Piestar

Did you hear about the new approaching paradigm in computing technology?  It’s all about the thin client cloud computing.  I am getting the feeling we’ve been here before.

It’s really simple.  Look at the architecture of your average CPU.  As well as the registers you commonly have three levels of cache integrated into the CPU.  Then you have system RAM.  If performance is a concern the aim should be to have to use system RAM as little as possible, and to never touch the hard drive if it can be avoided.  It takes about a dozen wasted CPU cycles before the data is fetched from system RAM.  It takes a few million before data is fetched from the HDD.

Yet it’s considered a revolutionary idea to stick everything on the network and deal with utterly horrible latencies plus being at the mercy of your internet connection.  You certainly won’t be able to use ChromeOS as proposed on a train or plane.

Engineers have been fighting latency problems for decades with all sorts of architectural inventions such as on chip memory controllers, mad sized caches, ramdisks etc.  Yet software companies always have this fascination with sticking half your computer in a datacentre in Mumbai.  It makes no logical sense.

I believe the technical term for all this ‘thin client’ mania is a ‘Solution seeking a problem’.

The Inner Platform Effect

ChromeOS also looks to me to be yet another example of the Inner Platform Effect.  “The computer is the browser” is the claim.  You don’t need a complicated OS when all you need is a browser!  But Javascript and XMLHTTPRequest are simply not going to cut it for long.  You’re going to need more advanced languages, better server communication, better graphics libraries (XHTML + CSS is only going to take you so far).  I am sure eventually local app caching (installing) will be introduced and then the aim will be complete – A web browser extended out to be an OS, running on top of an OS.

The problem that should have been solved was the trust issues with app installation on a normal OS.  If you can make sure an app can’t mess with anything it shouldn’t be able to via sandboxing and access control.  It seems to me taking the one advantage web apps have (being unable to mess with the core system) and building a whole OS on top of it is much less sensible than retrofitting that ability onto a normal OS.

Thin Client

Since my main laptop died I have been using my wife’s Samsung NC-10 as my main development machine.  Seriously.  And I haven’t had any issues with it, (except having to press Fn+PgUp/PgDn to get Home/End).  I upgraded the RAM to 2gb (From 512mb) and put Windows 7 on it and unless modern gaming is your aim this will do as a main computer for 99% of people.  And it’s a netbook.  And it cost around £300.

ChromeOS is not going to be out for another year at least.  When it is released I’ll be able to buy (according to Moore’s Law) a new netbook at the same price as this one, but twice as fast.  Google are intent on ignoring this fact, thinking they can sell a range of low-cost, low-powered laptops by making the whole computer a jumped-up web-browser.  The problem is todays low-cost, low-powered netbooks are fast enough to run a full OS, and the ones a year from now are going to be faster than most people’s current computers.

I just really don’t see the public accepting an essentially crippled PC which only runs web-apps, and which only works when you have a network connection, all in the aim of saving a tiny fraction of the cost price of the computer.

Q: But all you’re documents will be automatically backed up to the cloud!
A: Dropbox, or any of a wide range of services can do this.  Plus you get a copy yourself!

Q: But all your apps are available and auto-updated!
A: I think what Google meant to create was Steam for apps.

I have a great idea – it’s called ‘Thin Cupboard Eating’, where instead of wasting space storing things in your house, be it clothes, food or books, instead you save money, buy a smaller house, and simply go to the shops every time you are hungry or want to wear something.  Genius!  Maybe I can sell Google the idea for GoogleHouse!

10 comments

Just thought I’d have another bash at ‘IT News Today’ and point out the obvious bias and dishonesty in the alleged ‘reviews’.  Just to get started here’s the definitions of ‘bias’.

bias
often supporting or opposing a particular person or thing in an unfair way by allowing personal opinions to influence your judgment.

I am going to compare his ‘review’ of Windows 7, with the new review of Mandriva 2010.

It’s fairly obvious his ‘review’ method largely consists of deciding on an outcome, then going on a search for facts that fit this outcome.  For example take these two sections compared side-by-side:

“Mandriva 2010 also sports a great selection of packages. I like how both Konqueror and Firefox are included, so those of you that don’t feel Konqueror can compare to Firefox (like me) will feel right at home. All of the usual KDE applications (such as Dolphin, Kmail, Kopete and others) are included, and even GIMP finds itself in this release.”

Two web browsers and a myriad of other applications all usefully starting with a K.  Great.

“Another problem that Vista had was software bloat. I was very happy to hear around the blogosphere that Microsoft would finally be doing something about this and would stop installing everything AND the kitchen sink by default. Unfortunately, this problem (or tradition) continues in Windows 7 and has not been fixed, despite what any other blog may tell you. From a quick look at Windows 7’s start menu, the following apps were found: Internet Explorer, DVD Maker, Fax and Scan, Media Center, Media Player, XPS Viewer, Sync Center, Sticky Notes, Wordpad, and Remote Assistance.”

So if Linux does it, two web browsers is great.  If Microsoft bundles one, BLOAT!  Who’s betting if MS did strip out everything he’d say ‘no useful apps bundled’.  Fair and Balanced.

Then there is the usual confusing pro-Apple commentary in this:

Windows 7 Premium alone will cost you almost $200 for a retail license, while Linux is completely free and Apple gives away Mac OSX with every Apple computer they sell. Upgrading your Mac to the latest OSX whenever it comes out only costs around $30 the last time I checked.

Newsflash: Apple are charging $30 for the upgrade.  I like how it’s “last time I checked”, despite the fact that Apple have historically charged $120 – the same as Home Premium Upgrade – and are only charging $30 this time because it’s at best an enhanced service pack.

Then the further dishonesty that ‘Apple gives away OSX with every computer’, where in reality the cost is bundled in the price, just like Windows 7 would be on a new computer.  You want the new OS on existing hardware then prepare to pay.  Despite Apple and Microsoft having exactly the same deal with regards to OS sales apart from the one-off $30 SL pricing, he’s somehow twisted it so MS is bad, and Apple are good, despite them doing the same thing.

Needless to say he spends the rest of the review whining about the price, and the fact that it takes 20gb hard drive space, which will give you problems on an early model SSD based netbook, but is fine on absolutely everything else.

Looking at the price for Windows 7 though, lets assume you go for the upgrade at $120, and use your computer for 6 hours a day for 3 years until the next upgrade, you’ll be paying just under 2 cents an hour.  Would you rather pay nothing for an inferior product, or pay for something better?  You’d be unable to make your own mind up though based upon this review as he’s decided for you ‘it’s too expensive’.  Heaven forbid if reviewers reviewed and let the customers decide if the price is too much, rather than spending half the article bashing the fact.

The final score for Windows 7 – 2 out of 5.  The lowest scoring review on his site.  Windows 7 is worse than every other Linux distro that he can run.

The final score for Mandriva 2010 – 5 out of 5.  He couldn’t even find anything wrong with it thus was unable to come up with any cons for the summary.  It’s perfect, apparently.

It’s this simple:  If you cannot separate your bias when reviewing something, you should not review it! It is no different than the racists in America complaining about Obama simply because they don’t like black people, rather than basing their critique on his actions.  And while that example is fairly inflammatory it makes the point – a biased review is only appropriate reading for someone who shares your bias.

If I wrote a review of the Obama administration so far, and was a closet racist, I am sure you would equally think that I was an intellectually dishonest idiot – and you would be correct.  The same applies to the 99% of the population who read such reviews, expecting them to be useful, but in fact they are just lies and propaganda to support an agenda.

The fun result of this is you pretty much cannot trust any information coming from the Linux ‘community’ as intellectual honesty left a long time ago.   I am now unable to know when something actually good comes from the FOSS world as everything is hailed as being fantastic (despite often being just the same old crap polished).

Every point release of Gimp brings the reviewers out of the woodwork to claim how it’s now better than Photoshop.  And when one day it finally is, everyone will still ignore it as there is utterly no way of knowing since you never get any truth.

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OpenOffice Mouse

I’ve been seeing this picture here and there for a while but I just assumed it was a parody.  I really don’t know what to say.  Cramming a whole fricking keyboard onto a mouse and calling it ‘innovation’.  I suppose I should expect this sort of lunacy from the freetards, but they still manage to surprise me.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – “You can’t replace talent with enthusiasm.”

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So it’s been over a decade now since the mp3 format hit it big-time, and I still can’t download any Beatles tracks legally.  That’s fifteen years since the public release of the mp3 format.  To put it in perspective the format is older than a large amount of the people using it.  Yet I can’t listen to The Beatles without having to buy those plastic disks that nobody really has a player for anymore.

People fail to appreciate the impact of the Internet. I liken it in importance to the invention of Movable Type (the Printing Press).  It is one of those discoveries that entirely changes the way our world operates.  I think the slow encroachment of the ‘net, coupled with the original hype and it’s appearance as an entertainment medium has largely hidden this fact – but looking at the evidence it is fairly undeniable.

You can have anything you want delivered to your door in a few days – music, toys, food, furniture, even people.  You can answer any question in a matter of seconds when before it would require a trip to the library.  Want to know the air-speed velocity of laden African Swallow – no problem!  It’s funny how things are taken for granted.  The answer to any question you wish to ask – with the only real limit generally being your ability to understand the solution.  Mass global communication – my crappy blog alone reaches thousands of people – if someone has something to say they can say it, and they don’t need money anymore to make their voice heard.  The Internet has had a significant impact on peoples lives as the lightbulb.

Yet I still can’t actually (legally) get any Beatles recordings on the Internet.  It reminds me of the monks who would laboriously copy the Bible and other tomes, creating beautiful manuscripts of ornate letters and illustrations. They were extremely expensive and rare, but they were art.  They probably could have improved the process, cut corners, sped things up in an attempt to drop the price and increase the availability – but where was the motiviation?

Then (as mentioned) Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, and mass duplication was upon us.  It took only marginally more effort to create 10,000 books as it did 100, and the monks, hand-producing each book with care and attention, were suddenly irrelevant.

Now the music industry is in the same place as the monks of the mid fifteenth century.  They have been in control of defining the terms of the relationship so long that now that it has changed they still have not understood this fact. It has recently been announced that The Beatles will be releasing a plastic green apple with a USB stick inside for the princely sum of £200. Yet if all you want is the music to download to your computer for a reasonable amount of money you are entirely out of luck.

The music industry is still fixated on releasing ‘albums’, of creating ‘limited edition’ things and being choosy on who can download what from where, what devices you can listen to it on and how many times you can play it.  “Sorry, you can’t buy that online, you’re living in the UK.”, and “Sorry, only UK residents can use this service.”  It’s all about controlling distribution to the channels that they are most comfortable with and are the most profitable.  Never mind the fact that the customers have spoken, and that there are pretty much no record shops open anymore, you’ll buy this overpriced crappy USB stick because that’s what we are selling.  Want that acoustic version of that track?  Just get the Japanese single imported.  Want that live version?  Tough – all you’re getting is the one studio version, and you’ll like it!

I am saying all this because recently the “Featured Artist Coalition” in the UK, after what they termed “robust debate” – just as I am sure the foxes have a “robust debate” on exactly how to eat the chicken – decided that they wanted a ‘three strikes’ law to combat ‘pirates’*.  Never mind the fact that to a lot of people the Internet is as vital as electricity and water, never mind that you’d be placing an unelected group of businessmen in charge of extra-judicial punishment of citizens without courts or appeal, never mind the other businesses that would be collateral damage as this unelected group dished out their revenge – their business model is suffering so they need to put the blame somewhere.

The concept is very, very, simple.  Give people what they want, in a format that they want, at a price they are willing to pay and they will come to you.  Creating paranoid, locked down, untransferable and arcane systems where you provide a limited product in an unpalatable or annoying format then expect people to either pirate, or just plain not buy.

Oh, and considering that a movie soundtrack, which probably cost ~£50,000 at most to produce costs more than the DVD of the film, which probably cost ~£50,000,000 to produce it’s unsurprising that people find music too expensive.

* They apparently don’t want people cut off, just limited to 56kbps.  Which ironically at that speed just about the only thing you can do is pirate music.  I don’t think they had a single technical person at this “robust debate” of theirs.

3 comments

So another six months and another Ubuntu disaster has been released.  So you, Ubuntu users, now have four choices:

1. Perform an in-place upgrade with the real chance it’ll totally wreck your system.
2. Perform a clean upgrade and have to reinstall everything and set it all up again.
3. Download the LTS for three years of legacy apps and packages.
4. Don’t do anything and live with an unsupported OS with legacy apps and packages.

The ridiculous thing is if you want to do something even as simple as upgrade Firefox to the latest version you must upgrade your whole OS.

If I wanted a new toaster I wouldn’t buy a new house.  If I wanted to upgrade the CD player in my car I wouldn’t buy a new car.  Yet why is acceptable to be forced to upgrade your whole OS to get new software?  This hasn’t been the case in my experience of the whole history of IT – barring major version jumps – yet nobody ever seems to mention this is a bad thing.  If I was ‘converted’ to Ubuntu when it was released – and the first version I used was Warty – I would be on my eleventh re-install.

For some reason though it seems Linux developers have this fascination with solving things at entirely the wrong level.  Applications are something you add to the OS – they are not an integral part (or shouldn’t be).  Yet 99% of the distro cruft out there is just a forked version of another forked version of some random distro with some different apps.  99% of the ‘buntu’s are exactly the same – Ubuntu Christian Edition, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio etc.  They are, at best, a theme pack and a few apps yet you have to download and install a whole new OS, and instead of only spending time on the things that are necessary you now have to support a whole new OS.

Ultimately there are only six or so ‘required’ distros:

• Gnome Desktop
• KDE Desktop
• Old KDE Desktop (as the new one is still Alpha)
• X-less server
• Server with X
• Low hdd/ram/cpu version

PCLinuxOS, Mint, Mepis, Fedora, all the ‘buntu’s, Mandrake**, OpenSUSE, CentOS, gOS etc etc all have exactly the same target audience and mission statement.  They are all either KDE or Gnome with the usual apps and no real tangible differences except having customised key systems (installers, filesystems, config methods).  Linux advocates bleat on all the time about how Microsoft “doesn’t follow standards” yet each main distro has a proprietary software format which doesn’t work on other versions.  It’s ludicrous.  The whole point of standards is interoperability, yet Linux distros cant even standardise among themselves!

Another example is drivers in the kernel.  If I want to get a new driver for Windows (or OSX) I simply download and install it, which is usually a very easy process.  If you want a new driver for Linux you have to upgrade your whole kernel or OS.

It gets even more ridiculous when the ‘Linux is just a kernel’ crowd pipe up (as they inevitably do) as if that is the case surely Gnome is just another app, and it can be upgraded and replaced without requiring a whole new OS just to add a new notifications area.  Microsoft has been bashed daily for years for tying IE into Windows, yet in Linux just about everything is tied to the OS.

Then lets look at the repository.  A centralised storage point of tens of thousands of apps, which need to be updated and kept current, and are only relevant to the distro that uses it.  It’s ridiculous.

Think of the cumulative man-hours wasted by unnecessarily supporting thousands of distro’s that do pretty much the same thing in parallel.  Imagine what could be done with the time freed up by not having hundreds of lists of tens of thousands of bits of software and what great things could be done with that time?

On OSX and Windows these things are simply not necessary.  Software comes as an extra, supplied by the very people that make it, with the bonus that OS maker doesn’t have to waste time supporting it and you get updates when they are actually released.  Same with drivers – if Foocorp wants to release a widget they don’t have to involve anyone* if they don’t want to.

Correct development practices require writing modular, self contained, block of code.  The reason you don’t write sprawling 1000+ line functions is that when you do you risk causing a problem somewhere else.  Keeping everything self contained means that unless you actually fiddled with it directly it will continue to work.  I have libraries I use that I wrote years ago that I have not looked at the code in equally as long.  It’s self contained and the only thing I need to know is the interface – which is constant.

Driver code should be self contained.  It should use a stable ABI so that once the driver is written for a major kernel version it should just ‘work’.  Software should be as self contained as possible, relying on a stable API to access system functions.  At no point should the OS designers have to care what the driver or software code is.  It shouldn’t even be necessary to look at it.  Yet when MS released driver code for Linux there was a huge outcry that it didn’t follow coding standards etc and it appeared to be impossible to just compile it, yet I would put money on the fact that Windows and OSX driver code follows their respective OS’s coding standards without issue.

The very fact that a kernel update can break previous drivers is a sign that something is wrong.  The fact that it appears to be impossible to simply install some software like you would on any other OS without having to deal with a mess of dependancies and problems to the point that you are required to update your whole OS is not just ‘another way of doing it’.  It’s stupid.

It would be interesting to work out what percentage of the Linux development community is engaged in these pointless make-work tasks that shouldn’t even exist in the first place.  Between that and reinventing the wheel (Hello ALSA, Pulse Audio, Gnote etc) It’s no wonder nothing ever seems to get done.

* Microsoft do like to sign drivers for stability reasons, but it’s not mandatory, just advisable.

** To me it will always be Mandrake.  Mandriva sounds like gay slang.

10 comments

Apparently there are some major problems with the new Ubuntu release.  Looking at the Slashdot thread relating to The Register Article in which half the posts are people with problems, and the other half are saying WorksForMe(tm). (so predictable).

“Only around 10 per cent of those upgrading or installing reported a completely flawless experience.”

Wow a 10% success rate! Were these not the same idiots that were taking pot-shots at the Windows 7 upgrade process as it may take a while and occasionally has problems?  Also amusingly isn’t there a chance that if you ugrade to OSX 10.6 and use a guest account it may wipe the admin account?

Karma Definition:
the force produced by a person’s actions in one of their lives which influences what happens to them in their future lives.

I love when things are this poetic.

The Moral of the Story

DON’T DO AN IN PLACE UPGRADE!  DO A CLEAN INSTALL!   EVERY TIME!!!

I’ve not done an in place upgrade of *anything* since Windows 98.  It never goes well and the only ‘benifit’ is that it lets you keep all the cruft and a lot of the problems that existed previously.  Wipe the whole lot* and start again.  And pay attention to that story of people in glass houses.

* Thankfully when you do a clean install of Windows 7 it puts the old contents of c:/ in c:/Windows.Old/ so you can recover what you want and delete the rest.

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One of the biggest causes for dismay these days is that Linux advocates are cosying up to Apple, constantly talking about how they ‘will destroy Microsoft’.  Remeber rule #2 (from Part 1) “Microsoft is the antichrist”.  Even Linus Torvalds said ‘Microsoft hatred is a disease’, yet Microsoft hatred is a maintay of the Linux community – it’s as much about hating Microsoft as it is Promoting Linux.  Go find me a review of Windows 7 that doesn’t have a Linux advocate Kanye’ing the comments with pro-Ubuntu propaganda.  Contrast with the various Snow Leopard reviews which only contain a slight smattering of such garbage.  It’s nothing but talk of ‘beating Microsoft’.  It’s important to these people that MS fails.

The bias isn’t even denied.  Slashdot doesn’t even have a Microsoft section - it’s the emotional Voldemort effect (it’s hated so much you can’t even speak it’s name).  APLawrence plain came out and said he’s biased (and then proceeded to do a ‘review’ – dude you have zero credibility if you can’t even try to be impartial).  Some prolific troll I used to see on a regular basis would never type ‘Windows’ or ‘Microsoft’, instead calling it ‘That other OS’.

Consider if a group of car enthusiasts hated the Koreans, would it be fair if the reviews they put out for public consumption were based on an irrational hatred, rather than an actual review of the product?  Would it be acceptable for them to slander the company and it’s products just because they didn’t like the people who made it?  And most importantly would doing so be intellectally honest, or would it simply make the people participating in such activities morally bankrupt and untrustworthy?

Once you get over the whole Microsoft hatred groupthink (I was a hater in my youth, a decade ago (they still use the same ‘jokes’ now)), it pisses you off to see people spouting garbage based entirely on a misformed emotional opinion.  I can’t help but think people who actually subscribe to the ‘Microsoft is evil’ groupthink are probably the same sort of people that would fall for homophobic and racist propaganda, it’s all based on the same self-perpetuating cycle (Microsoft sucks, thus it’s products suck, thus Microsoft sucks).  Starting with the opinion that Microsoft products suck at the start of any review is obviously going to colour your opinion, and picking out the bad points to justify your cycle of hatred is no different than cherry-picking stories of ‘black’ crime and using that to say all blacks are criminals.  There are problems with everything, and everyone, and focusing only on the bad is not reflective of reality.

Not to mention that one a scale of ‘global suffering caused’ Microsoft isn’t even in the top 1000 companies.  What about Shell, McDonalds, Bernard Matthews, Nestle, Gap etc.  Think animal rights and child slave labour.  It makes the whole “Microsoft won’t give us teh codes” wharrgarrblll look utterly ridiculous to the non-indoctrinated.  Seriously, to the outside the Linux community looks like the people you see standing outside the subway yelling ‘the end is nigh’.

I’d even understand if it was about the ‘freedoms’ so frequently blabbed about, but the reality is that Apple are so much worse than Microsoft, yet they get a free pass.

So here’s a quick run-down of Apple’s latest antics.  Find something recent (or even at all) by MS that is worse than this lot:

Psystar and EULA’s

Who’s name I copied for this blog (for no other reason than I thought it was amusing), are in court again with Apple.  The ‘crime’ is selling Hackintoshes – Normal PC’s with OSX loaded.  Apple’s argument, in a nutshell, is that OSX is licensed, not sold, so they can define what you can and cannot do entirely by the EULA.  From the Slashdot headline (Apple’s brief):

‘Finally, every time Psystar turns on any of the Psystar computers running Mac OS X, which it does before shipping each computer, Psystar necessarily makes a separate modified copy of Mac OS X in Random Access Memory, or RAM. This is the third unlawful copy.

According to standing copyright law there is an exception (Section 117 of US Law, don’t know the UK one) which permits someone who buys software to load it into RAM to use it (as technically it has to ‘copy’ it off of the HDD to run it).  It’s obviously ridiculous that such a provision needs to be put in law in the first place as why would you buy two copies just so you can run the installed version, but there you go.

Apple’s claim is that since the software is ‘licensed’ and not a copy, the EULA (license) takes presedence over standard copyright, thus negating Section 117, making it illegal for Psystar to turn on the machine as they are making an unathorized copy.  This is entirely to support their hardware monopoly, they don’t want people to install OSX on any computer that they haven’t paid Apple’s markup on – despite the fact that it can as there is no technical difference between and Apple and any other PC manufacturer anymore.  And this isn’t about ‘support’ as if it was the case they’d just not support anyone with non Apple hardware.  What it is is Apple telling you what you can and cannot do with something you have bought.

Signed Binaries Only

Someone asked me if I had ‘jailbroken’ my HTC Hero.  Thanks to Apple it is now considered status quo to not be allowed to have control over your own device.  The whole reason I went with Android over Apple is I want to do what I want with my own hardware, rather than playing some ridiculous cat-and-mouse game to simply install non ‘Apple approved’ software on it.  Apple have removed basic functionality that has been around since the start of computing, placed themselves as ‘gatekeepers’ and refuse to allow anyone who they don’t want to play in their garden.  It also nicely negates the GPL as you can give away all the source you want but unless you get Apple’s approval (and pay) you’re not going to be able to get the software running.

Forced Upgrade Treadmill

I got an old iMac years ago to test websites out in Safari – that’s all I wanted it for.  But Safari wouldn’t run under the version of OSX it had, and I would have had to jump two versions to actually get it working.  Every time a new OSX version comes out after a while backward compatibility gets broken and Apple owners are forced to buy it.  Some people are still running Windows 2000, a decade old OS, without any issues.  XP from 2001 is still popular.  Yet if you run OSX from 2001 it won’t work with any current software.  Not to mention with Snow Leopard everyone with PPC based Macs (some sold as recently as 2006).  Everything before the Intel switch wont work with Snow Leopard and it’s successors, and when Apple inevitably drops support for Leopard you’ll have to replace your perfectly serviceable hardware with new stuff.

When Apple announced the dropping of PPC it was greeted with joy that ~6gb HDD space would be freed.  Yet in Part 1 of this post some Linux advocate is going mental because apparently Windows 8 (you know that OS that doesn’t exist) will only support 64 bit.

The Palm Pre

Apple has an install base of about 100,000,000 copies of iTunes, or so I have heard.  iTunes only works with iPods, and iPods make up a monopoly share of MP3 Players.  People are then looking at getting a smartphone, already have iTunes and no doubt DRM locked content.  Lets go for the iPhone they think, as nothing else syncs with iTunes.  Isn’t this abusing a monopoly position to get leverage in another market?  Wasn’t Microsoft strung up for using it’s OS share to get into the browser market?

So the Palm Pre came out and pretended to be an iPod so it could get first class citizenship.  iTunes was ‘updated’ which then blocked it.  And the cat and mouse game began again – it’s not that the Pre won’t work with iTunes, it’s that Apple are actively stopping it working.  Just like they stop OSX installing on non-Apple hardware and stop people installing non ‘approved’ apps onto iPhones.  Sure there is that XML file, but that doesn’t count for much.  Yet amazingly in discussions of this on the Internet people say “It’s Apples product, they can do what they want” yet if MS blocked any browser but IE on Windows can you imagine the outrage?  It would be epic.  Apple does the same thing and gets a free pass.

Microsofts Monopoly

People act like Microsoft and Apple are competing, which is entirely untrue.  Apple doesn’t even want marketshare.  They just want the lucrative high-end market and have no interest in the low end.  Apple account for something stupid like 80% of the over $1000 computer market.  If they wanted marketshare they would have released OSX as a standalone – as it stands they are suing a company for increasing their marketshare.  If they wanted to break Microsoft’s monopoly they could, but they don’t, so is it really a monopoly if it only exists because Apple lets it?  If OSX was commercially purchasable I would certainly give it serious consideration, and so would many others – but it isn’t.

Yet in all the discussions I have seen people largely seem to be supporting Apple in it’s behaviour against Psystar and Palm, justifying it and agreeing with it.  At worst they are supporting Apple.  At best they are having a heated (usually quite fair) debate, while ignoring Apple’s massive anti-competitive streak and history of actively excluding competitiors products.

I simply can’t think of a single thing that MS has done in the last decade that is worse than anything I have posted, yet the hatred is still entirely on MS – Apple even have their own Slashdot category.  Tell me this isn’t unfounded, irrational bias.

24 comments

The ‘Desktop Linux’ dream has failed.  There are absolutely no stats that support any favourable trend of Linux uptake (not that hasn’t just been pulled out of some random bloggers ass).  And before you say ‘Well Linux doesn’t want you‘ or some other smartarse thing like that – I don’t want it, and apparently nobody else does.  If you want to define success as people not using your junk then go away – this isn’t for you.

But first some numbers…

Linux vs Windows (Google Trends)  Observe the steady decline.  Not exactly a pattern that’ll lead to anything significant.

The much touted W3 Schools logs.  These are horribly biased as it is only for w3schools.com itself, is cited so often to prove dubious claims of marketshare that itself probably skews the numbers, not to mention that Linux is obviously going to be skewed on technical sites, yet it has only shown Linux use double in the last 6 years from 2.2% to 4.2%.

I was going to show statcounter as well but apparently Linux’ usage has fallen so low it’s now classified as ‘other’.  I could have sworn it had it’s own heading.  Oh well.

And finally hitslink.  Shows Linux usage at 0.98% at December 2008, a peak of 1.17% before dropping to 0.96% in October 2009.  A net loss.

Obviously if you pull up the logs of Slashdot or some site like that you can get some more ‘convenient’ numbers, but I don’t think I have ever seen a positive trend itself.  Usage is not increasing in any significant fashion.  If it is provide me with the stats (seriously, do it) but until this point I think my assertion stands.

As an anecdotal point, across the board on all the websites that I admin, Linux usage sits at about 0.3%, which includes music festivals, dentists, estate agents and the like.  As soon as you remove people who’s interests are not computers themselves (and view them as a means to an end instead) Linux’ numbers plummet even further.

The Myth of Marketing

Of course the usual answer from Linux advocates at this point is that it is because of Microsoft’s advertising money, and that the only reason people don’t use Linux is because they haven’t heard about it.  Which is now provably false.

1: Linux has one of the largest grassroots movements on the Internet.  In fact I am coining “Kerberos’ Rule #8 – If someone mentions OS’s, someone will mention Linux.” You can’t have a technical discussion anywhere without someone trying to ram Linux down your throat.  I am pretty sure the majority of the technical community knows what it is, yet strangely choose not to use it.  Is this marketing?  Are MS suppressing Linux?  What about the Streisand effect?

2: The real killer is this.  Windows 7 managed to, before it’s official release, pass Linux in terms of usage.  Everyone who had it installed at that point had:

• Known what it was and where to get it, despite the fact it wasn’t ‘marketed’.
• Managed to burn it to a DVD.
• Managed to install it on an existing system.
• Managed to get it working with all their hardware and apps.

Yet these are the very people that, according to the Linux community, should be using Linux instead.  Yet overwhelmingly they all went with Windows, despite the fact that they obviously have the technical ability to obtain it and install it which the proponents of Linux often claim is easier that Windows.

Linux Is Faith Based

Obviously pointing at a bunch of facts as I have done doesn’t lead to a civil discussion, despite all I have done is point at some facts – and not even said anything inflammatory.  Even saying something like “Linux uptake is remaining flat despite claims of superiority, which doesn’t make statistical sense.” will get you lynched on most pro-Linux forums.  Even saying “Linux is not suitable for my needs” is often enough to incite a flamewar, and stating why will generally get you banned.  It’s why I started this blog in the first place.

The reason for this is obvious though, once you replace the idea that you are dealing with Linux advocates on a basis of logic and science and instead realise that it is a faith based initiative, and religious rule #1 is “Free software is superior to commercial software” and rule #2 “Microsoft is the antichrist”.  Any challenge which questions these rules will elicit a fear/hate based response as would telling a religious person God doesn’t exist*.  Such a statement is fundamentally incompatible with their worldview.  This is proven in the fact that there is pretty much zero critical discussion of Linux occurring anywhere outside ‘hate’ blogs, despite the claims of a community created OS.  So in a world where ‘everyone is a developer’ there is almost no debate and critical feedback**.  That can’t be either right or healthy – but it’s the truth.

What the ‘community’ really is is an evangelical mission to spread the word.  It’s not about self reflection and self improvement, it’s about embracing the two rules and then trying to bend the world to fit them – and calling anyone who doesn’t agree a ‘noob’ and ‘stupid’ along the way.

Pragmatism

I like to think of myself as a software pragmatist – I don’t care which faceless corporation that pretends to care about me produces it – I’ll choose whatever is best for the task at hand.  At the moment I have…

• A Windows 7 laptop,
• An iPod,
• An Android based phone,
• A Linux (Smoothwall) based firewall,
• I also develop websites for LAMP on Windows,
• Plus numerous managed Linux, Windows and BSD servers

The point being I’ll get whatever fits my needs the best at the time.  I’ll get all the available information about all the options, compare them to what I need and base my decision upon this information.  If someone asks me for help I use the following process:

1. Ask them what they will be needing it for
2. Find out the skill and experience of the user
3. Make my recommendation based upon the above

Here’s how your typical Linux advocate makes their decision:

1. Use Linux, it’s the best!

You can see the problem here.  It’s faith based, they have ‘belief’ that Linux is good (and correspondingly that Microsoft is evil), thus they have their answer.  Actual user requirements are irrelevant as they know that Linux is superior, and that Windows sucks.  From this point on it’s simply a case of trying to convert the person they foisted Linux onto to their world view – which generally involves telling them they are wrong and bashing MS whenever a problem arises.  The question ‘would this person actually be better off with Linux’ is rarely, if ever, asked.  Someone being happy with what they have is never even considered.

You see it all the time.  ‘Why aren’t you using Linux’, they ask – the assumption of superiority is in the question.  ‘It doesn’t run Photoshop’, I reply.  Then we go through the whole ‘try Gimp’ rigmarole, then the ‘try Gimpshop’, which is the technical equivalent of putting a Humvee bodykit on a Ford Fiesta and sending it to Iraq. Eventually Wine is mentioned – which is fine if you are 3 versions behind and don’t expect everything to work or be stable.  The fact that I’d have to invest large amounts of time and effort to simply be at, best case, a par with what I had before I ‘switched’ means nothing to these people.

Which is the crux of the matter – you cannot expect a Linux advocate to give you honest advice.  Pretty much regardless of requirements they will suggest their favorite distro.  I’ve seen people recommend Gentoo as an easy beginners system. ‘Gaming is fine with Wine’ and other absurd claims.  The importance seems to be getting people to use it, not getting people the best system.  It would be like asking a fundamentalist christian in a bookshop what book you should read, or asking a Vegetarian*** what restaurant you should go to – the answer almost certainly would not be based on your requirements.

Lies, Damn Lies and Linux Advocates

Another side effect of the blind belief effect is the ability to play fast and loose with the truth.  If it makes Linux look good, it’s true.  If it makes Microsoft look bad, it’s true.  Anything else is FUD and lies.  A once run benchmark from some random idiots blog somewhere will be taken as proof of Linux’ success if it is favorable.  A large companies benchmark will be called lies if it is unfavourable.  Facts are not rated based upon their veracity nor citations nor testing methodology.  They are rated based upon how well they fit the agenda.  The words ‘scientific method’ are seen cowering in a corner somewhere.

Take for example this review of Windows 7 – I think someone linked to it on LHB originally.  It’s one of the most unbalanced hatchet jobs I’ve ever seen, yet is put forwards as being ‘fair and balanced’.  Gems include:

In the RAM usage front, Windows 7 when idle takes a good 1-2GB of my 4GB of RAM, while Kubuntu takes between 200MB-500MB

It’s pretty well known that Windows Vista and now Windows 7 use the RAM you have.  Any half decent programmer knows you can sacrifice RAM for performance and vice versa (largely through caching).  If you put Windows 7 on a box with 512mb it’ll idle using about ~250mb.  It’ll run fine too.  It’ll generally take half your RAM for itself to speed things up but that’s fine – it’ll relinquish it if programs need it rather than using as little as possible and thrashing your disks constantly.

Yet this bit of information, despite being infinitely sensible, and which has been common knowledge for years, is somehow not known to an alleged IT pro.  If Linux treated RAM in this way you can be guaranteed we’d see a spiel about Windows inability to take advantage of your system.  Also, nobody runs an idle system.  Even if you did use a RAM-light version of Linux (which would not be the fully-featured Ubuntu this guy is chatting about) you’d be stuffed as soon you open Firefox or try to do anything as that’s where the real RAM usage is.

But everyone always trots out the RAM argument as it’s on the pro Linux talking points list, despite RAM being dirt cheap and plentiful it’s still viewed as somehow better to spend weeks tweaking a low use system than just buying 6gb or something ridiculous.

Then this classic:

This is a common element of debate, and one I happen to agree with. Windows 7 seems to have borrowed a bit from the KDE4 series. Now days, KDE has changed it’s look to the “Air” theme, so it no longer looks as close. However, the Oxygen theme that was used in KDE around the same time as when Windows 7 was in development is mysteriously similar. Even the selection of widgets is similar, with both shipping with an analog clock, news reader, sliding block puzzle, and hardware monitor by default. Take a look at this quickly put together collage, with widgets from both Windows 7 and KDE versions previous to 4.3

The dude doing the review has apparently never so much as seen a screenshot of Vista, yet alone used it. The clock, sliding puzzle, black gloss, RSS reader, and every other thing he mentioned are stolen from Vista.  Unless Microsoft owns a time machine it’s pretty clear that KDE ripped off Windows.  Hell the guy proved it himself – but it makes Linux look good so fact checking isn’t important.  I even linked to a video ages ago showing that Compiz is an early Vista ripoff – wobbly windows and all.

As stated earlier though this reviewer had obviously already got his conclusions before Windows was even installed, it was simply a case of hunting for the facts to fit.  If the aim was impartiality or fairness he would have attempted to find out why Windows uses the RAM it does, and would have tried it on a 512mb machine, and would have at least used Vista to get a feel for the improvements in 7.  I’d also bet he is a ‘Vista Sucks’ cheerleader – despite never even having seen it before.

The rest of the his points are the airy “I prefer Linux” type of conclusions where he just looks for a bunch of things he can criticise and write up.  I mean a ‘fair’ test would be to use it for a week or two for actual work (although a month or more would be preferred) and then report back on the experience.  This review looks like he installed it, played for an hour or so then ‘reviewed’ it.

Yet crap like this never gets called out.  It’s standard practice.

I have a point? Wow!

The whole point of this post is not to stoke some imaginary ‘Linux vs Windows’ war, but instead to try to get the supporters of Linux and FOSS in general to take a look at and to hold themselves to the same standards they accuse Microsoft of breaking.  You can’t claim MS are bad for spreading FUD while making BSOD jokes.

Also instead of getting defensive when someone says something bad about Linux consider that although you think it’s not a problem they certainly do and thus it is important.  There is a reason nobody is using it – find out why and it will rule the world.

P.S. I don’t imagine for a second anyone will actually listen though, so carry on writing that angry comment/email ‘proving’ that I am wrong so we can get back to flaming each other. 

* It’s an example, let’s not go into it.  I also don’t have a problem with the religious, be it FOSS or actual religion, as long as they keep it to themselves.

** If you think I am wrong provide three examples of healthy, critical, debate that isn’t heavily moderated or a flamewar.  I dare you.

*** I am a vegetarian, but I did make a sausage-crust pizza last night, so I am probably not the best person to ask about fancy restaurants anyway. And I am biased.

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I’ve not disappeared or dropped off the face of the earth or anything – just so you know this blog isn’t abandoned.  I’ve just been really busy for the last month or so but plan to get a new post up as soon as I get a free minute to write it.

This blog is a cathartic to me – having to deal with this crap every day would drive you mad without an outlet, and everyone IRL I am sure is sick of my rants.  I think Linux just gets the brunt of it because they supporters are generally so brainwashed and stupid.

Anyway new post soon!

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