If you like to troubleshoot unstable Linux distributions then Intrepid Ibex is for you.  If you want a stable, working desktop Linux distro, then stick with Debian, Suse or an older Ubuntu.  This point release has too many bugs for daily use.  Issues such as the in ability to preserve a manual network configuration, while known are listed as ‘low priority’.  Of coarse you have your know-it-alls in the forums whining about how all you have to do is edit your /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/base and restart net services.  How does this help convert users to Linux? It doesn’t.  Ubuntu is perceived as the most advanced desktop Linux distribution out there, and you still have to dick around with text based config files to get your network card to work?

Everybody wants a pretty desktop. Everybody wants all the shiny, spinny, boppy things.  How about we focus on functional first?  The only reason I moved from Debian to Ubuntu was to conserve time while setting up workstations during our office migration from Microsoft.  If I still can’t get functionality without screwing around in a terminal window for hours I have gained nothing.

I have also found the Ubuntu forums and IRC to be filled with elitists who have reverted back to the bad old days of ‘RTFM’.  Not much help for newbies.  Not a very welcoming ‘community’ Jono.

The Hiwaypilot.

Like millions of others, I listen to the TWIT network, a series of podcasts produced by Leo Laporte from TechTV fame. One of Leo’s fine sponsors is Audible. Don’t get me wrong, Audible is a fine company that’s been around for years. They sell wonderful products. (I assume, because I don’t use them.) My problem is their proclivity towards DRM. Face it, we still don’t live in an ‘open source world’ so to each their own.  I have alternatives!

First off is my new favorite site, Podiobooks.com. Getting past the name. (I still can’t believe we named an entire web-based innovation after Apple’s little piece of proprietary, plastic crap!) Podiobooks are audio books released under Creative Commons, Non-commercial licenses free of charge. And get this, they’re real good books! Right now I am laughing my way through ‘Playing for Keeps’, a hilarious tale about superheros, supervillans and the poor people who are neither.

Second is Librivox.org. This is a great site. They are a service where volunteers read non-copyrighted works and release them for free. This site is wonderful for kids, because of all the great classics that are available. Plus if you like it you can participate by reading chapters from ongoing works. It’s a win / win!

If you still feel you must pay for your audio books, that’s even better. Both sites I listed accept donations. Podiobooks passes 75 percent on to the book’s author, (who is usually also the reader) and the remainder keeps the site working. Librivox just needs the money to stay on the net. So by all means pay for your audio books. Just think about who you are paying.

I have searched (no pun intended) throughout the Google product line for an honest to goodness feedback form or email address.  I found tons of references to forums, videos or even comic strips for help but no true ‘Contact us’ link.  I suppose I can understand how they would like to keep from having addresses harvested for spam.  And the manpower for actually reading suggestions from the millions of users who would have access to a ’suggestion box’ form would be insane.  But this does make one wonder how they can say they ‘listen’ to their customers when the only tech support they get is from other customers.

Anyhow, what I wanted to ask them was if they would put a little more effort into supporting the Opera browser.  I use Opera.  I like Opera.  But while it’s fully functional in all of the Google apps,  they continually take up half of my screen with annoying text boxes telling me how my browser isn’t supported.  Hey Google, I use Linux.  Firefox has become a slow pig and you refuse to port Chrome for Linux so I use Opera.

Now since they don’t take suggestions or offer any constructive way to get in contact,  I’ll just throw this rant into the web.  I guess this is just proof that once anybody gets large enough, they tend to forget where they came from.

The commercial says it all.

Digital picture frames were all the rage last Christmas.  They are still one of the hottest selling gifts around.  Great idea, just plug it into your computer, upload some family photos then turn it on and enjoy.

Well, not so much.

Many people have come to realize (usually the hard way) that items like thumb drives and CD-RWs can transfer viruses onto the average Windows PC.  But for some reason the logic that a flash-based medium like a photo frame could do this as well alludes them.

“But dude, I got antivirus software.” Ok two things.  First, don’t call me Dude.  Second, did you think to turn off Autorun? The Autorun ‘feature’ in Windows can execute software before most antivirus has time to scan and get in your face about it.  While XP and Vista ship with Autorun in ‘Prompt mode’ asking the user if they want to run the software, they also convieniently put a “Don’t ask me again” checkbox there so you never have to be bothered by this annoying security feature ever again.  (You clicked it didn’t you? Come on, be honest.)

For you die hards that insist on using Windows, please keep your antivirus updated and turn off Autorun.  Better yet, switch to Linux or buy a Mac.($$$)

Or at least check out these links…

http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=3787

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11499

I don’t use Windows, I use Linux.  (WHAT??!!  He must be some kind of weird counterculture type.)

While I may feel our governmental system is flawed, I have no interest in overthrowing it.  Other than speeding, (I can’t drive 55.) I don’t do anything that would be viewed by authorities as questionable.  Now that I’m older, I only drink about a 12-pack per week. (We all have our vices.)  Why does using Linux make me a weirdo?

I listen to podcasts, subscribe to Linux RSS feeds and read trade magazines.  While doing this, I constantly hear the gurus go on about software freedom, community,  the evils of patents and licensing, all of which are extremely important.  We all know they are important.  I do what I can, as we all do, to support the EFF and others.  But in the same discussions they complain that we can’t convert new users.  Well could it be because we sound like some kind of cult?

Currently, there is a major fracture in the Linux world.  There are two sides.  One side consists of the outspoken activists and evangelists touting freedom from the evils of proprietary software, digital rights management and the corporations of the world locking up our data and using it against us. Once again, important stuff but not a very good sales pitch.  Think about it…
“Hi, I’m a PC. I do business stuff.”
“Hi, I’m a Mac and I do fun, artsy stuff.”
“Hi, I’m Linux and I believe that the socioeconomic policies we are forced to follow are detrimental to developing countries and vile laws governing software such as patents and DRM  stifle creativity.”
Not a good commercial.

The second side is just as twisted.  The ‘free as in beer’ group grab up code as fast as the community can produce it and attempt to create a business model out of it.  Using the ability to modify ‘free’ code and adding some essence of the proprietary such as codecs or reverse engineered security measures,  this group has produced some of the most powerful software systems ever designed.  Focused on the corporate market, these systems create a very lucrative industry.  An industry that flies directly in the face of the first group.  This group is very successful and unfortunately is the only positive advertisement the Linux world gets.  The sad bit of course is the message…
“Linux is a complex client/server architecture with power, scalability and flexibility to accommodate any size corporation.”

Once again, not a very appealing sales pitch to the average Walmart shopper.  The current, uninformed masses see these two seemingly opposing views and think either, “Those Linux people sound like the hippies from back in the 1960’s.” …or… “Wow, that Linux stuff must be that really complicated stuff the scientists run on those big, room sized computers.  Glad I don’t have to do that!”

Seriously people.  There has to be a middle ground.  Linux can be just as easy to use as Windows or OS-X if not easier.  Security is a no-brainer and today’s desktop mangers (The ‘windows’ if you will.) are simply beautiful.  Games and other popular software are now being ported to Linux much sooner.   Items like Java and Flash even the playing field.  Also Wine and SAMBA fill in the holes of the interoperability challenge.  The year of the Linux Desktop is here and has been for some time. Average users are just afraid of it, and we’re responsible.

“Hello, I am Linux. I am not a hippie and I don’t use Windows.”

I got a virus. Well, no I didn’t but I would have if I was running Windows. (Which I wouldn’t do either.)

Look very carefully…

This is a virus installer scam.  It was easy for me to spot since Ubuntu kept asking me if I wanted to configure Wine to run the virus installer.  If this happens to you, don’t click on anything.  The smaller browser window is a flash graphic.  Even the Google Toolbar couldn’t stop it from popping up and taking focus.  In Windows, Ctrl+Alt+Del and kill all Firefox.  In Linux just shake your head, chuckle and pity your poor Windows-bound friends.

The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) had an oopsie a day and a half after they hit the big green button.

I guess it could be worse,  we could be enjoying a cool light show before settling in for a nice nuclear winter. So far so good.

No, not that kind of wine. I’m a beer guy. Wine the API.

Here’s the deal, on my desktop at home I replace the primary hard drive using a removable tray.  This gives me the ability to change operating systems simply by popping in a new drive.  It eliminates the messy bother with boot loaders on multiple partitions and so on.  There’s also the freedom to stick in a new drive and try out some shiny new distro.  Anyhow I still keep the original XP drive for one and only one reason… the second of my gaming addictions, Railroad Tycoon 2 Deluxe.  I know, I KNOW!  I didn’t say it was a new game. (Dude, that’s an game for old guys.   NEWS FLASH: I am an old guy.)  Every now and then  I like to take a break from killing dragons and giant cockroaches (long story) in Runescape and do a little tycooning.  Well being an old guy I forgot to take my RT2 disk out of the CD tray.

After booting Ubuntu to do some actual work, I saw the game icon on my desktop where the system mounted the CD.  Feeling froggy I figured what’s the worst that could happen so I jumped.  Opened the Nautilus window and double clicked the ‘Setup.exe’ icon.  The installer springs to life and has at it.  Now anyone who has run Wine knows that they put extra effort into the installer system so if the program will install in Windows, it will install using Wine.  Doesn’t mean it will run or even think about running, but it will install.  Then it asked if I wanted to instal Direct X.  Hey, it’s Saturday afternoon, I got a couple in me, I figure why not?

Bear in mind, I have not done any setup for Wine on this machine.  I installed it one day to test a CDRom game for someone which also installed but died horribly with a list of about 30 Windows DLLs it needed.  Figured that was a waste so I gave up.  I have gotten many things to work with Wine but that was a long time ago.  The complexities of configuration and troubleshooting were just too great and not easily repeated.  So I swore off all but native ports or open source that I could port myself.

Now back to Railroad Tycoon 2 Deluxe.  After waiting for the crash of Direct X, I received the normal pop up asking if I wanted to play now.  “Ok.”  Next I get the intro movie which is some real cool old archive footage from the twenties thru the forties.  Well cool, at least I can watch the intro (with sound too!) before I get to work.  So the movie plays through and fades to the main menu.  Actually a little faster than it did in Windows.  Ok…. I click on ‘Single Player’ and now I’m on the select scenario screen.  The funny old guy (older than me) starts talking about days of steel greatness and yada yada. I picked a scenario and I’m playing.  On Linux.  No pain, no anguish, no forums!  IT JUST WORKS!

Why can’t all box software be like that?  Wine is a wonderful tool  I have used it to fill those niche needs when there absolutely is no Linux software to do a task.  But that is sometimes a ‘crap shoot.’  So many pieces of software you buy have some strange little Windows DLL that probably does nothing more than identify the color of the font in the EULA.  Railroad Tycoon 2 Deluxe is a rich and wonderful game.  It is also proof that software can run in both environments.

Speaking of running in both environments, HEY GOOGLE!  FireFox works in all three, Windows, Linux and MAC.  What’s up with Chrome?

Anyhow, WINE ROCKS!