT WINDOWS OR OSX, AND OSX AND WINDOWS ARE NOT LINUX.

Everybody has their way of doing things, and I’ve never thought that limiting choice is a good thing. If Linux worked just the same as OSX or Windows most people would have no reason to concider using it (guys, when it comes down to it, cost does not matter as much as you might think. Most people buy a pre-built computer from someone line dell these days which comes pre-loaded with an operating system).

If you like windows or osx, don’t complain about linux not being the same, keep using your current operating system. We are happy you found a way to be productive on your computer.

His main complaints that stood out to me – and what I am going to focus on in this blog entry – are first that it is too difficult to install and manage software in linux, and second that the linux filesystem layout is broken.

He gives OSX’s AppFolders as an example and says that this is the way to go (in linux we would compile each application into it’s own prefix).

To be honest, I used to think the same way. But I have come to the conclusion that this is really just completly stupid. In windows we have the registry as the single location for all system configuration, in linux we have /etc. This rocks for backups and deployment, etc. The filesystem layout isn’t what’s broken, what’s broken is that people are trying to maintain their linux systems as if they were windows/osx.

I completly agree: It is currently too complicated to manage software for most people. However, I do not think we need to try to completly redesign the filesystem to fix this.

The main problem is that users who migrate from windows to linux (or perhaps from OSX as well) are used to going through the following process when they want to install new software:

1. Find the vendor website (via google or whatever)
2. Find the download link
3. Wait for it to download
4. Navigate to where it was downloaded to
5. Open the installer
6. Wait for the application to install

If a user tries to do this same process in linux they will quickly discover how impossible this is in most cases.

Obviously in linux the process is quite different.

1. Open the package manager
2. Search for the application you wish to install
3. Mark it for installation and click go

Now, in my opinion this is a much more efficiant way of installing software, and generally if I demonstrate this to a windows user they agree. In general I would try to keep my pesonal feelings out of this sort of thing, but the reason I bring it up is because this is how the rest of the linux community feels as well, and I can’t see anyone actually be willing to change (ever seen GoboLinux? what a train wreck that thing is..).

The problem lies in the fact that the linux/package-manager method of installing software is not something new users are able to discover on their own right now. Here are what I think might be a few of the reasons:

• “Package Manager” means nothing to most people
• People are just straight up used to the windows method of installing software and don’t think that there might be another way

What if we did something like this:

While I would love to say that synaptic would be the right choice for this, I’m not sure of it. What we want is something that looks inviting to new users, not daunting. Perhaps a web interface since most users are used to installing software from the web. UPDATE: Wow, looks like this was already done! :)

Now, in additon to this – here’s an idea: What if we came up with a nice freedesktop.org-approved, distro-independent way for websites to kick off a software installation.

What if every distribution registered a URL handler such as "install://gaim?version=1.2" to install things from the repository. Or perhaps better yet if we had a generic “package description” file format that listed the URL to rpms/dpkgs/tgz/etc for every given distro, and each distro would parse this file and pick out and install the appropriate one. This might allow us to get the best of both worlds – keep our package management and filesystem just how it is and don’t require users to change their ways (this generic file/url would be on a download page right next to the windows exe installer).

I’m really just throwing ideas out here, I’m not saying this is better than something like AutoPackage (which I hear either can or will soon be able to integrate into the local package management system).

I really look forward to hearing people’s opinion on all this. If you think I might be onto something, please post your thoughts. Or if you agree with “batman” and think i’m a completly insane fool who shouldn’t be allowed to blog anymore, please let me know that too.

Let’s make linux rock… just the way it is.

When I got back home and turned the server back on it decided to turn it’s self back off half way through booting up. I tried turning it back on again and it just sort of sat there. The monitor kept going back and forth between on and standby, which is something I’ve never actually seen before. Since any email sent to me the entire day was already sitting nowhere in other people’s mailqs, and since I plan to reformat that box sometime soon anyway, I got my email migrated off of there onto the same server as this site, running Hula. It’s working great, I look forward to watching this project as it continues to mature.

Long story short the power supply in there was a piece of garbage and finally gave up. I stuck a new power supply in and all was well. I had suspected that the power supply might be bad a few months ago but never remembered to do anything about it…let this be a lesson I suppose, fortunetly no data was lost…this time.

After putting in the new power supply in the computer booted directly into the BIOS and displayed this message, which is also something I have never seen before, but found amusing. If the bad power supply managed to throw the bios off like that I think it’s fairly lucky that everything else still works (as far as I can tell of course). At least there isn’t anything of importance on there anymore.

Well that’s all about that. Anyone in the seattle area don’t forget that the Seattle Mono User’s Group (yes, SMUG) is holding a meeting on sunday. More information here.

Oh, and today (crap, yesterday!) was April fool’s. My favorite internet joke has to have been the swap of http://planet.gnome.org/ with http://www.planetkde.org/, which had me laughing out loud when I first came across that, followed by the new Ubuntu Hoary splash screen. I was fortunate enough to come across both of these on my own rather than reading about them online first. Offline the best has to be the giant penguin at a Tokyo zoo. The photo is just priceless.

Wow that was way too long. I’ll try to resume my shorter less pointless entries soon… maybe I should have included a bunch of angst and turned it into a full fledged april-fools joke? There’s always next year… =)

Examples:

(21:39:47) Someone: for my site i can’t get mono to work as my handler for my site i put the handler line in the apache2.conf but it isn’t working

(18:22:24) Someone: i still cant change my screen resolution
(18:22:49) Eric: what video driver are you using
(18:22:58) Someone: the one it installed

Guys, seriously. I’m not trying to be an asshole, but what do you expect from me? Telling me that something “doesn’t work” is completly worthless.

I’ve gotten so fed up with answering questions like these that I have come up with a list of things to think about when asking for help on the internet. I hope this can be useful to others as well.

How to ask for help on the internet without getting yelled at

1. ASK THE QUESTION

   (It’s amazing how many people get this one wrong)

   WRONG: “I have a question about mono.”

   This is very simple, fellows. TEACH US TELEPATHY, OR ASK THE FUCKING QUESTION.
   
   

2. Explain what it is you are trying to acomplish:
   
   WRONG: “I am trying to set up mod_cgi with apache.”

   This is worthless because it doesn’t give the person you are asking any background information. You could be approacing your problem with the wrong solution.

   CORRECT: “I am trying to set up a WordPress blog using apache and mod_cgi.”

   Since our “expert” in this case now knows what your goal is, they can say WordPress is a PHP application, you need to install mod_php instead. This will save a lot of everyone’s time.
   
   

3. Explain what the error message is:

   WRONG: “I am trying to set up samba so I can transfer files to my linux server and it doesn’t work.”

   There are about 40,000 (at least) things that can go wrong with a samba installation. Being this vague is worthless.

   CORRECT: “I am trying to set up samba and I when I try to connect using windows it tells me that my username or password is incorrect, but I KNOW that I am entering the correct password!”

   The expert in this case could now very simply tell the person asking the question that they need to run smbpasswd -a because by default samba has it’s own user database, or re-configure pam so it does direct UNIX authentication.
   
   

4. Lookup what the error means first:

   WRONG: “I am getting an ‘Error 403′ when I try to access my website, what does this mean?!”

   Nothing pisses someone off more than someone using them as their reference manual. Look up what an error means BEFORE asking for help with it. Understanding the error might be even enough to fix the problem.

   CORRECT: “I am getting an ‘Error 403′ when I try to access my website, but I have apache set to ‘Allow From All’! What else could be causing this to deny access?”

   Obviously the user probably has their directory permissions set too restrictive preveting the webserver from accessing it.
   
   

5. Explain what you expected to happen instead of the error:

   WRONG: “I set up apache but when I visit my site I get a 404 error.”

   You did? Really? Oh noes not the dreaded 404!

   CORRECT: “I set up apache but when I visit my site I get a 404 error instead of my website. I put my index.html document in /etc/apache2/ but it’s not working!”

   Obviously the user put their web content in the wrong directory. Hopefully, however, if the user followed the preveous item (lookup the error message first) they would be able to provide a slightly more useful description of their problem than this.
   
   

6. Check any log files FIRST

   If something isn’t working READ THE LOG FILES FIRST. If the log files arent helpful enough figure out how to increase the log level and try again. You might be impressed by how helpful the logs can be.
   
   

7. Read the fucking man page before asking for help (RTFM)

   WRONG: “Where does samba write it’s log files to?”

   This is answered in the man page! There’s really no correct way to say this one. This should be your though proccess with almost all software: “man samba”. Okay, hm, a list of other things. What’s this smb.conf man page they keep bringing up, the log file is probably a configuration setting right? Let’s check that out… “man smb.conf” …hm… lots of stuff here. Let’s search for “log file”, oh, there it is! …etc..
   
   

8. This one needs no further explination:

   
   

Last night right as I was about to turn off my computer a friend of mine sent me a link to a video of the to “Monday Night Football” on ABC. Some lady “wearing” nothing but a towel basically convinvced some football player to go skip the game and go have sex with her instead. My reaction to it was “oh, that was kinda stupid” after which I promptly went to sleep completly forgetting all about it.

Today I noticed an article on the front page of MSNBC.COM: Owens apologizes for racy MNF skit

Oh great, I thought, I know exactly what this must be about.

Why do people feel the need to complain about everything? Is it genetic? Do they have some sort of disease preventing them from shutting the fuck up? Do they even hear themselfs talking?

People complaining about a “sexual” scene before a TV show where men pound the shit out of each other while at the same time trying to run a ball from one end of a field to another is just completly stupid. So it’s totally OK with everyone to see someone loose a few teeth or blacken a few eyes, but as soon as we see a woman’s sholders CUT THE BROADCAST!!!! BURN ABC DOWN!!! REVOLUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you havent seen episode 801 of South Park – “Good Times With Weapons” – go download it, as they do a great gob (as usual) of puting this into perspective.

It also really irritates me that this guy apologized. I would have reacted with something more along the lines of “If you don’t like it, change the channel, get over yourself.”.

Naturally it gets worse. Someone is also claiming that the intro was racist because it had a black man and a white woman. If you ask me, calling tihs racist is more racist than the intro it’s self! It never at one point even occured to me that someone might look at this differently because they are of a different race until seeing that article. The guy who brought this up says that the video stereotypes black men as sexual preditors. HUH? You are trying to tell me that you put a white guy next to a half naked blonde woman and he is going to run away in fright? Seriously people, wake up (and go watch episode 408 of South Park which puts this into perspective :).

At least the FCC is right in their place – standing right next to all the other overractive prunes.

So I needed to install Windows. I wasn’t happy about it, in fact I was nearly in tears but it had to be done no thanks to a software company finally releasing a highly anticipated game a year late (I hadn’t switched to Linux when this was first supposed to come out…).

I’ll describe my disk configuration first:

• SATA Channel #1: One partition – Linux boot drive (Grub is here)
• IDE Channel #2: Unallocated space at the end of the drive, reserved for windows

Seems simple enough, no? So I load up the windows setup, cringing at first sight of the horrid blue installer, and was slightly less than thrilled to be presented with an error when I attempted to install Windows to a partition I created in the empty space.

After a more careful examination of the error I realized that it was complaining about being unable to write to the MBR of the FIRST IDE DRIVE in the system, even though I had clearly told it to install to the second. Apparently it is beyond Microsoft’s ability to comprehend someone not loading Windows first thing on their computer.

I ended up unplugging my first IDE drive and reconnecting the drive I wanted to use as primary (changing the jumpers and whatnot). I also changed my BIOS to boot IDE before SATA. This made windows happy and it installed sucessfully. Unfortunetly I’m still not sure how to feel about that…

Naturally my problems didnt stop there. Once I had windows working I reconnected my hard drives how they were and switched the boot order back, loaded linux, and added a section to my grub.conf to load Windows.

I rebooted, selected “Windows XP”, and was greeted with a lovely error:

A Disk Read Error Occured.
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart

Now I knew that the Windows install worked because I had just booted it, so I figured it had to be something with how grub was calling it. After trying various things with no sucess I installed a second copy of grub onto the same harddrive that windows is located on, changed my BIOS to boot from IDE instead of SATA, and was very happy (in that strange sort of way) to see the Windows XP splash screen!

$ sudo grub-install --root-directory=/Files2/boot /dev/hdd

So it seems that the windows boot loaded (NTLDR) was unable to comprehend being loaded by grub from a different hard drive, or something. I have no problem loading my linux install from it. There might be a grub bug here but it’s hard to say, and I’d rather blaim Windows anyway :)

The latest issue of WIRED came with a CD with 16 songs licensed under a new set of licences from creativecommons that permits you to rip, sample, mash, and share.

Unfortunetly the question I quickly asked myself was “Why would I want to?” because most of the songs on the CD are terrible. There’s some new song from the Beastie Boys called “Now Get Busy” which is one of the worst pieces of audio (I refuse to call it music) I have heard in recent memory, and unfortunetly most of the other songs on the CD are not much different.

Of all the songs Dan the Automator – Relaxation Spa Treatment is my favorite, although it’s too slow to listen to too often. I like the music of The Rapture – Sister Saviour (Blackstrobe Remix) but the lyrics totally ruin it.

All that said I think it’s great that people are spreading the word about open music, and I hope this will inspire some talented artists to release some as well.

• More info (including a full track list) avaliable at http://creativecommons.org/wired/

School District Bans Halloween


PUYALLUP – A local school district is banning Halloween parties because children dressed up as witches might be offensive to real witches.

Apparently our concept of “witches” comes from a religion called “Wiccan“. The Wiccans are upset because they claim that people dressing up as witches is not respectfull to their religion.

“I do lots of things that are not revolving around wearing a black outfit and stirring a cauldron,” said Wiccan Priestess Cheryl Sulyma-Masson in an interview with ABC News where she explained that Wiccans (or Pagan Clergy) celebrate nature, not Satan.

This is completly absurd. Holloween is a day where kids get to have fun with their friends dressing up and eating candy. Not a single person dressess up as a witch to offend someone. I mean, have NEVER heard of this religion before and I doubt most people have. For these people to speak out all of a sudden against the holiday is ridiculus, and is only going to make people think “WHAA?? This person actually thinks they are a witch? Well I wasn’t planning to dress up this year but anything to get these freaks aggrevated will make my day!”.

And anyway, if our concept of witches is so different from these Wiccan types, why should they even bother to care? We won’t bother them if they don’t bother us, and look who spoke out first. Religion and schools are supposed to be seporate. I dont see why religious protest always gets to be an exception to the rule.

“Yeah it does bother me because I would really like to go around and dress up,” said Maplewood 6th grader Grace Macon.

Leave it to religion to ruin an entire school of kid’s day.