Does it matter if Vista makes an impact?

This should have been posted last week. Forgot to take it out of draft mode. :-/

I just read an article by John Dvorak entitled, "Will Vista make an impact?" It seems the real question is, "...does it really matter?" Dvorak writes this long article about how boring Vista is and how Microsoft really hasn't put much effort into promoting Vista. Then at the end he says, "... Eventually this will settle down and we'll all be using Vista..." Which basically means it doesn't matter how boring Vista is or how much effort Microsoft puts into promoting it. The sad fact is that people will buy it anyway.

What does this say about the computer operating system industry? Because Microsoft has such a stranglehold on the desktop market they have absolutely no motivation to improve their product. It seems they only do so to marginally satisfy their critics that at least they are doing something.

I ran Vista for a couple of days because I wanted to see what great things they had done. Ok, that's a lie.. I wanted to see if it actually ran on my three-year-old laptop. It worked fine, but there was nothing really compelling, and in fact some stuff was just annoying.

Red Hat will not include Mono in RHEL 5

This article was passed along to me by a colleague. Though this is not big news it is one of those "good to know" things. Back in January when the Fedora project first announced they would include Mono and some Mono-based applications, Red Hat said they would not consider using Mono in RHEL. However, if Red Hat wants to include features like desktop-wide search, they need to include Mono. The above mentioned article says, "I think there are other good alternatives for searching." What would that be then? Locate-db? Regular expressions? All kidding aside, I am curious if there are alternative technologies Red Hat may use to fill this void, so if anyone has a suggestion, please leave a comment.

I'm also curious about the statement, "...I wouldn't be surprised to see an equivalent type Tomboy thing to emerge." The argument is that a relatively small application needs a huge amount of infrastructure to run. I'm not going to debate this statement, I'm not a developer and in no position to confirm or deny, but what this demonstrates to me is the OSS community's obsession with forking. "If you don't like some aspect of a project then start a new competing project!" Now, I'm not saying this is never called for (i.e. xorg), but I will say that it is very rarely the solution. Tomboy is becoming a more mature and useful application everyday, and there is no reason to throw all that away and re-invent the wheel. That is just stupid.

Ultimately, I think the most relevant statement is, "We also think the whole Java way to go with Web Services works just fine. Obviously with JBoss we made a strong commitment to that." That is the meat of it. Red Hat invested big time in Java and has always been a big proponent. Now that Java will be open source they can really go whole hog, and bet the farm on Java because it fits into their "open source or nothing" policy. Congratulations, Havoc. ;-)

Pinch me...

When I first heard it today I thought it was a joke. Microsoft and Novell come to an agreement? And Microsoft is going to recommend SUSE Linux Enterprise to their customers!? Apparently, it is all true. I can't help but have a healthy bit of skepticism, but overall I think this is a good thing. Amazing, really, but really good to see. If you read Novell and Microsoft's open letter to the open source community you see that Microsoft will actually pay engineers to work on open source software. They have funded some open source projects before, but afaik they don't pay open source developers. Very tired right now, but will write more tomorrow.

A better open source backup tool

When planning a Linux backup strategy there are a number of options both in open source and from proprietary vendors. However, almost all of them are server-centric. This isn't so surprising, I suppose, considering the server market is much more mature than the desktop market, but Linux on the desktop is become more of a reality with each year.

I have been using a program called Simple Backup. It was created as an Ubuntu project for Google's Summer of Code. It gets the job done, and is pretty good for a project that was started and completed over the summer. However, I think Ubuntu (and other Linux vendors) need to take it a lot further. For instance, when I insert my USB hard drive I should get a notice asking me if I want to start a backup. There should be some built-in intelligence that will not backup the various caches on my system. After I configure (or re-configure) Simple Backup I should be prompted to backup the configuration to somewhere external (web storage, usb, even a floppy). Further if I have never configured Simple Backup before I should be prompted to import the configuration. If I have a system disaster, or I have to re-install, I shouldn't have to go though all the configuration again.

Now that Linux is getting more popular on the desktop we have to be more proactive about protecting our data. This came up for me because I accidentally formatted a partition that had five years worth of data on it (e-mails, contacts, documents, projects...). I was absolutely devastated. I know, I know... I should have had some type of backup, no matter how cumbersome. While I agree, how up to date would that backup be? If I trusted the magic of rsync, would I get the right combinations of command-line arguments and regular expressions? Would I inadvertantly delete something important in an attempt to keep my backups clean and compact? What about the complexity of time stamps and permissions?

My point is that we need to do better. I think Simple Backup is a great start. Now lets build off that.

Oracle can and will hurt Red Hat

I have seen several articles and blogs stating that Oracle could not possibly provide the high level of support that Red Hat provides its customers. These articles and bloggers opine that Oracle will fail horribly. I have to say that I vehemently disagree. Have any of these people talked with any Oracle or Red Hat customers, or read any research from analysts on this topic? It has been known for a long time that Red Hat customers are not very happy with Red Hat support. In addition, it is well known that it is often a bear to deploy Oracle on Linux because the Oracle DB only works with certain versions of the kernel, the system is very volitile on upgrade, and customers are loathe to upgrade unless they have to.

The title of this blog entry is probably a bit too strong, but to say at this stage that Oracle will fail is very premature. Oracle made this move for real reasons, and if they can execute on what they have set out to do they will cause real problems for Red Hat.

Would love to say more on this topic, but will have to leave that for later.

Does it work yet, Does it work yet, Does it work yet?

GNOME has the blog applet that is pretty neat. Anything to get me to blog more is good. ;-) However, the last time I tried it I would not publish to blogger correctly. Haven't tried it in about a year, but we'll see if this works...

Update: Nope. Still doesn't publish the title correctly. :-/ Oh well. Maybe I should look into contributing...

No, it's not from The Onion

Laptops Give Hope to the Homeless

They may not have roofs over their heads, but some homeless people are toting around old laptops and trading tips on the best hot spots. Some are even blogging. Jacob Ogles reports from Fillmore, California.

I found this article with the built-in rss agregator in flock, and I'm blogging on the article with the "Blog" link the aggregator has for each entry.  I automatically adds the quote you see above.  Very cool.

I have to admit that flock is not quite as polished as I thought earlier, but I still think it is relatively stable.  There are a few bugs that I need to report when I get time.  Obviously I have not blogged in a while, and that is because work has gotten pretty crazy.  At this very moment I have someone urgently pinging me on IM to do some testing. :-)

Anyway, the article.... All I can say is, "wtf."  I imagine if I were ever homeless this would probably be me.  I can't afford rent, but darn it I'm not giving up my laptop!!  However, I almost say this in jest.  It just occurred to me though that this is a good argument for city-wide wifi.

Ok, must go.  Going to get into trouble.

Blogged with Flock

Day 3: Flock on Mac and Linux

So this is the third day of using Flock.  Yesterday I installed Flock on my Linux laptop, and it has been working very well.  What I'm surprised to see is that at version 0.7 Flock is performing as well as Firefox 1.5.x.  I'm not sure if they used the Firefox base, and created a different graphical frontend or not.  I have yet to have a crash, though admittedly I probably haven't worked it very hard for the purposes it is intended.

A neat feature I found, but have not had the chance to use yet is this little icon on the right-hand side of the status bar (lives at the very bottom of the browser window) where you can drag both text and images to use later.  Maybe I will try to incorporate that into a blog entry.

Another cool thing I noticed that Macromedia Flash already works.  It wasn't distributed with the product, and it doesn't use the version of Flash already install (afaict).  However, when I went to a Flash-enabled site I received the notice that I was missing a need plugin.  I clicked on
[ Install plugin ], and amazingly it just installed.  Anyone who is used to Mac or Windows will say, "...so what..."  However, this was on Linux.  Often what you get on Linux with a "new" web browser is "There is no plugin available..."  So to have it work flawlessly was a thing of beauty. ;-)

One thing that annoys me is that the search bar uses Yahoo! Search by default.  I like Google, and would rather have that be the default.  I can click on a drop-down and choose to do the same search with Google, but it is just another step.  I will look to see if I can change the default.  Yahoo! seems to be rather prominent in this product, and I wonder if that means Yahoo! is somehow funding or contributing to this project.  It would make sense.

Need to get back to work.  I really like this blog tool. :-)

Blogged with Flock

Software Junkie

I am such a software Junkie.  And, admittedly, a big fan of the Mozilla Foundation.  I'm trying out the Flock web browser.  I saw something about this before, but never really bothered to download and install it.  Often I will checking stuff like this out to see what advantages it may give me or any new features, and often I am disappointed.

For instance, I tried Seamonkey, and found it to be nothing more than a re-birth of the Mozilla project and the Netscape browser (maybe that is a bit harsh).  Flock, however, seems to actually have a different purpose and a different audience.  It is the browser for the constant Internet junkie.  I can't say I'm an avid blogger (as is obvious) or that I share my photos with the world on Fliker (because my photos largely suck), but that is often because it is just to much of a PITA.  There are some neat tools you can find about, but Flock seems to nicely integrate these tools, and make it easy.

So, as the software junkie that I am, I am trying it out.  So far it is neat, but I will have to reserve judgment for a week or so.  I guess we'll know if the blogging feature is that easy if I manage to blog more. ;-)

Blogged with Flock

Leveling the scales

A friend of mine just sent me a link to an article on ZDnet about how Google is giving Microsoft a run for their money. Microsoft is being forced to reinvent themselves in order to keep pace. Some in the Linux community look at an article like this, and see the giant beginning it's decent. However, I don't see evidence like this as evidence that Microsoft is finished. Microsoft isn't going anytime soon, nor would I want them to.

Fair competition keeps us on our toes. What I see is a leveling of the scales. When you grow as large as Microsoft it becomes difficult to stay agile. It is an inevitability. We may even see a day when Microsoft begins to have offshoots, that can grow on their own.

One thing that Microsoft can't seem to let go of is associating everything back to the Microsoft name. Making it part of the borg. They incessantly purchase other companies or start new projects, immediately roll it into Windows, and re-brand it. They hang on to that association like the egotistical old man that names his own children after himself with the thought that this will make him live forever.

Sun needs to get a clue

Just read an article entitled, "Sun make peace with the Linux world" I think there needs to be some type of temperature gage that measures Sun's position on Linux daily. Maybe even hourly!

"Today Sun's position is:  <insert-johnathan-schwartz-comment-here>".

Make up your mind, Sun, and stick with it.

Cool new blogging tool

This may make things easier for me. ;-) I'm running the final release candidate of SUSE Linux 10.0, and there is a cool applet in GNOME to add a blog entry! There have been so many things to blog about in the last few months, but I "...haven't gotten around to it."

Most notably I attended the KDE World Conference, aKademy, in Malaga, Spain. I know it sounds odd that a GNOME person would attend a KDE development conference, but I was doing a talk on the usability study my company conducted earlier this year. I learned a lot about their community, and the way KDE works. I found my talk was very well received, and it is encouraging to see so much interest in usability from both the KDE and GNOME communities.

After that I was home for a few weeks, and flew back to Spain, Barcelona this time, to attend Novell Brainshare. The food was wonderful. :-D

Hopefully this cool blog tool will help me blog more (with more interesting stuff...). Check out the upcoming SUSE Linux 10.0. You can download it for free!

Evolution Notes component!

I've been using Evolution since version 0.12. I used to be a big Outlook user, and used Outlook along with some type of PDA. I frequently used the Notes component, and sorely missed it. A Notes component (no, not Lotus Notes) was one of the top requested features, but Ximian just never had time to implement it. I added myself to the CC for the bug requesting a Notes component, and finally someone has created it. You can find the project at Sourceforge.

First post

I always said there was no reason for me to start a blog... But here I am. Hopefully I'll have some interesting stuff to put here. There are definitely times where I would like to have a public voice, and I guess this is it. :-)

And to start...
Scary stuff afoot with software patents in the EU.