A desktop for new Linux users – some thoughts

Posted on January 3, 2012 by

There is an Estonian legend telling about the Old Man of Ülemiste (Lake Ülemiste is the water source for most of Tallinn, the capital) visiting the city gates every midsummer and asking if the city is ready. The guards are instructed to answer negatively – as the Old Man will drown the city when it’s finished. Luckily, no city will ever be completed.

And neither will Free and Open-Source Software.

That said, during the last two years, the development of mainstream Linux distros has reached a nasty sort of limbo. Starting from the early days of Mandrake and Red Hat (I moved to Linux in August 2000), there have almost always been some efforts around to make Linux understandable for ordinary people as well. Sure, for several years it was still ‘hacker stuff’ but the effort was there.  Slowly and gradually, Linux distros became more usable – the whole new boost was given to it with the emergence of Ubuntu in the mid-2000s.

I don’t know if it was some kind of collective madness, some insidious death rays sent by aliens bribed by proprietary software companies, or the fear of losing one’s job when Linux is ready (did they meet the Old Man of Ülemiste?) – anyhow, somewhere around 2010 it happened.  It was the long anticipated “Year of Desktop Linux”, but with a minus sign. First, KDE 4 was a royal bummer. Then the upcoming GNOME 3 decided to follow. And finally, the makers of THE Linux for Ordinary People and the ones who initially had helped a lot to make free software easier to use – Canonical – dreamed up a huge turd of a desktop, named it Unity and decided to force everyone to use it.

Sure, the users’ uproar was there – and Ubuntu has since then lost its top place at the Distrowatch list, practically for the first time after its introduction. Yet, those roaring hacker types flicked up a finger towards Canonical, mumbled some obscenities and then proceeded to download and install Fedora, Debian, Arch, OpenSuse etc (and dumping the bloated desktops for XFCE, LXDE, Fluxbox and others).  But the newcomers were silently unhappy.  And a number of them went back to Windows (some richer ones went to Apple, too).

I personally have used the pre-madness Ubuntu 10.04 LTS since (long support and works well with data projectors – something an academic needs daily; it was also messed up in new versions). Yet, after a year of confusion, I now may at least have something to install on the ordinary guy’s machine.

The (at least temporary) solution is Linux Mint 12 (which incidentally is the new top guy on the Distrowatch list)  with the MATE desktop (a fork of the pre-madness GNOME 2). It is possible to set up a nice workplace with configurability, less bloat and still nice appearance.

What I did:
* installed the packages compizconfig-settings-manager (with dependencies) and compiz-fusion-plugins-main (enabling some nice things like Shift and Ring Switcher in Compiz)
* added the line ‘compiz –replace’ to the Startup list
* restarted and switched the session to MATE

Optionally, to achieve a Mac-like dock functionality and to reduce the messy-ish Mint menu to a backup feature:
* install avant-window-navigator and awn-settings (with dependencies)
* add the ‘avant-window-navigator’ to the Startup list
* move the bottom panel to the top and perhaps make it almost transparent
* to switch  tasks, I use the Rotate Cube for workspaces and Ring Switcher for windows, but there are other ways
* an idea is also use some the top panel for some icons which run rarely needed administrative tasks (in order to separate them from the everyday stuff in the dock).

I haven’t had a chance to test out data projectors yet – but if the configuration handles them well, I’ll likely also switch. At least this is something that I could set up for my parents without scaring them unconscious.

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Wow!

Posted on October 9, 2011 by

In my various lectures about legal aspects of IT, I’ve often used the hypothetical example of “what if Sir Timothy Berners-Lee had patented the Web?” (it would have been able to start developing freely from the year we have now). I’ve also always thought the example as a bit hyperbolic – in the same class with the FFII webshop.

And now Cory Doctorow tells us that some dude suggests in all honesty that it would have been a great idea. Sure, I’ve seen this kind of people before – but none of them have been in charge of a UN-level organization. Excessive use of a neck-tie…?

Joe Bauers aka Not Sure in the Idiocracy movie probably felt a bit similar after waking up at Buttfuckers.

Still, some other news suggest a bit better scenario – the Greens at the European Parliament have apparently grokked it. Even if they are few, the fact itself occurring at the EP level is notable indeed.

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Backfired

Posted on September 9, 2011 by

Some time ago, the Tibetan Dalai Lama visited Tallinn. He has been here a couple of times before, always drawing ire from the Chinese government. This time, the reaction was to drop a minister’s planned visit to China, something else may be in reserve yet. But this is not the point that I wanted to write about. Rather, today’s Postimees (a major newspaper in Estonia) featured an 8-page inlay portion “purchased by China”.

Felt like 1982 or so. As a child, I started to read early and took on newspapers early as well. Growing up on Soviet-time literature kept me believing the Commie stuff for quite a while (honest!) – on the other hand, the Soviet newspapers were partially responsible for bringing me back to reality. They were just far too stuffed with unreal propaganda to be believed. Having grown into a full-fledged anti-Communist since, the today’s experience was like having an old nightmare suddenly come back. It was a book example of red propaganda in all its exaggeration.

Looking back to the days in the early 80s, I need to give some praise to Estonian media of the times. They occasionally found ways to put some twist into it, to be found by those willing to read between the lines.  One of the classic examples was the famous “Sitta kah!” cartoon during the 80s phosphorite war (the Soviets planned to start mining phosphorite in Eastern Estonia, the result was estimated to have turned 1/3 of the country into waste; this was the first large-scale, national protest movement which contributed heavily to the larger events following soon after – see the Wikipedia article for more). The cartoon featured a farmer shoveling dung to his field – with the biggest chunk looking like the silhouette of Estonia. “Sitta kah!” can be literally translated as “let’s add some shit” (to the field), but the common meaning of the phrase is rather “f… it!” or “to hell with that!” (I think the Wikipedia translation – “just shit” – does not convey the full meaning).  The cartoon caused a huge scandal, some ‘comrades’ were reprimanded, but the damage was done.

Among other things, this was the time of a kind of revelation – many Estonians who had been sedated by Soviet propaganda suddenly saw through it. And even if 25 years have passed, many of them are still alive and active. The today’s uproar in Estonian media proved that they largely shared the same “WTF???” moment with me.

I’m afraid that the Chinese government could not have picked a more inappropriate place in Europe to publish a paper like that. If some people were indifferent or … er, pragmatic (in political context, this usually means cynical cowardice) before that, they were convinced towards a totally different set of opinions from what the Chinese wanted to achieve. More than likely, the publication of the paper did more harm to the Chinese governmental interests than the visit of Dalai Lama. And Postimees has been hit by a far worse amount of virtual manure than what was featured in the cartoon (some critics ask if they would also be willing to publish stories purchased by the Kremlin – like how the mass deportations of 1941 and 1949 were actually tourist events…).  If this is not a blatant example of journalism for sale, then what it is?

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EPFSUG

Posted on August 20, 2011 by

…, the European Parliament Free Software User Group,  is apparently getting some wind into its sails. After visiting the EP last Spring,  I did not hope for such changes they are now trying to accomplish. Good work – and it’s nice that an Estonian MEP has taken on the principal role there.

It is also possible to become their supporter – it’s not limited to the people at the EP.

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Stealing the (very) old dreams

Posted on July 24, 2011 by

The JSTOR affair is really a new level of absurdity in the already pretty crazy world of ‘intellectual property’.  A very good overview is provided by Glyn Moody at his Open Enterprise blog.

The man who copied a bunch of ancient articles from the MIT server is charged for theft (and not copyright infringement  which could at least make some borderline sense!). To make things far worse, the US Attorney displays utter ignorance in understanding things digital. The latter is actually the real reason why this case is really important to get right – like cancer,  ignorant legislation tends to spread rapidly and is lethal if not treated early on.

Another issue is what was already touched earlier here and what is also pointed out by Moody -  most of the academic work has been paid by taxpayers already. This is just another case of double charge from customers seen so much in academic publishing – only this time, the stuff sold is old (in terms of copyright) as well.

And as pointed out by one of the commenters at OE, these same articles are still sold for tens of US dollars a piece. If this is what JSTOR deems affordable, they can really afford far too much.

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LPI partnership

Posted on May 25, 2011 by

It’s finally done – Estonian Information Technology College is the first Estonian Approved Academic Partner of Linux Professional Institute.

While Linux has always been a part of EITC curriculum (all labs have been in dual-boot since the beginning), it did not have any formal recognition scheme until now. We checked all the major players – Red Hat training partnership was far too extensive (and thus expensive) for us, Novell/SUSE was caught in the winds of change at the time.  As a little unpleasant surprise for a strongly Ubuntu-oriented facility – we managed to run into a polite but droidy “no, thanks” response from Canonical. Twice. LPI was the only one whose reply gave us hope.

While we have had a number of established Linux users on staff for years, none of them were LPI-certified. So I had to pass the LPI 101 and 102 exams in April – and as a pleasant boon, received the Certified Linux Administrator from Novell as well (thanks to their partnership). The College paid half the price on my behalf, which I consider a fair deal – the following exam-goers are already going to receive LPI discounts. So starting from the coming autumn, students who pass the Linux course will be offered a chance to pass LPIC-1 cert exams (in a way similar to already existing Cisco and Microsoft cert programmes). A similar training course will be also offered by the complementary education department.

IMHO, a nice precedent in otherwise far too Microsofty Estonia. Kudos go to Ms Brooke Gresham from LPI for her helpfulness all along the formal recognition process.

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The same old tired song

Posted on May 12, 2011 by

BSA Estonia is apparently still not tired of singing the same stale litany… Quoting the article from ERR:

“On one side, people have a habit of unknowingly using unlicensed software, and secondly, there is a popular misconception that using pirated software does not harm anyone,” said Uduste. “They tend to forget that this activity inhibits the development of the IT sector as well as innovation, because no one wants to improve their product, knowing that it is constantly being stolen.”

Mr Uduste has either never heard of free and open-source software (and its business models, as well as its real relation to innovation) – which I actually doubt -  or is (hopefully not) deliberately misleading. Really, this kind of rhetorics was old already in the 90s. The disciples of Microsoft can actually argument much better than this.

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Taming Natty

Posted on April 28, 2011 by

A true geek should try out his main Linux distro on the same day the  new version comes out. I did.

Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal started out all well when used on my workplace desktop. The Estonian localization that had somehow disappeared some releases ago from the installation (it was still available for later addition) was finally back. The installation went without a hitch and looked slicker than ever. The machine has a mid-range NVidia graphics card, but the system warned me that Unity cannot be used without 3D drivers. Fair enough – the extra drivers option (as we are fortunate to live in a country that still does not have software patents) made their installation a breeze. Before the necessary restart, I had a brief look on the new system – apart from the new GNOME 3, some substitutions like Banshee or Shotwell were seen. But otherwise it was just the ol’ good Ubuntu. Until the restart.

After that, as if by some miracle, my fully functional Linux desktop turned into a tablet. Or a mobile phone (my HTC Desire with its Sense interface looks quite similar).  Although I knew that Unity was originally designed for netbooks, I did not expect it to be usable ONLY there – it was pretty, but with a very limited functionality and nearly inconfigurable.  Trying to mine for more applications besides the default Firefox and LibreOffice gave me a mixture of existing and could-be-installed apps. Looked a bit like an ancient version of Mandrake on LSD….  The main dock could neither be moved nor edited (Come on! Windows may be a dungpile, but no Windows has had such levels of crap).  Whoever is responsible for the usability of Unity deserves some really bad things.

What really baffled me: if such a novel interface as Unity is used on the official release for the first time, it would be expected to a) be offered as a choice for the adventure-minded during the installation rather than being the default option, and b) have a clearly marked way out, i.e. have a “Switch to classic interface” option at a highly visible place (again – Microsoft got it when they turned their sensible Control Panel into some Teletubby-themed mess in XP; at least the  “Classic” link was right there). No.

After the initial attempt to revert back to classic GNOME failed and left me without some graphical components, I decided that reinstall is easier than trying to hack the system back into usable. Thus I discovered a positive new thing – unlike my other machines, this desktop is dual-boot with Vista (the workplace staple). Natty had a new “Reinstall Ubuntu” option which left Vista intact and did a fresh Natty install. Other positive notions include Firefox playing MP3s and Youtube videos out of the box as well as FreeCol running on OpenJDK.

After some time of messing around, I finally had a functional Ubuntu desktop with classic look and 3D effects. Nothing bad to say. But I still fail to see why on Earth was such an immature piece of software as Unity passed as a default user interface of THE Linux (for many ordinary people, Ubuntu is just that).  If Ubuntu 11.10 does the same, I’ll be off to Debian or whatever more sane options there will be.

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The system is broken

Posted on April 26, 2011 by

I read the article by Mark C. Taylor – even if he seems to overgeneralise some aspects, I have to agree with his main ideas. But I think that  the main problem lies not in overproduction of PhDs, but in the structural problems in academic life (the former is rather a result of the latter).

The academy is in a crisis, and this is not only due to downtrodden economy (in some places, it made things worse, while in others it even helped to clear the air somewhat). It actually started  much earlier.

The academic freedom that once allowed academics to pursue their goals without outside pressure has now become an excuse for playing with redundant things.  Getting in project and grant money is paramount, the real impact of the research is often an afterthought. As a result, many of the researchers who are highly valued for their publications do not teach – they either are unable to, unwilling -  or more and more, unwelcomed by their students for having been totally alienated from real-life problems and issues.

Peer review, the once-working quality assurance system to maintain high scientific standard, has turned into an abstract game (usually named “Publish or Perish”) of mastering the art of paper writing (where following the set of rules is far more important than having something substantial  to say) as well as building the necessary social network where “WHOM do you know” becomes far more crucial than “WHAT do you know”.

And to top it off, the whole academic publishing industry runs on a seriously skewed business model which allows publishers to collect the research results from academics free of charge (as they have to be grateful to get their article in) and sell the results back for exorbitant prices, making the results inaccessible for researchers from poorer countries and thus widening the gap further. Open Access is making slow inroads, but the old system still dominates.

The whole system has turned into a caricature of its former self, regardless of geographical location or cultural differences – the problems seem to be alike in every corner of the (academic) world.

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Hackers and Vatican

Posted on April 7, 2011 by

It all started with the article by Father Spadaro reviewed here. Then came the Slashdot discussion. Then ESR commented on it.

If anything, it suggests that a certain kind of atheism is an intolerant religion by itself. Even ESR seems to lose some of his usual reason to a somewhat uncontrollable urge to throw dung at the church. A little sad.

That said, Christian hackers actually do exist. Tom Pittman’s famous quote was included in the original article, but is also featured in the Hackers by Steven Levy and elsewhere.  There are others -  Donald Knuth comes to mind, or Johnny Long (whose work seems to be both definitely hackish and definitely Christian). Granted, Christians are a minority in the hacker culture but they do exist (“Conventional faith-holding Christianity is rare though not unknown.”). Labelling some community members as “delusional” does not help the common cause at all.

 

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