Piestar

I’ve heard some ridiculous claims concerning usability and the command line, my favourite being ‘It’s really usable when you’ve learned how’.  Which is total rubbish when you think about it as anything is easy once you’ve learned it.  Using that logic a machine running (say) Arabic Windows, complete in it’s RTL glory, is just as easy to use as one with English Windows installed as it’s just a case of learning it.  Right.

The thing is the command line is the antithesis of usability.  It’s the exact opposite of where modern computing is going and it is, quite literally, a regression of over 20 years of progress.

Here’s the thing.  A GUI interface is decision based.  You look at what you have and decide a course of action based upon the options presented.  A CLI is knowledge based.  You have to know exactly what you need to type before you type it.  The beauty of a GUI system is you do not need a manual – you do not need to invest weeks learning concepts, commands and other irrelevant arcana. It’s the difference between following roadsigns and trying to get home blindfolded.

For example anyone reasonably confident could find how to change power settings, drive mounts, record some audio or any simple task on Windows (or any decent GUI based OS)  in a few minutes without needing any help, manuals or other assistance.  With the CLI approach you are no longer able to operate on your own volition, instead you have to seek out howto’s, manuals and ask for help in forums.  If there is no documentation or someone to ask then commonly there is no way to solve your issue – more often than not it is impossible to figure out the solution on your own.  Linux essentially strips you of your independence.  And God help you if you have a problem that breaks your internet connection.

If you use Linux you are beholden to the technical elite and their whims.  The depressing part is it is viewed that this can all be solved if only enough documentation is written when everyone else has figured out that documentation should not even be necessary in the first place.  It should be obvious what you need to do.

The Walled Garden

Essentially, and unlike Windows or OSX, the Linux user interface paradigm is a dichotomy.  Instead of having a unified interface that everyone uses you have a two-tier system where you have the ‘real’ Linux users consisting of developers and power users, who rely largely on the CLI, shell scripts, vi and other non discoverable, non intuitive, complicated and extremely difficult to master concepts.  Then you have the normal users who get to use the GUI scraps off of the power users table.

Which is largely the problem.  You have a GUI interface, but it is really just a flimsy facade put up over the CLI underpinnings.  It’s a walled garden of ‘ease of use’ in that as soon as you need to do something outside the remit of what the GUI allows you are immediately dumped into nerd hell in which 99% of the population have no hope of ever understanding.  Stuff which is incredibly simple on other platforms such as installing drivers, installing software, mounting partitions or even changing your screen resolution can quickly turn into half-day Google marathons on Linux if your needs happen to not be covered by the GUI (and thus are outside the garden).

Take NTFS-3G for example.  Last time I tried to use that the volume I tried to mount was marked as dirty.  The GUI tool had no handling exception for this so it just blurted a load of CLI comands into a dialogue box – since it is just a wrapper around the command line version.  You see it all the time in Linux.  Rather than the standard approach of writing an API and interfacing with that large swathes of the GUI is simply calling a CLI command and scraping the result.  No wonder it’s so flaky all the time.

Essentially the problem is that users are viewed as people that need something stupid, something dumbed down, that essentially they have different needs than ‘real’ computer users and as a result you get this system of intellectual apartheid where the ‘dumb users’ only get to play in the padded room and ask an ‘adult’ for help if they have a problem.

Speaking as a user and a developer I am sick of the elitism, of the machismo, of the walled garden.  I don’t want to read howtos.  I don’t want to learn useless, arcane, commands.  I don’t want to spend two days plugging in random commands in the vague hope that my wireless may start working at some point.  It’s not that I don’t know how to use a CLI, it’s more that I have better things to do with my time than fight with the creations of developers too lazy to go the extra mile and understand the whole raison d’être of a modern OS, which is empowering normal users to get stuff done on their own without having to get a degree in CS first.

Update

I saw someone complaining about how it was so difficult to set up a manual IP on Windows with the GUI, how it was so confusing and how Linux was better.  Guess what?  You can easily do this with the Windows CLI also.  As pointed out though, unless you know the exact command and the exact parameters you have no earthly way of figuring it out and if he had gone from Windows, where a GUI is available, to Linux, where it isn’t (or is broken), then he would have failed entirely rather than just taken a bit longer than normal.

34 comments

So I was reading the Digg thread on people abusing the Javelin glitch in Modern Warfare 2 – The Javelin is meant to be an anti-armour only weapon but there is a bug where you can pick it up and cause it to explode if you die, killing everyone in a large radius.  Essentially a suicide bomber glitch which is apparently causing huge issues with people racking up massive scores by using it.

Apart from all the posts blaming Microsoft’s shoddy programming (despite the fact they had nothing to do with this game) and the EULA’s are bad, how dare they stop me cheating! rants there was one post which was particularly telling and inspired me to write this post:

I don’t need this issue to bash microsoft. They are a lousy company whose only REAL innovation is to use its size and marketing to steal or buyout ideas. What has microsoft really innovated besides mass marketing of existing ideas?

The question is, what companies actually have any original ideas?  And why are Microsoft held to a different, higher, standard than anybody else?  Why does Microsoft have to be 100% original or face the wrath, yet nobody else needs to be?

The iPod was entirely unoriginal.  There was hundreds of portable MP3 players out before the iPod yet it is deemed as being ‘original’.  Microsoft releases the Zune and apparently they are copying Apple.  Linux is essentially a clean room copy of UNIX, yet apparently Windows is simply a copy of Apple, despite Apple copying Xerox.  Apple releases the iPhone, are they accused of copying Microsoft as Windows Mobile is years older?  OR are they ‘innovating’?

Show me anything significant from a successful company and I will show you the idea that they ’stole’.  The thing is innovation is a rolling, evolutionary process.  You don’t just jump into the market with mk1 entirely new product and sit there – it simply doesn’t work like that.

Company X uses a visual metaphor interface and you are using a CLI interface.  Do you:

1. Damn, they thought of it first, thats a shame as it would greatly enhance our product. 
2. That’s a good idea, lets incorporate that into our product.

Everyone rants about how horrible and innovation stifling patents apparently are, then get outraged when people (that is, Microsoft) does exactly what these patents attempt to stop.

What made the iPod successful was nothing to do with originality, as the Diamond Rio had it beat by a good three years (right).  Check out the scroll-wheel-esque ring in the middle.  Now tell me that the iPod is original.  Pretty damning isn’t it?

The success of the iPod was due to Apple taking an existing idea and doing it well.  The device was aesthetically pleasing, it was incredibly user friendly, it was marketed incredibly well.  It was a great product and although it did not invent the concept of a portable MP3 player it refined and improved the concept immeasurably.  I owned a third gen iPod and bought it for no reason better than it was better than anything else available at the time.  I certainly didn’t rant about how they were unoriginal, and then bought a PMP300 off of ebay to somehow ’stick it to the man’.  That wouldn’t have made sense.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Microsoft is the only company that produces a commercially viable non-Unix based OS.  BSD, Linux, Solaris, OSX etc are all essentially copies of the original Unix.  They are viewed as innovative.  Windows, which has an almost entirely unique heritage, is not.

What is Windows a copy of?  While I do not doubt that there was similarities with the original Xerox implementation and Apple’s implementation, if you run modern OSX beside Windows 7 the systems couldn’t be further apart now.  There are common features that have been traded backwards and forwards between the two, but when it comes to basic implementation the two operate in entirely different ways.  You can get OSX theme packs for Windows, but it is fundamentally impossible to get the UI and interface to operate in the same way.

There are also certain ideas that are inevitable.  Window compositing is one of them – moving window management to the GPU is only logical and largely improves performance.  It also easily enables a whole raft of abilities which would have been incredibly hard to do before – expose, preview thumbnails, rotating cubes, wobbly windows, blending translucency – which all become almost obvious once the GPU comes into play.  Dynamic search, things like Windows search or Spotlight on OSX, are a result of improved computer power.  It’s only because computers now have the power to do it that it is getting included – not because it’s somehow a new innovation.  People often accuse Microsoft of ‘copying’ Spotlight from Apple – ignoring the fact that it’s capabilities were meant to be in WinFS as part of Longhorn well before any Apple announcement.

The claim that Microsoft somehow steals all it’s ideas (and by implication, everyone else is original) is simply an extension of the irrational Microsoft hatred so prevalent in the IT community.  There are utterly no facts to back it up and it’s very easy to argue Microsoft is more innovative than your average company.  It’s become so ingrained into the common psyche that even if Microsoft does it first (ala Compiz) they are still accused of being copycats.  A look at everything that was planned for Longhorn basically set the stage for a large amount of features that are considered de-facto in a modern OS and they came from Microsoft.  Where’s the credit?

To me, you cannot use the term ‘ripoff’ or ‘copy’ if very little of the original remains.  Is every text adventure a ripoff of Zork?  If every raycaster a ripoff of Wolfenstein?  Isn’t Wolfenstien a ripoff too?  Is Duke Nukem 3D a ripoff of Doom?  If you set out to make a copy of something with, at best, cosmetic changes then you are guilty of ripping off someone.  If you take a basic idea and make your own implementation then you are just expanding on the public domain.

Why is everyone allowed to make their own implementation of various ideas except Microsoft?  Why is expanding on an existing idea innovative, unless Microsoft does it?  Why is Open Source allowed to make near carbon copies of proprietary software with impunity – isn’t this a stone’s throw from simple software piracy?

I’ll leave you with a picture comparing ‘Frozen Bubble’, the hit Open Source game and ‘Bust-a-move’, an old commercial game that actually was quite innovative.

Either it is OK or it isn’t.  Anything else is hypocrisy.

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So it has occured to me that I have gone slightly off track with this blog.  My original intention was to engage the FOSS community in debate to try to bring attention to various issues, and also provide a place I can link people to instead of having to go over the same tired arguments repeatedly.

It’s fairly hard being critical without being exclusionary, and far too easy to get carried away with the ‘you all suck’ aspect.  Not that there is anything wrong with angry rants, it’s just not what I wanted to do.

So I am going to start again, with the aim of providing a definitive argument and opinion on a range of challenges and problems facing Open Source in a (hopefully) non-hostile way.  After all success and progress in the FOSS community can only serve to help me in the long run, and the community is in dire need of critics.

I have not yet decided if I am going to keep, archive or wipe all the old posts – largely I’ll be rewriting most of the points in them anyway.

Anyway, coming soon, Piestar II. 

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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!

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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.

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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.

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