Linux

Overheard - Karmic Koala comes with GRUB 2

“Ubuntu 9.10, codenamed Karmic Koala, is the next major release of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution…The alpha 2 release ships with GRUB 2, the next-generation of GNU’s GRUB bootloader.” Ryan Paul, First look: Ubuntu 9.10 alpha 2 brings Ext4, GRUB 2

There are still some aspects of GRUB 2 that are not yet working properly in this alpha release, the most notable of which is support for booting other operating systems. Users with multiboot configurations are encouraged to wait for alpha 3 or use a workaround to install GRUB 1. The Ubuntu developers are seeking help from the community to test the new version of GRUB on a wide range of hardware configurations. Testing instructions and a growing list of results can be found at the Ubuntu wiki.

If you want to test alpha 2 yourself, you can download a CD image from the Ubuntu website.

Moblin - Reinventing the Linux desktop

“Moblin may be plain old Linux under the hood, but the Intel-backed project for netbooks has managed to pull off the unthinkable: it’s made Linux look cool.” Gary Marshall, At last! Moblin has made Linux look cool!

Allow me to introduce you to Gary Marshall. Here is a perfect example of why I like him so much.

“With most technology, looking into it is like shopping for a new and exciting car. We’ll happily spend days scanning brochures, reading reviews and coming up with increasingly imaginative and expensive configurations.

With Linux, though, it’s more like shopping for a new central heating boiler. You know it’s going to be worthwhile and you know it’s going to save you money, but it’s hard to summon up much enthusiasm. Oh look. It’s a boiler. Oh look. It’s another boiler. Oh look. It’s a slightly different boiler. Oh look. I’ve wasted my life.”

Overheard - Switching operating systems is like going to Burger King and trying to order a Big Mac

People encountering Ubuntu for the first time will find it very similar to Windows. The operating system has a slick graphical interface, familiar menus and all the common desktop software: a Web browser, an e-mail program, instant-messaging software and a free suite of programs for creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Ashlee Vance, A Software Populist Who Doesn’t Do Windows

There’s a big blogswarm right now about about whether or not Ubuntu is easy to use.

It all started when a college student in Madison Wisconsin bought a Dell laptop for a distance learning class and the computer arrived with Unbuntu Linux as the operating system.  She was not a happy customer because she wanted Windows — so she went to the local TV station to get some help. The story got picked up by Digg and by Slashdot and Linux bloggers everywhere and the poor girl was bombarded with hate comments.

I’m just not getting it.

Is this an Ubuntu story?  Or is it a dissatisfied customer story?  It’s certainly NOT a story about how girls are stupid idiots and should not be allowed near a laptop running Linux.  But that’s what you might think from reading some of the trash floating around the blogosphere.

Sure, Ubuntu might look like Windows — but hey guys, does it work exactly like Windows?  That is, can you really expect the average college kid who’s grown up using Windows to open a laptop running Ubuntu without a hitch?  Apparently someone at Dell tech support thought so.  That is until he started getting blaimstormed in the media for ending this Wisconsin student’s college career.

The whole thing is kind of silly.  It’s not the girl’s fault, it’s not the tech support guy’s fault and it has nothing to do with Ubuntu.

You’d have the same problem if you asked a Windows’ user who’s never used a Mac to start work tomorrow using  OS X . There are going to be some moments of confusion and getting lost.  It would be silly to presume otherwise. Yeah, the basics are still the same, but things are put in different places and tools are called by different names.  It’s just OS culture shock.  You have a panic attack and you get over it. That’s all that happened to that poor girl in Wisconsin.

The real story here is “What is Dell doing shipping laptops with Ubuntu as the default OS?”

Aha! Now THAT’S an interesting story.  You see, Mark Shuttleworth — who describes himself as a billionaire, bachelor and ex-cosmonaut — has teamed up with Dell to make Ubuntu the operating system of choice for low-end laptops.  And he’s not doing it for the money. He’s doing it because he likes the challenge.  (And what’s more challenging than selling something the customer can get for free?)

His company’s name is Canonical.  According to New York Times it’s worth $30 million right now. Keep an eye out for Mark Shuttleworth.  Like Bill Gates, he’s an intriguing mix of businessman-humanitarian.  Mark Shuttleworth is going to be a very interesting personality to follow as the world’s economy recovers from the Crash of ‘08.

Overheard - JBoss is Red Hat’s golden goose

Red Hat’s JBoss business is growing twice as fast as its Linux business, and it delivers $10 in consulting fees for every $1 in subscription revenue. This means that JBoss is much more interesting to Red Hat’s channel than Red Hat Enterprise Linux is. It also means that JBoss should be the foundation for Red Hat getting into the application business in earnest. Matt Asay, Red Hat: JBoss growing twice as fast as Linux

JEMS is available from Red Hat through subscriptions that include certified software, support, updates and patches, documentation and multi-year maintenance policies.

Note: I’m starting to hear “cloud services” being called “middleware” again.  Cloud computing = middleware as a service (MaaS)?  I don’t think it’ll stick.  The acronym is pronounced Mass and will just remind the user that when his stuff is in the cloud and he’s given up all that control,  he’d better pray.

Overheard: Heartbeat is the brains

Heartbeat is the brains used to automate all the steps needed to determine if a node is down, and run all the steps needed to bring the spare node up as primary. Mark Schoonover, MySQL 5 High Availability with DRBD 8 and Heartbeat 2

Overheard: Linus Torvalds loves penguins, dislikes monkeys

Security people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can’t stand. I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them. Linus Torvalds, in an email to the Linux kernel developer mailing list

The man has a way with words. Here’s his explanation.

Overheard: HA clusters

HA clusters are deployed for the purpose of improving accessibility to the application, in the event of a hardware failure. They do this by incorporating redundant nodes that provide the capability. Ken Milberg, Linux clusters vs. grids

Overheard: Is Firefox 3 really ready for prime time?

It’s clearly come a long way, but with all the download hype, is Mozilla pushing out a not-quite solid product just for a publicity stunt? Fahmida Y. Rashid, Firefox 3 on Linux: Questions about Stability

Today is Download Day 2008 for Firefox 3. Mozilla is attempting to set a Guinness Book of World Records for the largest number of software downloads within a 24-hour period. I sort of want to join in the fun - but I just can’t risk it today — too many fires already.

Overheard: Linux desktop flunks the parent test

The day where I can recommend that my father use Linux (without the fear of him calling me on a daily basis to fix things) is the day I’ll proclaim the “year of the Linux desktop” has arrived. Wayne Richardson, Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 Release Notes Rewritten in Plain English

You could have said the same thing about Windows ten years ago.  Remember drivers and .DLL files?  I think the learning curve is going to be the same no matter what operating system you start with. It’s no different for Linux on the desktop. The navigation, jargon and acronyms are always going to be confusing the first time you jump into a new OS.

Overheard: Hardy Heron flunks the girlfriend test

Linux won’t truly be ready for the desktop until someone computer illiterate can sit down at a the computer and with little effort do what they want to do. Content Consumer, The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment

The Linux on the Desktop debate continues. Lots of buzz this week about this guy who had his girlfriend try out Ubuntu’s latest release, Hardy Heron. (Love the codenames!)

It seems the guy (Content Consumer) had his girlfriend perform 12 tasks — ordinary things like watching a video on YouTube or changing the mouse speed. Nothing fancy.

And guess what? She had trouble. His conclusion?

Conclusion
The main issue with the desktop experience is that the geeky programmers and designers assume too much from the average user. They assume the user knows about the way in which programs are installed, or how the file system is set out. The average user will not go out of their way to google for help or even read the associated documentation that comes with Ubuntu and its default software. The little information pop-ups and guided wizards are critical to explaining how the user can accomplish the basic tasks they most probably are trying to do.

For those of you who’ve never even seen Linux on a desktop, Shawn Powers from Linux Journal gives you a high-level look-see. And here are the release notes from Wayne Richardson in plain English.