C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

What can you tell me about Mezzo, the new desktop environment for a Debian-based flavor of Linux called Symphony OS? This looks exciting and I can't wait to play around and experiment with it. I don't like downloading a program in Linux and then wondering where it went. Any interface that actually puts my programs where I can find the start icon after I install them will have me for a faithful user. Here's hoping it does so. I'm currently running Ubuntu, so I wonder if this desktop environment be downloaded to run on any other Linux than Symphony. Also, would a new desktop environment be restricted to running only programs developed specifically for it?

Mezzo is based on the Laws of Interface Design. Instead of a start menu, the four categories (computer settings, programs, documents, trash) are assigned a corner of the screen and accessed by ramming the mouse into a corner and clicking. When dragging/resizing application windows, the edges of the screen are solid so you can't lose them out of view. The desktop-as-folder is done away with. Technically there are no "icons" in the sense of something that can be moved like a piece of paper on a desk surface-- only buttons with icon pictures and captions. Other than the MacOSX-dock-like area, the desktop normally is covered only in nine slots for widgets just like the ones in Konfabulator. This is how it looks when you have some application windows un-minimized. (You can still put a background image behind the widgets, if I understand correctly.) Clicking a corner of the screen auto-minimizes all windows into the dock and covers the screen (except the dock) in that interface. There are no drop-down nested menus or scrolling in the file browser or the screens the corners bring up; instead, the view of the list zooms out until it fits. Drop-downs and scroll bars only appear in applications, since they've been pre-programmed that way.

Reportedly, in his OSCON keynote Paul Graham said "People don't switch to open source because they want to hack the code. People switch to Firefox because its better. Microsoft can't pay people enough to build something better than the people who are building it out of love." What's incongruous is that so many in tech have denied the existence of the type of FLOSS developer who is competing for my usage. The Firefox kind, whose attitude is "We're here to increase open source market share and save the world from Trusted Computing domination. We're here to compete and win. So we design for easy entry for n00bs instead of just driving them off with RTFM." I thought I had recently been told that Linux was only intended for power users and TUX Magazine is engaging in false advertising by claiming it was ready for the desktop. I thought I had been told that open source programmers write software only for themselves and none of them are driven by socially-conscious free-culture hippie egalitarianism. Then why are Symphony and Mezzo being created at all? The site names their mission "the easiest to use Linux experience there is." That doesn't say "power user" to me. Are shoemaker elves doing that? No, the Firefox kind of open source programmer is doing that. That's what gives me some hope for desktop-focused open source operating systems to be viable within the next decade. They are tantalizing me with promises...

P.S. As you can see from the concept images, it appears that Jason Spisak (or someone) badly needs a proofreader. Since I can do graphics, maybe I could do that for the open source community if I knew who to talk to about it.

I am pleased to report that hope pings eternal in the Linux-for-humans breast.

The problem with installing an application from CD to the laptop was a defect on the disk. My frustration was before I found the package manager, or to borrow a phrase I once heard netmouse use, "the Magical Man that Gets Things Done." The Ubuntu folks on the IRC channel assure me that new users are not expected to compile source code or hack scripts every time they want to install applications. It is not normal and accepted anymore and they do not want me to just get used to it. Tux Racer is not a flagship desktop-user product and should not be taken as representative of the effort to compete with Windows or Mac. Also, R's laptop has connectivity problems because it has buggy ethernet hardware and there is something idiosyncratic with the way the Gateway Solo 5300 talks to wireless cards. Linux can't detect what isn't there.

( Read more... )Ubuntu does not suffer from the design philosophy that turns the entire computing experience into guessing a series of what amount to cryptic passwords. There do exist builds of Linux that are ready to replace Windows or Mac-- if you're lucky with hardware compatibility and go directly to the Ubuntu-specific community when you need help.

Emboldened by these successes, I am prepared to venture into unsafe territory and begin to learn more ambitious things.( Read more... )

I can't get any sleep thinking about it so I might as well express it. At least I don't have to go to work tomorrow.

I had a huge epiphany today about Linux. I sat there and said "what the hell am I even doing this for?" Remind me again (I asked myself), what is the benefit in this, to me? When is the last time Windows crashed? I can't remember. What do I want to run on Linux that I can't run on Windows? I have Firefox, Open Office and The Gimp on Windows. This week I've been using free, open source desktop publishing, video and audio editing software on Windows and it's been a wonderful experience. Not to mention the countless free and open source web services. My support for free and open source software is as high as ever.

Except I no longer want to run Linux. What finally broke me on it was not the problems. All operating systems have problems. It was the horror of the solution. It was presented as normal, accepted, and even a positive. That was when I realized: "The promised land is never going to come. I am already here. This is it and I don't like it. This is normality. This would be happening if I bought a new computer with Ubuntu preinstalled and bought a year's worth of tech support. I cannot get around using the command line interface."

I am only lazy in a good way, the way that keeps you from chopping down a tree with a herring. It occurred to me, why should I learn command line? What do I gain? I thought I was getting a free operating system, but there are financial costs and there are work costs. From my perspective the cost to benefit ratio makes no sense! I would spend a lot of unpleasant time learning something I don't find interesting, in order to accomplish... well... I honestly have no idea. I have to take people's word for it what vague and nebulous benefits there are to this command line. I haven't needed it since DOS, and DOS is not something I want to go back to. Ever.

As those who know me are aware, I react very strongly to disillusionment. I should not have said in the comments to my last entry that Linux "broke" the computer. The most exquisite tool is just as good as broken when I apply it to the wrong problem. When I have a step down from my happy and content Windows experience, rather than a step up, then from a very context-dependent point of view it's kind of like I broke my experience. Linux doesn't "work" in the sense of not needing you to hold its hand. You know? The earth, the sun, my hearbeat, Palm OS, Firefox, these work. When your heartbeat needs you to "hold it's hand" with a pacemaker, it's broken. When your heart keeps asking you to tell it to beat with a command line interface you could sort of say it's working, in that you're not dead, but it seems your standards have shifted weirdly. "You know how important it is to be in the driver's seat of your hardware; we can't have autonomous heartbeats because you never know when you might need to hide your presence from the supernatural hearing of ninjas." I don't want to lose CD autoplay, or associating file types with actions, or lists of clickable options. I don't want to lose prompts and actions attached to every point in the interface, from which I can learn what to do next.

Well, it didn't take long to realize what had been motivating me in the first place-- rhetoric. All the coolest people were, and still are, in open source software. What I was gaining (in my mind) was solidarity with an idealistic social movement. Viva la teçhnōliberáčion. I don't want anticompetitive corporations to own the whole world with intellectual property, which in the future will be just about the only kind of property there is. Justice, freedom, monopoly-busting, equality, democracy, global brotherhood, access for the little guy-- it might as well have been goddamn control of the goddamn means of goddamn production, if you can believe that. Anything but what I could actually do with a tool! How embarrasing. Oh well. Lesson learned, and not for the first time. Now I have to make sure not to be a fool and have to learn it again.

Victory! Dan DeSloover from Monroe Linux User Group has gotten cosette_valjean's laptop to work with the network. Ironically, I recently installed Ubuntu on it to fix the difficulty we had with getting WinXP to network. I am typing this on Linux. Awesome!

There's a lot for me to say about Penguicon over the next few days. Three of my events were very successful and popular and are requested for next year by popular acclaim: the Pantropia game on a Hoberman sphere, the Lojban class and the coffee ritual. Also I'm pleased to have received plenty of appreciation for the program book and wall schedule.

I was stressed out about the info kiosks on Friday. They worked and worked and worked, and then got to the hotel and stopped working. The invaluable webmaster Ron Blanchett worked tirelessly on it for hours instead of all the fun things he could have been doing. We got them mostly working most of the time. That's a step in the right direction!

Last year I was dis-satisfied with the computer room and dedicated myself to fulfilling its potential. I definitely failed at this. I don't know enough tech geeks personally. I plastered prominent requests on the website and mailers for months about bringing computers to the convention and still, people hardly did so. I currently have an entire spindle of CDs that went un-burned, and an entire box of labels for hardware check-in that mostly went unprinted. Thanks to the three people who volunteered to be computer room attendants, including twoofdtm. I was wondering if no one cared and I should give up, until Charles Ulrich volunteered the efforts of Lansing LUG and restored my hopes.

How fondly I remember my first introduction to Linux at 2.0, having not seen it at all during 1.0. I vividly recall all the things Rich Clark showed me that Linux could do. He inspired me for the potential of this feature of Penguicon. This experience must happen to other newbies in the computer room. If only I were a tech geek who could do that myself.

More about the con report later.

Thanks to phecda for this link to an Australian bake-off between installing Mac, Windows and Linux. It's interesting that their preferred version was Xandros, which I have been running on my already-existing Linux box for almost a year. I gave up on it because whenever I found cool software that I wanted to install, it was only available for two or three of the more common distros. Trying to install software, or even find it after it had been installed, made me want to throw the keyboard at the wall-- I thought a more popular distro would help that, not exacerbate it as the article hints. I installed Firefox on Xandros and then it only gave error messages when I tried to run it. This is the Open Source Web Browser, the end-user-desktop Killer App that I give to my friends, the only browser I use. It works great on Windows!

It's only just recently I found out the graphical user interface of Linux comes in varieties such as KDE, GNOME, etc., and is not part of the operating system. I always thought "operating system" = "desktop environment" and vice-versa. So apparently I'm stuck with the same experience I already had trouble with, no matter which distro I use. I'll get one of those For Dummies books-- they're great. I will master GUI before I even get started on the command line interface, because CLI is like driving with a stick-shift. It's like wearing a blindfold, feeling my way by memory in a 100,000 square foot warehouse full of shin-cracking footstools. At least with a GUI I have some use for the computer while I'm stumbling around in that.

I guess my reluctance to use that computer has just as much to do with the fact that I can't get the CD drive to work, and it's running on a Pentium 2. Now I have to seriously ask myself if I want to spend hundreds of dollars on a new computer with decent performance just to replace what's not broken: I've always been satisfied with my WindowsXP experience on an AthlonXP 2.4 Ghz, but I always want to do better or more if somebody tells me it's out there. The only two reasons I wanted Linux were #1: the word "free", and #2 everybody else told me I'd like it. So much for free. Just because you can run Linux on a toaster or a dead badger doesn't necessarily mean there's any reason to do so. This claim is deceptive to newbies who don't know the difference between OS and GUI. The real Linux is just a kernel, which sits there saying, "oh wow, I'm a kernel on a toaster, look at me."

I was correct when I said that helping to run Penguicon, I have got to get Linux. I just didn't realize the reason at the time-- the real reason is to get past the hype and learn the provisos and quid-pro-quos. That's why my determination is still resolute, but now I'm reserving judgement.

With a sense of satisfied triumph at 12:30 a.m. I finally get the new computer working, piece by piece. Thanks goes to the great C.R. and Blasted Bill for providing the components, and to phecda, fuzzyjelly and stormgren for indispensible tech support. Linux Fedora Core 3 is installing on it as we speak.

A friend is giving me Fedora Core 3 Linux on CD, a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 chip with a processor fan, a GeForce4 AGP graphics card, many disk drives, another thing called a RAID controller that harnesses several drives together and increases access speed, and a device which will let me share my other computer's monitor, mouse and keyboard.
I already have several ancient computer cases, ethernet cards, case fans and CD/floppy drives that might be eligible for this build.
To make this a complete computer, I need to obtain a real Intel P4-compatible mainboard to connect all this to, a 400 watt dual power supply (the kind with one cord for just the processor and another for everything else), and an undetermined amount of RAM. Which type of memory chip depends on which mainboard I get. So, I expect it to be a long time before I can use my new Linux box.
This is why I am very grateful for eBay. Yesterday I used it to buy a car charger and 32 MB memory card -- both incredibly cheap-- for my brand-new Palm Tungsten E handheld. Any day now I expect to get Fitaly Stamp in the mail. My PalmOS device will once again become my most customized, reliable, and easy computing platform.

P.S. I love Ars Technica's Complete System Building Guide. With all the help out there, building one's own computer has the kind of learning curve with a great ratio of work to reward. The rewards are quick compared to other computer-related expertise. And there's not so much of a risk of frying an expensive component these days.