[Mon Jan 24 18:13:27 CET 2011]

Jamie Zawinski has written an entry on his blog about a "vintage terminal emulator" that looked sort of cool. However, when I checked into this little app called Cathode (it only runs on the Mac OS), I found out that it costs US $20. What the...? Who is going to pay that much money for this type of app? I mean, it accomplishes the same as the default terminal that comes with the OS for free, for crying out loud! Actually, it does the same in a more convoluted way, which makes it more difficult to read. Let's be clear. Only very geeky people who feel nostalgia for the old days may even care to install something like this. In my case, since my oldest son is now showing interest for the fascinating world of computers and has asked me a few times about the old consoles, I thought it might be a good chance to show him first-hand but... US $20? No way! So, I searched around and found another little app called GLTerminal that accomplishes exactly the same (once again, it only runs on Mac OS, as far as I can see). Here is a screenshot:

...and, now that I have shown my son, I can uninstall it. Like I said, I find it difficult to believe that anyone can run this on a regular basis. If you want to give it a try, make sure you do visit the howto page. If you don't, all you will see is a white terminal with no contents at all, not even a prompt. {link to this story}

[Fri Jan 21 09:36:43 CET 2011]

Tech Drive-In publishes a reviewer's first impressions on Ubuntu 11.04, Natty Narwhal. Adding to what I have written before about the Unity desktop environment (I don't really like it much, not even on a netbook, where one ends up losing even more screen space than with the default GNOME environment), I must now say I don't share the love for global menu integration either. I suppose it's one of those Mac OS features that Mark Shuttleworth finds extremely user-friendly, but I beg to differ. I know it's not such a big thing. After all, even if you have a lot of windows open, you just switch from one to the other, at which point it doesn't really matter if the menu is in the individual window or at the top of the screen altogether. Yet, I find myself disliking that feature on the Apple laptops we have at home all the time. It especially happens when I want to access the default OS menu and, in order to do so, I have to first either make sure that no other app has the focus or somehow bring up the Finder window. I just don't like it. It doesn't feel right. At first, I thought perhaps I'd get used to it after using Mac OS for a few weeks. However, I have already been using it for years and I still don't like it. I find it extremely useful that, with a simple Alt+F1, I will bring focus to the GNOME main menu right away. It's also just a click away because the menu is permanently visible, instead of being two or three clicks away by bringing the focus to some other app that doesn't necessarily have to be the one we first think of as associated to the OS main menu. I don't know. I have the feeling there are plenty of other things we should pay attention to in order to improve the usability of the Linux desktop, rather than these little issues that come to completely change the way we have always done things without necessarily reporting us a big gain anyways. {link to this story}

[Fri Jan 14 17:21:51 CET 2011]

While listening to an episode of The Linux Action Show podcast dedicated to the BSDs I hear —once again— the old description of the BSDs as a "complete operating system from the ground up, as opposed to Linux". I've been hearing this for years now, but I'm still not sure I fully understand what the whole hoopla is all about, to be honest.

Let's start with a disclaimer. What I am going to say has no bearings whatsoever on the quality of the different BSD projects at all. Actually, I do play with FreeBSD from time to time (I suppose that "dabble" is more like it), whenever my other occupations allow it. It truly is a rock-solid operating system, very well put together and with a great performance. There is no doubt about that. But all that is beyond the point here. What I want to discuss is the idea that, while BSD is a complete operating system, Linux is only a kernel loosely coupled with a lot of other applications that come from all over the place. Obviously, the message that most BSDers are sending when they argue this point is that their OS is very compact and well organized, especially when compared to that other little rascal called Linux, a complete mess of a product, a sandbox where tens of thousands of inmature kids have fun pretending to be true hackers. Sorry, but that's the impression I always get when I hear most (notice: I said "most", not "all") BSD supporters talking about Linux.

However, let's take a look at the facts, shall we? The reality is that the BSDs are nothing but distributions that package together their kernel with lots and lots of applications that are by no means developed exclusively by BSD programmers. Or is someone arguing that perhaps they develop KDE, GNOME, Firefox, Evolution or GCC from scratch? Whom are they fooling? In the end, any BSD is no different than a Linux distribution: they grab the source code directly from the open source projects out there, assign it to a maintainer and apply patches and/or improvements to it without veering too far of the path already walked by the upstream maintainers. What is the different, then, between this and what Red Hat, Novell or Debian do? I just don't get it. {link to this story}

[Wed Jan 12 12:53:38 CET 2011]

Bruce Byfield writes a very good piece about Ubuntu's decision to ship the Unity Desktop by default in their next release. Back in October, when they released Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.10, Mark Shuttleworth also announced that they would be using the Unity desktop environment instead of GNOME by default with Ubuntu 11.04. Needless to say, lots of people responded —both negatively and positively— to the news and the issue was being discussed in many forums for a while. Shortly thereafter, Shuttleworth also announced that they also plan to move from the traditional X.Org server to Wayland, although in this other case he did not give any timeframe. Ever since, Ubuntu has been the center of many arguments in the open source community. Is this the right decision for Ubuntu's own users? Is Canonical being honest to the community? How much do they contribute to the different projects? Well, Byfield gives us a nice overview of the whole thing:

For over a year now, Ubuntu has been shipping with a version of GNOME that is increasingly different from the standard one. Notifications, the arrangement of title bar buttons, customer apps for centralizing the control of social media and sound-based aplications —all these have been developed by Ubuntu outside of the usual GNOME channels in the name of making the free desktop competitive (and, no doubt, of making Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial aspect, profitable at last).

It all sounds pretty straightforward: Ubuntu uses open source software and they are entitled to make what they consider the right decisions to boost the use of Linux on the desktop, even if it is at the price of diverting or forking from well established projects, as long as they abide by the letter of the open source licenses these products are released under. Sure. That is quite clear. Nobody is arguing that Canonical is doing anything illegal. Rather, the issue is whether or not they are behaving in an ethical manner. I know, that is a strange concept in the business world, but open source is quite different in this regard and people who often contribute their time (and their code) for free have a right to feel outraged if they think that a vendor is taking advantage of their work without contributing anything at all, even though they obviously do have the resources. That's the question. Byfield goes on to detail the actual issues:

This basic division is strengthened by two very specific claims against Ubuntu and Canonical.

The first is that, although Ubuntu ships with a version of GNOME by default, it does not contribute its fair share to GNOME development. Superficially, this claim appears to be supported by an analysis in July 2010 of the commits to the GNOME code that shows that only slightly more than one percent of them were submitted by Canonical, as opposed to 16% by Red Hat, and over 10% by Novell.

Undoubtedly, Shuttleworth has a point when he blogs that Ubuntu contributes in other ways, particularly by attracting new users to free software.

The trouble is, a contribution that so directly benefits Canonical may be rejected as not being comparable to the indirect benefit that coding benefits give other companies. Nor are developers apt to appreciate an increase in users when what concerns them are contributions to the code.

The second accusation is that Ubuntu is determining free software for its own commercial interests. This is a charge that most businesses involved with free software face sooner or later, but in the case of Ubuntu and Canonical, it is supported by circumstantial evidence.

Considering that GNOME is currently trying to develop its own interface innovations in GNOME 3.0, you might easily conclude that Ubuntu and Canonical are trying to create a software stack in which tehy can dominate the decision-making without having to endure the usual give and take of free software development.

Let's face it. It's not the first time Canonical is accused of taking advantage of the free software community while contributing very little to it. There have been quite a few voices within the Debian community criticizing them for this very same reason. While, the way things stand right now, there cannot be an Ubuntu without the tremendous work performed by the volunteers of the Debian project, they contribute little back to the community. Ubuntu prefers to go its own way. Yes, their argument is that they do what they consider it is best for their users and to expand their market share. Fine. But does that not apply to Red Hat and Novell too? Yet, both those companies contribute far more to the community than Ubuntu does, in spite of their alleged commitment to the traditional Ubuntu philosophy (the interesting thing is that lots of people switched to Ubuntu when Red Hat decided to discontinue its old Red Hat Linux distribution and Fedora, the project that replaced it, showed clear signs of being too much of a test-bed for developers and not totally suited for day to day use; we must also remember that back then plenty of people accused Red Hat management of breaking with the spirit of the open source community and "not playing nice"). I have to acknowledge an increasing feeling that by using Ubuntu I may be painting myself into a corner. It could very well be that one of these days one of these decisions they make to "improve the user experience" simply doesn't cut it for my particular needs and I will then find myself having to switch to something else in a hurry. Or, on the other hand, perhaps it's just time to switch to Debian once and for all. {link to this story}

[Mon Jan 10 12:09:50 CET 2011]

While perusing the website of Computer World UK today, I came across a piece written by Glyn Moody titled Why Linux is Alpha and Omega that praises the open source OS for its extraordinary portability and compares it to Windos. The reason why I mention it here is because the author, although discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the DEC Alpha architecture, does make some good general points that apply to our current situation:

As new form factors like mobile and tablets demanding new architectures have taken off, Microsoft has rather belatedly realised that it has painted itself into a corner. In an attempt to get it out of that corner, it has just announced that it will be bringing Windows to the increasingly-key ARM architecture.

(...)

Once again, this is a clear demonstration of how Windows is technically behind Linux, for all Microsoft's boasts about its "innovation". The fact of the matter is that when it comes to cross-platform support, Linux is —and has been for a decade— the Alpha and Omega of portability.

Moody is certainly right about that. The key here is, without a doubt, the open source model of development, which allows the Linux community to port its operating system to other architectures, whether or not the move makes "business sense". Obviously, neither Microsoft nor Apple can afford doing that, precisely for the same reasons that commercial Linux firms (Red Hat, Novell, Ubuntu...) cannot make this move either. That is also the reason why Debian (a community-run Linux distribution) maintains so many different ports. It is also the reason why the BSDs tend to maintain their software in more architectures than commercial vendors. The fact that they are open source provides them with far more flexibility. As far as there are volunteers willing to maintain the ports, they will do so. As a consequence, they have also been able to spread into the embedded devices market so easily. {link to this story}

[Sat Jan 8 16:57:09 CET 2011]

Ever had to remove the contents of the Trash folder in GNOME and, for whatever reason, the GUI didn' let you do it? Or perhaps you just don't want to waste your time moving between the terminal and the GUI. Why not remove the contents from the command line itself? Well, it's easy enough. In old versions of GNOME you would find the contents under your own home directory in the ~/.Trash folder. However, that changed in newer versions of the GNOME desktop environment:

$ ls -l ~/.local/share/Trash/
total 28
drwx------ 3 jortega jortega 12288 2011-01-03 08:11 files
drwx------ 2 jortega jortega 16384 2011-01-03 08:11 info

$ ls -l ~/.local/share/Trash/files
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 3 jortega jortega 4096 2011-01-03 08:11 sudo

$ ls -l ~/.local/share/Trash/info/
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 jortega jortega  0 2009-04-21 21:55 apache2-2.2.8.trashinfo
-rw-r--r-- 1 jortega jortega  0 2010-08-04 16:03 PyQt-x11-gpl-3.14.1.trashinfo
-rw-r--r-- 1 jortega jortega 82 2011-01-03 08:07 sudo.trashinfo

As you can see, there are two directories under ~/.local/share/Trash: one of them (files) contains the actual files and directories in the Trash, while the other (info) contains metadata. In order to truly get rid of all the contents you will need to remove them both:

$ rm -rf ~/.local/share/Trash/*

{link to this story}

[Tue Jan 4 19:34:57 CET 2011]

Information Week informs us that Internet Explorer has been dethroned in Europe:

Last January, Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 had a larger market share in Europe (29%) than any other single browser version. The runners-up included IE 8 (23%), IE 7 (16%), Firefox 3.0 (8%), IE 6 (6%), Chrome 3.0 (5%), Safari 4 (3%), and Opera 10 (3%). But taken in total, Microsoft had about 45% of the Eu browser market compared to Firefox's roughly 40%.

(...)

At the end of December 2010, Internet Explorer's share of the EU browser market had fallen to 37.53%. While Firefox is now the most popular browser in Europe, its aggregate market share is lower now than it was last January.

How could this be? Easy. Apparently, MSIE has been losing market not so much to Firefox as to another browser: Chrome. The Google browser, whcih back in January 2010 only had 5% of the market share, now has 14.15%. Now, that's progress! A well-deserved advance too. Chrome is a superb browser. Not only is it fast and lean, but it also comes with nearly as many add-ons as Firefox.

However, the key here is not the quality of the different products, but rather the fact that the European Commission reached a compromise with Microsoft in March 2010 to end the EU antitrust case by which Microsoft had to allow users a choice among different competing browser the first time they tried to connect to the Web from any Windows operating system. I have seen this dialog box myself when booting into the Windows 7 partition of a netbook I was recently setting up for my kids, and the implementation looks clean and fair. It just comes up with a box informing the end user that there are multiple browsers one can choose from, and offers several choices: MSIE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. We ought to acknowledge that, between the actions taken by the US and EU political institutions against a likely Microsoft monopoly and the excellent products designed by both the Mozilla Foundation and Google, the browser market is now the healthiest and liveliest it has been in over a decade. Let's hope it continues being that way. {link to this story}

[Tue Jan 4 17:41:54 CET 2011]

ComputerWorld reports that the Android phones already top the iPhone among recent buyers:

Although Apple's share of the US smartphone market remains slightly ahead of Google's, more buyers in the last six months picked a device powered by the latter's Android OS, Nielsen said today.

According to a November survey by the polling company, an Android handset was selected by 41% of US adult smartphone buyers in the last six months. Apple's iPhone accounted for 27% of the purchases, while a BlackBerry device was the choice of 19%.

If you ask me, it seems clear that it is Research In Motion (the Canadian manufacturer of the BlackBerry) that should be worrying, more than Apple. But, of course, the headline is far more catchy if it portrays the whole thing as a Google vs. Apple mother of all battles... which, to be honest, is precisely what this is shaping up to be anyways. In spite of the fact that I work in the field, I'm usually way behind the curve. I have never been the type of guy who is overly obsessed with gadgets. Yes, I like them, but I see them as tools. As a consequence, my main computer still is an old Dell Latitude D610 and my phone a Nokia E65 (yes, I know, old stuff). Sure, we also have a total of three netbooks and two additional Apple laptops in the house, but that is for the rest of the family. I run the oldest of the old, and that's fine with me. However, judging by what I read, see and hear, my next cell phone will be an Android device without a doubt. {link to this story}

[Mon Jan 3 12:14:52 CET 2011]

After many years, I have finally decided to start reading In the Beginning... Was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson, the author of such well known science fiction novels as Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon or, more recently, Anathem. I must say I found myself chuckling already on page three:

Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealeships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.

There was a competing bicycle leadership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles —expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.

The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.

Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.

Stepehenson goes on to also talk about BeOS and Linux. There is no need to say that BeOS disappeared without a trace (except for the Haiku OS project, of course), but Linux is still there fighting against the biggies. {link to this story}