Richard A. Johnson

For those of you who have kissed off openSUSE, Novell, and possibly recently Ubuntu for its Yahoo deal (which by the way is with Yahoo, NOT Microsoft), it is time to kiss off other things, such as Amazon. Granted this deal blows to the highest level and just shows how shite Microsoft is, there are many companies doing this same thing with Microsoft, deals like this and others. So while you are sitting there, wearing your anti-Micro$oft (see what I did there? That’s what all of the cool Microsoft haters do) hats, ditch the following product manufacturers:

• Samsung
• Fuji
• Nearly every computer manufacturer
• Asus
• MSI
• Nearly every automobile manufacturer
• More than likely your lovely ISP
• and so much more…

Don’t forget to dismiss your family members who are using Microsoft products too, but not Uncle Ned, he is cool, oh and Aunt Jane, as they at least use Linux. And the next time you get a bill, just throw it out, as it was probably printed from a Microsoft computer. Oh boy, and your government, local police, because they are up to their armpits in Microsoft deals. I wonder if Microsoft touched the snow in the backyard? I think I will get naked and sleep out there tonight. Yuck, the thought of something Microsoft has a deal with anywhere near me gives me the heebee-jeebees.

NOTE: I sure hope you all found the sarcasm, because I am not a Microsoft lover at all. I am tired of their BS just as much as the next person, but I am also tired of the anti-Microsoft extremists and their simple-minded attitudes. It’s fine to stand up against Microsoft, and those who have deals with Microsoft, but just remember, that is a lot of standing, hope your legs and back are ready for it.

Yes, as many of you have read recently, Canonical has created a deal with Yahoo! to provide the default search for Firefox in the Lucid release. I decided that I would sit back and parse not only the information that Canonical has put out, but also the information I am reading on the web, Twitter, Identi.ca, and mailing lists. To be honest, I was actually surprised that a large scale attack or a FUD campaign never started over this, and I feel there just might be a turning point in all of this. Before I go on, let me throw a bit of a disclaimer in here as to hopefully not provide a lash back against either Canonical or Ubuntu.

Disclaimer

1. I am not an employee of Canonical, I receive zero money from them for anything I do.
2. I am not a speaker on behalf of the Ubuntu project nor the Ubuntu community.
3. I speak for myself and nobody else.

OK, I think I covered the grounds. I know this post has the potential to either be popular or very unpopular. I am not here for a popularity contest, so if it sinks or swims, I do not care. I just want to provide my opinion of the deal and the atmosphere I have experienced since I first got involved in Linux some 17 years ago.

I personally think this deal between Canonical and Yahoo! is a good one, and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of these deals. I wouldn’t mind seeing a deal with Google, Ask, Bing, or whatever else there is out there. The reason I like this deal is that it brings the potential of hiring more developers for the Ubuntu project. Seeing as I am a Kubuntu user and developer, I would love to see some of the money make its way into Kubuntu. Wait a second, did you just say Bing? Isn’t that the search engine, or rather the decision engine, ran by that big evil empire known as Microsoft? Oh boy, how many of you just went, “WTF IS WRONG WITH THIS IDIOT?” I am sure some of you did, and that was to be expected. I mean, Canonical did strike a deal with Yahoo!, and for some reason, many of you feel that Yahoo! is now Microsoft, or at least powered by Microsoft. If you read more than a couple of blog posts here and there, and dive into the news by not only Yahoo! and Microsoft, but read the stuff by the WSJ, NYT, and more. You will see for one, this deal has yet to be approved by the powers to be, and who knows if it will. Saying that Yahoo! is powered by Microsoft is not only incorrect, but it can be construed as either trolling or FUD at best.

You see, I have been around this Linux community for the better part of 17 years. There were good years and plenty of bad years. There were two things that always stood out during these years.

1. Free is on one side of the fence and open source on the other side, in other words a split camp with common goals.
2. Microsoft is a big and evil empire

So, Microsoft is big and evil, and don’t think I could disagree with that statement, and they haven’t proved themselves worthy of us removing this title, or whatever we want to call it. How many of you actually feel that striking this deal with Yahoo! is striking a deal with Microsoft? Don’t be shy, I have seen you on Twitter and Identi.ca stating the same, and on the Ubuntu Developers Mailing list as well, oh and on IRC. How many of you use Dell equipment? HP? IBM? Intel? I could keep going, but I wanted to kind of use companies that Canonical has worked with that Microsoft has worked with as well. How many you out there love your new Intel i7? Why? Don’t you remember the late 90′s when Microsoft was driving Intel to only do things a certain way that would benefit Microsoft only? How many of you are driving a Ford? Shoot, how many of you own a car? How many deals do they have with Microsoft? What about that bicycle, as I know there are a few of us nuts who prefer to ride instead of drive? Your TV? Cable? Shop at Best Buy? Oh man, I could keep going. How many of you just went, “WTF DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE PRICE OF TEA IN <nsert county so I don’t offend anyone>?” It has a lot to do actually, and yes it is probably beating yet another dead horse. The reasoning I see a lot of with dealing with $X who in-turn has a deal with Microsoft, in this case Yahoo!, in many cases can be seen as hypocritical. Imagine a life if you only dealt with companies or people that didn’t have a deal with Microsoft. For those of you against this and use Google, not to long ago Google made a deal with Twitter who already had a deal with Microsoft in terms of searching. Did you just switch your default search engine because of that? How about Microsoft and Facebook? Strategic alliance between Microsoft and O’Reilly? Gonna stop reading O’Reilly books now? Sugar CRM? Xen Source? And the list goes on.

Let me cover those of you who are using System 76 or Zareason, or some other Linux only manufacturer, that want to keep the attack going possibly on the deal. Ever consider the hardware that is used in those systems? I know System 76 uses, or was using, MSI equipment. Guess what, big Microsoft deal there. I don’t care what it is, there is a damn good chance you are using something right now that has struck a deal with Microsoft.

Is this the year of the Linux desktop?

or…

Is Linux ready for the mainstream?

Two of the most sickening questions I have seen for over a decade. The answer will always be “NO!” until we realize we need to step from underneath this rock we, yes we, have put ourselves. We have this great product, but if we continue being split on whether the Free Software side or the Open Source side is the correct side, or we shouldn’t be doing these types of deals, let’s just keep our mouths shut and enjoy this lovely rock canopy we have created for ourselves. Oh, here comes a big bomb, Novell. I am not about to rip on Novell, sorry Boycott Novell. I do not agree with their merger whatsoever, but I am a first hand witness of the good that has actually come out of the deal. Guess what Novell is doing that we aren’t right now? They are showing large companies, Fortune 500 and then some, that there is a choice out there, there is more than just Microsoft for your infrastructure. I went to their IT In Action tour here in Chicago last year. Granted I didn’t appreciate it when they said, “Microsoft is now the largest provider of Linux service,” nor did I like when one of their speakers decided to take off his jacket and reveal this nasty Detroit Red Wings hockey jersey (/me points at the Ubuntu Michigan people with a grin). What I did like, and I was wicked impressed with, were these people who were almost to the point of bashing Linux before the event started, to being super stoked over the Linux platform and the tools that Novell had when it was all over. Here I was an Ubuntu guy, and they knew that and welcomed me with open arms, who came in defending Linux and left helping some of these companies switch to, or look at the possibilities of switching to Linux. So thanks Novell for helping me get a few consulting gigs out of the tour.

I feel we, the Linux community, need to unite more so than we have. Not a fan of President Obama, but last night during his State of the Union address, he talked about reaching over those party lines. I think we need to do the same thing. Hey, if Microsoft is evil and they won’t reach their hand out, then why shouldn’t we try? OK, no more politics, OK maybe one more. Let’s tear down this wall! OK, that was lame, but I had to do it because it made me chuckle a little. I am not saying lets sell out to Microsoft, because that is definitely the last thing I want. You see us Linux people look at the big guy and concentrate on trying to make them look bad. In my eyes, we aren’t winning that battle, and while we keep carrying it forward, there is this person in the middle who is seemingly getting bigger and bigger every time they announce an iSomething. So instead of spending membership money to stand out in front of some silly event with a sign, lets think of better ways to use it. There are so many people out there who see people with signs picketing something, and a majority of the time these people go unnoticed, except for that one rogue honk, which believe it or not wasn’t supporting your campaign.

OK, that should be it. I am sure it is all confusing, so please feel free to respond anyway you feel is right in the comments. Thank you, and I apologize for causing you to spend this time possibly reading absolutely nothing.

This weekend, April 4^th and 5^th, is the annual Flourish Conference, a decent sized free software conference held at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This years guest speakers include Bruce Perens, John ‘Maddog’ Hall, James Bottomley, Brian Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman, and me of course, plus many more. Some of the events being held include a mini-BarCamp, a Hack-A-Thon, and a Web Framework battle. If you are in or around Chicago, I hope to see you there! I will be giving a talk on the KDE community as well as KDE 4.

Lighter side of things, I updated my Vista box to SP1 this past week. I haven’t been attacked by the driver issues and what not, but I am getting killed every time I let the computer fall asleep. I can click my mouse button to wake the computer up, but upon wakeup, neither the keyboard or the mouse work. I was going to file a bug report, however I was unable to find their bug tracker

I see we are now a few weeks away from the 8.04 release. That is pretty groovy. Is it me or did this release cycle seem to go on forever? Dapper was 9 months yet seemed faster. Edgy was 3 months and was really fast. Feisty and Gutsy flew by, but Hardy, heck we still have a few weeks to go. What a busy cycle. I am excited with a lot of the new features with our beloved Kubuntu release. Thus far, Kubuntu Hardy with KDE 4 has been rock solid. The only issue I had during this entire cycle was the libc6 issue. Remember that one? That was fun

My blog was recently updated to WordPress 2.5. I am not sure yet if I really like the whole new admin interface just yet. It seems a bit slower than the previous releases, but it does look a tad bit better in most ways. I didn’t have any problems either. Gotta love those one-click installs that Dreamhost provides. All I had to do was just update the database and rock on. None of the problems like with the previous 2.2.x releases that drove many of us up a wall.

Oh well, here’s to you and hoping that I see you at Flourish! Take care!

Today I was tasked with fixing my buddy Matt’s computer. Matt is what you would call the average computer user. He uses his computer to surf the web, communicate via email, chat with friends, play some games, listen to music, watch some movies (probably pr0n), and get infected with viruses.

After working on this computer today, I got really irritated with Windows XP, to the point that I was disgusted at just how poor not only the system security was, but also the anti-virus software that it was using. Because of this, I needed to take a break, head up to the local Best Buy, and choke the first salesman who offered me a Windows computer. OK, wasn’t going to choke, but I wanted to talk to their tech support crowd and see what kind of work was the most popular there.

After speaking with the Geek Squad, which only one or two really qualifiedto be considered a geek, I now know I am not the only one who was irritated. Both of the gentleman I spoke with were Apple users, and were disgusted with Windows. Don’t blame them after today. We spoke for a bit and then I asked, what type of tech support is your biggest ticket. Oddly enough, removing viruses from Windows PCs, and fixing Windows PCs that are thrashed by your so-called “average users.” That is more virus fixing than home entertainment installations, which really threw me. Both of them said that with the quality of a lot of today’s hardware, they rarely get in a system where something has gone wrong with the hardware, and if they do, it is typically a power supply.

After that, I went to the Apple store just to see what kind of support they did. After talking to some of the techs and salesman there, who are all super knowledgeable and pretty damn cool, I was amazed that on average, they only get about 1 issue a week that isn’t hardware related. Just 1, that is pretty damn good. It was there that one of the techs said that Linux was by far greater than Microsoft Windows could ever be. I like to think the same.

A lot of people say that Linux isn’t for “mom or dad, or the average user,” and after having worked on this Windows computer today, I would have to say the same about Windows. Most people go to the local shop and purchase their computer because it was cheap. They are told they get this and that, one of those being virus protection, so they think they are golden. Little do they know that in 90 days, more than likely this virus protection is mute, just like my buddy Matt found out, and go about their business until a week or so goes by and their computer is pure garbage.

Within just a few days of the virus protection expiring on this computer, the hhard drive went from 160GB of free space to less than 300 MB, to the point that once you logged in, it would pop up errors and all 400+ Trojans took off. YES! 400+ Trojans. I plugged the PC into my network to try and get to a site but shortly after my ISP totally blocked my Internet connection. There was no connection in my house, I reset the modem and routers, unplugging the infected system first, and everything was back to normal. OK, so I wasn’t going to be able to fix Windows from within Windows, so I did what every good geek does, and whipped out the latest Knoppix CD and went to work.

Booted up Knoppix, mounted the hard drivee (sda1) with NTFS read/write support, went into the directory containing a bunch of fluff and deleted it. From there I did a simple apt-get install f-prot, updated the virus definitions, and went to town on checking out the drive. 400+ viruses, all pretty muchTrojanss of some sort, weredisinfected or deleted. But it didn’t get all of them, but it did get me to the point to where I could now boot into Windows, plug back in the network, and get to downloading some enamelware fighting software. 6+ hours into this adventure, and it still isn’t done. Right now eScan has found 8 more Trojans and 13 errors (01:27:21 so far, and still not done).

Now I know you Windows people who are above average, ya, those of you who say “I don’t have virus software and I have never gotten a virus.” Your trusty little operating system isn’t any better than Linux, actually I would have to say it is much worse than Linux for “average,” or your mom and pop users. Everything this person does can be done with Linux, and if he would use Linux, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. I switched my brother over to Kubuntu about 3 months ago, and within 3 months the only time he called was when he tried to get his Nokia phone working with Kubuntu. It didn’t work all that great and at the same time it didn’t work any better in Windows.

The results are in, and after today, I am sorry, Windows loses. This is absolutely ridiculous considering the amount of work I had to put in just to get the computer Trojan free. So from this point on, I could never in my life recommend Windows for a user that doesn’t know any better. The security is poor, but the support for fighting viruses and figuring out what every app running is doing is great. I think this will definitely be my last “will you fix my Windows” support ever.

Just so everyone knows, you can totally alleviate all of your viruses in Windows in less than 30 minutes with a Kubuntu Live CD. Boot up the CD, and when you get to the desktop, simply click the install button and follow the instructions. Yes, within 30 minutes your virus head aches will be gone, and that crap called Windows will be gone as well.

/me goes for the largest bottle of Tequila in the house

PS: Posted this with KBlogger for KDE 4. Pretty impressive little application, just a bit buggy still though. The spell checking is a little off, so if you notice some weird words, it wasn’t my fault this time

…and READ THIS.

Just so everyone knows, the quote by Mark Shuttleworth was horribly used and misrepresented by the so-called writer. Also bare in mind that the owner of this website is Ziff Davis, which just happens to receive gobs of money from Microsoft for advertising and providing reviews on their products with a high rating every time. Even though it is a Linux news site, you know where some of their operating cash comes from.

…and today this image.

Yesterday Linspire announced their deal with Microsoft. Of course which many of you know, but today I wanted to read their forums to see what people had to say, and on my way in I saw that image. I truthfully find it distasteful, as I am sure you probably know why. 4 partners, 3 of them proprietary in their ways, bunched together with one that holds a free and open source software philosophy. To me it looks like Ubuntu supports all of those partnerships just by a single image. I know that isn’t true, but do the people who go to that website know that?

This is disturbing, and what I find appalling is that Kevin thinks that his deal with Microsoft will provide a “Better Linux.” How? WTF can a Microsoft deal do that will make Linux better? Take off the cloudy glasses already.

EDIT: Strike my P.S. to Mark for a reply. It seems he is currently traveling and to prevent any unneeded unrest, I am removing my P.S. to Mark, as I am sure he will respond in due time.