Robert Scoble: What do you think? Did I miss anything in my
list of 12?
Jamie Zawinski
(1998) Linux is only free if your time has no value
Ray
Ozzie (via Joshua Allen) Convincing case that
“Internet makes software deploy at lightspeed”, is not
the same as saying “Web apps deploy at
lightspeed”. He’s framing the discussion as
software on the Internet, rather than thin-client DHTML.
Simon
Willison: the key reason that open source development tools
are so compelling: they put you in charge of your own
destiny.
Scoble tosses out a softball. I’ll bite. As a
developer, I do run a few things on the bleeding edge, so for that
I agree with Simon above. But mostly, I’m a user.
I want things that just work.
For years, I ran Windows as my desktop OS. Sure, I flirted
briefly with Netscape when it came out, but I switched back to IE
because frankly it was better.
A few years ago, I noticed something. IE was
abandoned. I was abandoned. I didn’t like
it. So I switched first to Mozilla, then to Firefox.
Sure, tabs were nice. But even better was the support for
standards. And the lack of pop-ups and spyware.
I understand it that IE now has blockers.
And there is even a promise of a next release. But will I be
abandoned again?
Then I had my registry go corrupt. At the same time I was
being hassled for GenuineCheck and then a legitcheck when I simply
wanted to download a security patch. I had already given up
two hours of productivity a week to virus scans. I had
enough. I switched to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu boots off of a CD. It comes with Graphics,
Internet, and Office tools. Where I had once ran AIM with
advertisements and could only connect to a single service, I now
run GAIM with no ads, can connect to multiple services. And I
even get spell check.
But I’m a developer. I want more. I want
ruby. And subversion. And cvs. And build
tools. Each is only an apt-get away. There
even is a convenient GUI for this. Ray’s vision of the future, I
have today. And whereas Windows Update kept the OS and
selected Microsoft tools up to date, the Debian packaging manager
keeps everything up to date and in synch. Without ever
needing to reboot.
And there is more. If I ever felt the urge to build a
PBX, I’d do an
apt-get install asterisk. If I wanted to build a
DVR, I’d do an
apt-get install mythtv.
The latest version of Ubuntu was released last month. The
next version? April.
Convenience. Security. Predictability. More
options. Less hassle.
I like that.
Jamie’s 1998 observation has effectively been
flipped. At least for me.
t Just Works
I’m getting a 404 from the link in the feed. I think it’s the missing ‘I’ in ‘It’.
I am with you on this one. I switched to MacOSX tree years ago and if not a sucky notebooks I would’ve been using it now. Then I switched to Ubuntu and don’t want to use anything else. Works perfectly on my powerful Dell notebook which cast me less then 1K.
I really want to believe that installing software on Linux is THAT easy, but almost every apt-get or yum install is followed by cd /etc; vi obscure.conf.
But I’m a developer. I want more. I want ruby. And subversion. And cvs. And build tools. Each is only an apt-get away. There even is a convenient GUI for this. Ray’s vision of the future, I have today. And whereas Windows Update kept the OS...
Much of this comes down, I believe, to the monolithic nature of Windows. With Linux, your distribution consists of a great number of little tools working together which can all work on their own release schedule. This makes the release cycle for most of these parts MUCH smaller than the 5 years MS now needs to get a new OS out the door. If Microsoft were to split up Windows into smaller parts, I believe that would fix some of their problems.
I’m still on Windows because I just can’t get used to the Linux widgets and font rendering just yet - which are not always as good as on Windows. Nevertheless, I try every few months, because I really want to.
I’m still on Windows because I just can’t get used to the Linux widgets and font rendering just yet - which are not always as good as on Windows.
This is something I initially had as my pet peeve with Linux, but nowadays, I think font rendering in Linux is much better than in Windows. The sub-pixel antialiasing leaves my text more readable.
And whereas Windows Update kept the OS and selected Microsoft tools up to date, the Debian packaging manager keeps everything up to date and in synch. Without ever needing to reboot.
Amen. This is exactly the reason why even Mac OS X isn’t comparable with Debian based systems like Ubuntu. Mac OS X updates itself and Apple tools like iTunes or Quicktime nicely. But for example what about a new version of Ruby? What about Python? What about other typical *nix tools?
Brilliant Labs, Inc. Are you finding it difficult to find the photos you want from the thousands you’ve accumulated on your hard drive? BrilliantPhoto makes managing your growing digital photo library fast, easy and fun. (tags: photo management...
Mind Hacks: Open-access sleep special at Nature “contains a number of articles summarising recent research in the world of sleep” (tags: science sleep research) Sam Ruby: It Just Works (tags: linux ubuntu desktop) Twisted "an asynchronous networking framework written......
[more]
Debian based systems work so well as apt-get provides a solid contract between the users and the developers that the packages they use will work and install with the base system. Upgrades will go smoothly and changes will be documented in an easy to find place. Futhermore, blogs combined with google makes it incredibly easy to find solutions other people have deployed to config complicated software.
Compare that with Windows, were you have to pay for software you aren’t sure works. Often the developers say the software does things it doesn’t. There is no contract between the base system and the developers to provide smooth upgrades and service, let a lone the users. Even if you do use Windows Update, you are always unsure that if your virus checker breaks for even half a minute if you would survive.
The only place where Linux loses at the moment is hardware support. Particularly for things like laptop suspends. Even there Ubuntu is hard at work making it easy to use on standard brand name laptops.
Mind Hacks: Open-access sleep special at Nature “contains a number of articles summarising recent research in the world of sleep” (tags: science sleep research) Sam Ruby: It Just Works (tags: linux ubuntu desktop) Twisted "an asynchronous networking...
I’ve worked under Mac OS X for more than five months now, and still have mixed feelings about it. I was ready to shout and yell at the stupid operating system which seems unable to bend over my working style; but then I realized there’s...
More notes / opinions and tips on setting up Catalyst development environment to play in, in addition to stuff you’ll find here. Even if you don’t know Perl, you’ve probably heard of CPAN, which was inspiration for PHP’s...
I’ve got this Ultra 20 which among other things has a huge disk with room for lots of operating systems. I want to fool around a bit with Linux and Solaris Classic and GNU/Solaris, run some Bonnie numbers and also shake down my own stuff on all...
To put the following in context with my own use: I’ve been using Ubuntu for quite a while now on secondary servers and I switched to using it on my primary development computers for more than a couple months now, so what Sam states was of no...
Mind Hacks: Open-access sleep special at Nature “contains a number of articles summarising recent research in the world of sleep” (tags: science sleep research) Sam Ruby: It Just Works (tags: linux ubuntu desktop) Twisted "an asynchronous networking framework written......
[more]