Vermyndax’s Lair

Last night I was reminded of why Linux’s failure to launch on the desktop will continue. It still does not survive the grandparent’s test.

In my case, my stepfather wished to view videos and flash on the web. That, of course, doesn’t come naturally with Kubuntu, unless you’re wanting to watch video on with a free/open-source codec that is used by about 0.000001% of the web. If you’d like to use Quicktime or WMV, that offers a bit of a challenge.

He called me up and said, “I researched this and read on the forums on how to do it… open up the terminal, make these directories, type this shit and all that shit, some apt-get somethingorother… and what does sudo mean?”

I offered to come over and help. Regardless, I know that automatix2 is the cheap way out of this situation and potentially borks up the system, but with the little time I had to play with, I didn’t have much choice.

Ultimately, the Linux community still just doesn’t get it. Let me reiterate this for you. Your product - the fruits of your labor or whatever you wish to call it - will not… repeat… NOT… EVER… SUCCEED on the desktop until you find a way to make this stuff easy and work out of the box. Period. Stop expecting that grandpa can open up a terminal session and whack his way through commands on the terminal. Give him an icon to click. Then… and only then… will you start to succeed.

Until that day, you will continue to fail in your quest for larger desktop share.

/me shrugs.

Hey, maybe you didn’t want a larger desktop share anyway. If that’s the case, that’s fine. Then you’re succeeding. We’ll just continue on fighting those zombie drones that pick up orders from IRC every day. Not a problem.

Bother.

Update: How ironic that this opinion article just showed up on my feed reader. I did not know there was a heated debate forming on this - but at least this issue is getting recognized by the concerned parties with a stake in the ground.

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Microsoft Watch - Corporate - What Microsoft’s EU Ruling Means to You

Good work, Europeans. You’ve finally delivered what was needed. Too bad the U.S. government was too much of a wuss.

Folks in the cell phone and computer businesses need to wake up to what is going on outside of our country. Perhaps this is the first step toward that end. I congratulate the EU.

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Microsoft Allegedly Bullies and Bribes to Make Office an International Standard

While I know there’s two sides to every story, there’s enough negativity surrounding Microsoft on this issue that I just don’t care to hear their side. Sigh.

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Jeff Jones Security Blog : July 2007 - Operating System Vulnerability Scorecard

Jeff Jones, who makes a living for himself as a security consultant, has released a scorecard for operating systems as they stood around July 2007.

Not surprisingly, the charts are fodder for everyone to bolster their arguments about which OS is better, which therefore just doesn’t prove much at all… except perhaps the definition of the word “futility.”

A wise man in a poopy-brown robe with a coffee-colored tunic and a glowing blue line all around his silhouette once said, “…you’ll find that many things depend on your point of view.”

Oh yeah, that guy carried a big, glowing sword that slices through flesh like butter.

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Groklaw - Court Rules: Novell owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights! Novell has right to waive!

Thus for SCO… begins the end.

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I love the ‘net. Only on the net can you say things and expect them to haunt you months, or even years later. Hell, I may be eating crow in a matter of minutes for calling Mary Jo Foley an idiot for claiming Apple licensed Exchange ActiveSync - and I’ll be proud to do it.

Somehow though, I get the feeling that Steve Ballmer will not be so proud of this 2:20 clip when Friday rolls around.

I have to make a very clear observation at this point.

This is a man who is absolutely proud of the Motorola Q. He’s proud of how much it costs and even goes so far as to call it innovative. This was January of this year (2007, in case this blog is around that long). As a person who carries a Motorola Q every day but barely uses it…

…BECAUSE THE IDIOTS THAT SHIPPED A BATTERY WITH THAT PIECE OF DOGSHIT DIDN’T REALIZE I MIGHT WANT TO SPEND MORE THAN 10 GODDAMN MINUTES ON THE PHONE, OR THAT I MIGHT BE ANNOYED BY THE FACT THAT IT FEELS SO INCLINED TO RETURN TO THE HOME SCREEN EVERY 10 SECONDS NO MATTER WHAT THE HELL I TELL IT TO DO… NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT WINDOWS MOBILE IS MORE CRASH HAPPY THAN WINDOWS VISTA EXCUSE ME… WINDOWS MILLENNIUM 2007…

Oh… my… God. Truly, this is a CEO out of touch with the world. Folks… run… run from Microsoft. They are killing you. You sad people pods are nothing but coccoons for your brains to swell up and burst from the terrible reality known as a Microsoft universe… those games that you so proud drown in… they are nothing but a hook sent there to make you swallow the wrong pill (sorry, I don’t remember the colors)… run… please run…

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Microsoft’s anti-virtualization stance: forget DRM, think Apple

This is a fantastic analysis on why Microsoft doesn’t want you to virtualize the cheaper SKUs of Vista. It reads a little like a conspiracy theory, but the bottom line is always the same. Isn’t it always?

This one’s for you, Whitey. Yeah, it’s purely designed to piss you off and make you get a Mac

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I spoke with a developer here at WWDC who is deploying Exchange 2007. He said that the Linux/UNIX folks on Evolution are finding it impossible to use due to some kind of webdav issues introduced with Exchange 2007.

I’ve not yet had a chance to test/play with this to look into it deeper. I will get a chance to do so next month. However, as I said before, Exchange 2007 introduced web services for working with your mail and that’s where Evolution needs to go. Webdav is officially deprecated in 2007 and will be completely absent from the next Exchange server. Evolution needs to uhh… evolve.

Maybe 2007 SP1 will fix some of the webdav issues in the meantime.

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Paul Thurrott has said numerous times in his blog and on the Windows Weekly podcast that he feels that Linux does not innovate.

This is a pretty broad statement and I find myself in violent disagreement.

Whenever I install a Linux distribution to play with… which is usually how it always ends up, since I run into issues… I find myself installing and using software that I wish would be running on Windows or the Mac. I often find myself saying… “Self… why doesn’t the (such and such) platform have an app like this?”

Linux does innovate - quite well, actually.

The problem is that Linux innovates but cares very little about making software problem free. I often feel that open source developers are pushed by the hunger of making an application bend to their will. They come up with a fantastic idea, write it, publish it and it gets widely adopted by whatever package management application will pick it up. The software becomes popular.

Then, a major bug is found in the functionality of the program… i.e. functionality that is advertised but doesn’t work. Take, for example, many builds of the KMail PIM suite. It advertises that it works with Exchange via plugins but I challenge you to make it work reliably. File a bug against it and what happens? Your bug is largely ignored because the developer or package maintainer does not have a vested interest in fixing it.

In my mind, the problem with open source development today is not that there’s a lack of innovation. There’s just a lack of making it work as advertised.

That will keep Linux in the shadows. That’s probably good for most die-hard Linux fans though.

One other item I will share. A lot of times when I wish that a Linux app exists on another platform - I often find it on another platform… namely, OS X. To top it off, usually the app is done well and relatively bug free as a bonus.

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Paul Thurrott’s Internet Nexus - A technology blog

On this post, Paul Thurrott points out the install base of Windows Vista is 40 million strong… so sayeth Bill Gates. Despite all of the negative press, Vista has a strong presence in the industry and is already installed on more machines than non-Microsoft products.

I echo Paul… “I get it.” However, what no one is able to measure unfortunately, is how many people are uninstalling Vista to roll back to XP or another operating system. Reporting that sales of Vista is 40 million strong does not mean that there are 40 million PCs using it. Every day, I read posts about people trying to weather Vista and failing.

I still sense a change in the industry’s attitude toward Microsoft products. The corporate types at Redmond may not be able to smell it, but from here on the ground I do not see much in the way of positive Vista developments. Even the revolt over at Windows Central somewhat succeeded - as the admin of that site finally gave in and rolled back to XP64. Granted, it wasn’t because of the revolt - but rather because he could no longer use Vista to get through his daily battle.

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