Going Without Social Networking

So, yesterday I dropped Facebook, tried Twitter out for a few hours, and then decided to drop that as well.  As of now, I do not have any major social networking service to my name.

While I certainly feel that social networking is a good thing if used in moderation, I often found that it took up a considerable amount of time — time that would be better spent studying and actually doing work.  It also gives me an opportunity to get outside and exercise, which is something I can always use to avoid the infamous “freshman fifteen.”

I am not saying this decision is final, and thankfully Facebook lets users come back to their site and use their old profile, but I will see how life is without Facebook and other social networks for a while.

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Ubuntu Going Beyond a ‘Distribution’

I have been following the developments of the latest Ubuntu release, Ubuntu 9.10.  The release will include a massive amount of new features, extending from programming to features that benefit the end user.  It is within these new features that Ubuntu is moving beyond simply a repackaging of different Linux systems and applications to implementing features specifically created by and for the Ubuntu project.

One such example is the Ubuntu One feature, providing a file backup and sharing service — specifically for Ubuntu.  Another feature, a program called “Quickly,” will allow programmers to create applications for Ubuntu and share the resulting .deb files with other users.

The Ubuntu One feature especially catches my attention.  Not only is it officially provided by Canonical, but it also has a proprietary backend for the server.  I personally do not mind the proprietary nature of the program, but it adds an unusual twist to the distribution.  Officially a part of the installation, you have a feature that no other distribution offers or can offer in the same way.  Other distributions must provide the feature themselves, something that perhaps only Red Hat and Novell might have the capacity to do.  The rest of the community distributions are really out of luck on this feature.  Because of the proprietary nature, even the community distributions cannot even begin to implement a similar service using the code for the service as a base.

With the features above, Ubuntu is beginning to look different from some of the other distributions. Typically, distributions have software and features that are either the same or roughly equivalent to one another.  Ubuntu’s departure from this model is an interesting development, especially with reference to Ubuntu One.  Exactly how will the rest of the Linux community respond to Ubuntu providing features, that due to proprietary nature, cannot be used by the other distributions at all?  It will certainly be interesting to watch how these new features affect the Linux market.

Ubuntu 9.10 is due to be released on October 29, 2009.

KDE 4: Recap

A few days ago I wrote an article titled “How Important is KDE 4?”  This article picked up a lot of attention, including and off-site rebuttal.  I am no stranger to criticism.  I have written on this blog for almost three years now (including the time before my switch to WP from blogger) and through these years I have learned that if you cannot take the heat from the radicals of the community you will never survive.  It would be impossible for me to be objective if I do not develop a strong opinion.  I have critiqued projects and ideologies before, and every time I have been attacked on all sides, although typically I find myself on the side of the majority. But not always….

I am subject to being hilariously wrong.  I have made the wrong analysis, predictions, and observations about Linux many times before.  My arguments are also not perfect.  Many people have different opinions, but I will tell you that the person I respect the most is the one who can disagree respectively.  In my article, I was rather harsh to the KDE project.  I drew such a hard line because I care, and I want the project to do well.  It would be ludicrous for me to wish a part of the Linux community to fail.  What good would that do?  Instead, I want the KDE project to make things work right.  My observations are from the reports I have heard first-hand from average users who have tried KDE 4.

Nonetheless, I could have been more clear on several points in my argument.  I edited one part (in italics, starting with “Edit”) surrounding the issue of KDE’s development slowing down.  When I said this, I should have said “KDE’s release schedule is slowing down.”  That would have been more clear and not such a sticking point for the observant commenters.  Also, I could have been more clear on the applications and usage of KDE.  The problem with opinion, especially around Linux and open source, is that there are really no hard numbers we can use to look at in order to develop a definite position.  My opinions are from what I have observed in my work as a Linux advocate.  I get to communicate with real and potential users, and from that gather quite a bit of information surrounding what people want.

I have had a fair deal of trouble with KDE 4, especially with brand new users.  Many are amazed, including myself, of all that it can do.  I wish that it could do all as promised without something going wrong.  I imagine that in time, KDE 4 will stabilize.  The only question in my mind is whether or not it will be too complicated for new users.

I don’t like to take the position that KDE deserves more criticism than the GNOME project just because at the moment KDE is a bit harder to pass on to new users.  KDE has always been for power users, which is one of the reasons I used KDE 3 almost exclusively for most of 2007 and 2008.  GNOME 3 will be arriving in another six to seven months, and with it will come major changes that could either be good or bad, and I will be sure to review the situation then as well.

I also want to mention that I expect criticism and welcome it, as long as it is decent and respectful of all involved.  If it is indecent and does not contribute to the conversation, I will moderate it.  Like I mentioned earlier, I respect those who can disagree respectfully.  KDE 4.4 will be released in February, and I will be sure to review it then.  Who knows, maybe it will be stable after the KDE project has been working on it for seven months.  Since I have a life to live, I am done discussing my previous article.  I have decided to leave comments open if people want to blow off some steam.  I wish the KDE project the best of luck, and I thank everyone for the lively discussion!

Ubuntu 9.10 Beta: A Review

Recently, I have taken the time to take a look at the beta release of Ubuntu 9.10.  I have installed it as a virtual machine on VirtualBox, using the 64 bit image to make it just a bit faster on my laptop.

On the initial installation, I was surprised to see a new feature:  slides!  The informational slides talk about the various software available and how to get help — a very good feature for new users.

I could see a bit of the new artwork shining through in the installation.  Both the window title bar and the progress bar looked different from previous versions.  I will write more about the artwork later.

After the installation had finished, I was hit by a quick black screen with a white Ubuntu logo on it… very nice touch.  Upon the reboot, I saw the startup screen sporting some new artwork:

So obviously the Ubuntu folks have settled on using a darker shade of brown, moving from the more orange-brown that dominated the last three years of releases.  The login screen featured a similar “spotlight” style background with the Gnome login manager.   The desktop looks much the same from previous versions, with about only 0ne difference.  For one, the mail icon you see on the top bar of the screenshot below includes messages from Empathy, the new default IM in Ubuntu 9.10, and messages in Evolution, Ubuntu’s mail client.

Now I would like to take a moment and discuss the artwork, which although new I cannot say that I like it as much as the previous versions.  For one, the default icon theme gives the Ubuntu logo a low-res appearance.  Also, the brown theme looks like it is a lower quality than the previous version, with a title bar that appears to have been slimmed down height-wise.  All these things aside, this release includes what I believe is the best collection of backgrounds available for a Linux distribution.  Many of the images are simply stunning.  Now if Ubuntu 9.10 had an awesome theme to compliment those, it would be the best looking distribution around.

Moving on to a more controversial feature, Ubuntu 9.10 includes by default the desktop synchronization software known as Ubuntu One.  This software allows you to access files on another Ubuntu computer.  The little Ubuntu icon in the top bar is the apple for the application, and the browser you see opened is what I saw when I clicked the applet, and then clicked “Connect” on the drop-down menu:

So, apparently you will need a Launchpad ID to access the service.

One more major feature I would like to mention is the new “Software Center.”  Apparently this is a remake of the old “Add/Remove Applications” feature in previous releases.  I imagine that having the different categories displayed right away is intended to help people find what they are looking forward.  I personally think it could be made more clean, but this is its first release afterall:

On a rather interesting note, I found it interesting that the English standard is different throughout the system.  In some places, Center (in Am. English) is spelled “Centre” (UK English).  Also, words such as “colors” and “colours” are mixed throughout, even though American English may be your selected language.

On a technical note, Ubuntu comes with GNOME 2.28, ext4 by default, and the new Grub 2.

Overall, I have to say that Ubuntu 9.10 looks like it will be a great release.  A few technologies in this release are new, so it may give the system a rough edge.  When the next LTS release comes around (10.04), it will probably refine those features to create the best release yet.  I will definitely be giving this system a test run when it is released in 24 days!

How Important is KDE 4?

I ask this question because the most popular post on my blog, KDE 3 vs KDE 4:  It’s Finally Over, is still getting comments and a rather large amount of attention.  Comments are still being written well over a year later after the original post was published.

Just by looking at the KDE project, it appears as if development has slowed down (Edit: I am referring to the development of new features, and from the comments obviously I was not clear enough about this — things have slowed down, the 4.3 release was in August and the 4.4 release will not come until next February).  This certainly would not be a bad thing; the KDE project really needs to focus on stability and performance.  The question still lingers:  exactly how important is KDE 4?

If the post I wrote such a long time ago is any indication, KDE 4 is still a major issue.  It is a major issue that is also difficult to analyze, leaving as many questions as their are answers for which only time will tell.  Most of the comments I have received are not in favor of the new desktop environment, with many people still holding on to the tried and true KDE 3 desktop.  I wonder if KDE 4 has hurt the KDE project?  Just by taking a look at a list of distributions out there, the major distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian all use GNOME as their desktop environment of choice, and there are not really any major distributions with commercial backing that use KDE as their primary desktop.  In this area nothing has really changed, distributions still choose the desktop environment that fits their user base.

The major problems with KDE 4 in its current state is its patchy development, performance, and reliabilty — something corporations do not want attached to their software.  Sometimes I believe GNOME, in spite of its lack of controls for the people who want them and a lot of features, has a better development process.  A focus on making the software stable and conservatively thinking out how new features should be implemented seem to be an advantage for the GNOME project.  KDE’s development seems to be all over the place, without much order or quality controls.  It is claimed as a work-in-progress.  I know from experience people want software that is complete, something that is stable enough for them to rely on for their work.  This is not to suggest that KDE 4 is necessarily bad or that it will not be a great product someday, but that it is simply not ready for enterprise or average consumer use.  I believe that KDE 4 development has come too slow, and for an impation community that expects development to move at a pace that can compete with proprietary competitors with similar or better quality, KDE 4 is really not up to quota.

The issues the KDE project all appear to be interconnected in some way or another.  KDE’s patchy development leads to little oversight on how the many features and eye-candy effect performance.  Many people, including many who commented on the original post, have complained that the desktop environment seems too slow, and forces them to buy new hardware.  Of course, this does not go over well with a community known for using old, outdated hardware to run their Linux systems.

Reliability also seems to have been affected.  Just from my tests on my computer using KDE 4.3, I have found it to still be rather unstable.  Connected to the patchy development and random inclusion of new features has led to the mass number of bugs hindering the software from reaching its full potential as a desktop contender.  People care about the work they do on their computers, and having that at risk is certainly not in the interest of both companies or mainstream users.  Perhaps this is the reason that KDE 4 has failed to make an impact on the major distributions and unseat the much-criticized GNOME desktop environment from being the most popular desktop?

From my observations of the software, the number of features and eye-candy is truly amazing.  However, I find that in many cases that some of the features do not contribute to the usefulness of the software and are poorly implemented.  The overall look of the system is nowhere as clean as it was in the earlier versions, and instead today it is a translucent mess.  Also, much of the artwork is starting to take the look of KDE 3, a bit “cartooney,” with exceptionally large icons and images that look as if they were placed together in a matter of a few minutes, without much concern for whether or not the system would look better as a whole — that may be harsh, but I see the seeds of what could become a giant mess for the KDE project.  Professionalism is key in this era, and they must be able to deliver a clean, professional environment, not just for their sake but for the very reputation of the open source  movement as a whole.  Just by taking a look at the major KDE applications such as Konqueror, KMail, and KOffice, they are in not as mature as their mainstream counterparts, or for that matter the other competitors in the Linux arena.  Consider if the GNOME distributions went with all GNOME Project-built applications.  It would be disastrous for a distribution to make such a choice!  GNOME Office is not even close in comparison to OpenOffice or IBM’s Lotus Symphony, and the Epiphany web browser is not complete enough to compete with Firefox.  Surely distributions could work on implementing better software into their version of KDE 4.   Applications seem to be a sticking point, and the fact that many major applications are rarely written specifically for the KDE desktop is not a good sign for the acceptance of the system by developers — a potential problem for them in the future.

So, how important is KDE 4?  To the KDE project, it is absolutely crucial.  I hate to say it, but it looks as if KDE 4 has become KDE’s “Vista.”   The KDE reputation has been tainted with a divided community, mediocre products, and a seeming lack of solid direction.  I can only hope KDE becomes stable at some point in the near future, perhaps by choosing to make their “4.5” release their stable release fit for refinement and development, much like with KDE 3.5.  Perhaps creating that stable environment for people to improve upon could lead to the creation of a new, thriving community, one just as influential as the one when KDE 3.5 was around.  Otherwise, they may lose the market they have fought so hard to gain.

Update:  Before commenting please read this updated article.