Vuvubuntu

I just realized. Lusers are the vuvuzelas of the software world.

OMG OMG OMG. In addition to totally fucked window controls, we now have a font!

I'm so excited about this thing because it's going to fix so many problems. It's going to make my 30 inch monitor work, and give me awesome 3d graphics, and all the game companies will port to linux to take advantage of this font, and my wireless problems will go away. And it will make Intel open source their gpu, and Microsoft will roll over and die.

I mean seriously. That's what happened when they release Bitstream Vera, and Liberation. Right? All the free desktop was missing was a fucking font.

Oh btw, will this make other websties that specify the standard web fonts look good? No?

Wut

I was just taking a look at S-man's announcement for Ubuntu Unity and Light versions. Most of it is blah, except for this tidbit:

... The dual-boot, web-focused use case is sufficiently different from general-purpose desktop usage to warrant a fresh look at the way the desktop is configured. We spent quite a bit of time analyzing screenshots of a couple of hundred different desktop configurations from the current Ubuntu and Kubuntu user base, to see what people used most. We also identified the things that are NOT needed in lightweight dual-boot instant-on offerings...

Wut. Ok. Let me learn you something. I've seen lots of Linux screenshots in my time. If you were actually optimizing for the freetard, basically what you'd have is a desktop with two semi-transparent terminals. One tailing a syslog, and another showing an irc session. Oh and like some pager with a bazillion virtual desktops that are totally useless. Oh, and don't forget the scantily-clad, objectified female as the wallpaper image.

As for the rest of the article? OMG, You put a fucking dock on the side. In OSX and Win7, doing the same thing takes like 3 seconds. Do you really need to write a whole giant announcement about it?

Oh and I like the two sections at the end, about "Relationship to Gnome Shell" and "Relationship to KDE". Even the S-man has figured out that you can't just go "innovate" in the OSS community without shouting out to everyone. Because we don't want to piss off the ten people who care about Gnome Shell or KDE. Fuck. Could you imagine an Apple announcement saying something like "Relationship to Windows"?

A year later

Woah, Lundude is at it again.

Don't worry, it's mostly the same stuff. Linux Desktop sucks. It still sucks. Even a year later. When it's sucked for the last N years, why do you think N+1 will make it so much better? But I'm sooooo sure that there's just a business plan hiding under there somewhere, and I'm the only person to think this hard about it..

The rest of us know that if there were a business model that made sense and could be presented in a 45 minute slide-deck in some classroom, then someone would have done it already.

But I had some other funny thoughts:

The big players in the linux desktop are the distributions. They distribute stuff. They're somewhat ok at distributing their own stuff. But they're supremely awesome at making it hard for third parties to distribute their stuff. It's the distributions (and more precisely, the fact that there are so many of them) that make the actual distributing hard. Go figure.

Another thing. Why are y'all _still_ focused on random niche desktop thick client apps. Linux's problem is not a lack of thick client apps. Hardly anyone uses them, other than Office. And besides, that problem is solved. Distributing thick client apps to generic PC hardware is MS's turf. You wouldn't try to take on Google's search advertising business with a rag tag group of volunteers would you? So why the fuck would you go after MS's bread and butter? You win by solving the problem in a new better way, not making the problem worse in a shittier way.

Besides, the desktop is dying. Web apps are taking over. And it so happens that Linux is in a pretty good place to be an awesome web terminal. Even Google thinks so. But it still takes a google to herd enough people together to produce something like ChromeOS. Y'all could have probably put something like that together in as much time, if you could only focus and stop chasing after Microsoft's sinking boat.

Y'all bitch an complain that nobody writes apps for Linux. Boo hoo. Hardly anyone writes apps for windows either these days. They all write for the web. You got your fucking level playing field that you've been bitching about for years. But I'm sure it's still going to take some eeeevil corporation with a giant clue stick to show y'all how it's done.

A tale of ogg

Oh Ogg. The format that trapped many a user's music files on lowly Linux desktops. I know I've got some oggs somewhere that I can't listen to any more in itunes. Or any device that I care about, for that matter. And I'm too anal to re-encode them into the only format that matters: mp3.

Then today I saw this nice little tear down of Ogg. I'm not going to write much here since this article has a beauty of it's own. But I will quote a bit:

More commonly, the Ogg proponents will respond with hand-waving arguments best summarised as Ogg isn't bad, it's just different. My reply to this assertion is twofold:

• Being too different is bad. We live in a world where multimedia files come in many varieties, and a decent media player will need to handle the majority of them. Fortunately, most multimedia file formats share some basic traits, and they can easily be processed in the same general framework, the specifics being taken care of at the input stage. A format deviating too far from the standard model becomes problematic.
• Ogg is bad. When every angle of examination reveals serious flaws, bad is the only fitting description.

The third reaction bypasses all technical analysis: Ogg is patent-free, a claim I am not qualified to directly discuss. Assuming it is true, it still does not alter the fact that Ogg is a bad format. Being free from patents does not magically make Ogg a good choice as file format. If all the standard formats are indeed covered by patents, the only proper solution is to design a new, good format which is not, this time hopefully avoiding the old mistakes.

Wow, doesn't this sound fucking familiar? Oh wait, %s/Ogg/Linux Desktop/g ... Ahhh... there we go.

They took our codes!

Huh. GregKH is complaining. Again. Big suprise.

Short story: Google uses Linux to create Android. Google makes some kernel modifications, in their own tree. Google has no time to deal with kernel community to re-architect their stuff so that it can go mainstream. GregKH whines like a baby.

Dude, get a clue. Seriously.

You can go on and continue to waste keynotes at conferences (yea, I'm sure the the organizers are super happy about that) to complain about people "stealing" your code. Waaa Waaa. Someone took my hippy license and took my code and isn't giving it back. Waaa.

Hello? Did someone not realize that Google is basically all about stealing Linux and "forking" it? Do you think that google server that you're hitting is really running bleeding edge Linux 2.6.35RC62? No, they're probably running some 2 year old kernel with their own patches, because they want to insulate themselves from upstream idiocy. They're not going to give you those patches, and even if they did, they probably couldn't because of upstream churn.

When it comes to Android, Google has done what the license asks. Make all the modifications public. If you and your rag-tag bunch of kernel developers want _their_ HOT new shit, the suck it up and bring the code in. It looks like they've even produced patches and sent you reviews. Don't like what they got? well, they're already doing more than what's required, so stop complaining.

You see, they've got this product to ship. And they've also got this competitor called Apple. You may have heard of them. So, yea, they _could_ sit their rearchitecting their interfaces so that some kernel dev which they don't pay and don't give shit about can feel like he's important... and watch Apple eat their lunch.

Or they could say fuck you guys. We're the one that's actually building something here. We'll get around to it, maybe, after we win.

Seriously, has this guy shipped real software before? And before someone gives the obvious answer, shipping upstream kernel releases does not count as "shipping" or "real". Just go look at the redhat kernel to see why that's the case.

Also, why go after google? There are tons of folks that do the same shit. They're just not as big. By doing so, you just look opportunistic and self-centered. Me me me me me me.

PS. I was thinking, maybe he should change the "staging" tree to the "hostage" tree. I mean, that's basically what it's used for.

BM's

Well, it looks like there's at least one business model out there that kinda works for companies shipping open source software: be some search engine's bitch.

Mozilla is Google's bitch. And now Ubuntu is Yahoo's bitch. Maybe Novell will be Bing's bitch?

I gotta better idea for you Ubuntu. Why don't you take your awesome hardware auto detection capabilities, and make it such that every time you install, you hit a server, which in turn causes an instant live auction between bing, google, and yahoo, who will bid money to make their search engine the default for that install.

I'm warning all you freetards. Some day, Ubuntu's installer is going to ask you if you want to install the google/yahoo/bing toolbar. And it will be present on every single window. Even your panel, and your xterm. Every shell command that you mistype will result in a google search. Then canonical can make ass loads of money and give you a crappy desktop system for free. It's going to be awesome. And some search engine will get like a hundred new people visiting their site.

BTW, it's amazing how desparate Yahoo looks at this point. A me-too search engine in bed with a me-too operating system. That's some nice thought leadership there Yahoo. Because you know, Google's all going to be like, we need to find some other distro that we can sponsor. Wait, what? They're building their own distro? It's going to ship on supported hardware and be somewhat usable? And it's based on Linux? ha ha ha. That's bullshit. Everybody knows that open source products won't succeed unless they have the support of the FSF. The FSF knows that the people want. Please. Stop your nonsense.

Some other notes for yahoo:

- These are Linux users. They are too cheap to click on your ads.

- These are freetards. They think it's cool to use adblock and pirate music.

So yea, uh, have fun trying to actually generate revenue from them.

Bad karma

Lets see, it's been almost 18 months since I originally posted Evolution of an Ubuntu user, but looks like they still haven't got their fucking act together.

I know a lot of you freetards out there dream of jobs where you can work on Linux, write code for Linux, and pen flowery blog posts that make it up on hacker news, but let me tell you, unless you're one of the few who are hired by Redhat to contribute nothing to their bottom line and instead work on their playground sand castle known as Fedora, it's going to suck.

So anyways, I had the awesome opportunity to upgrade to Karmic. Cuz I know, like shuttleman says, every Ubuntu release is the best fucking Ubuntu release ever.

Problem #1? Using update-manager to upgrade Ubuntu from behind the firewall is ass-slow. Yep, you guessed it. They try to do something that doesn't respect http_proxy and has to time-out before progressing. What year is this? really guys? Just because Ubuntards work out of their basement, doesn't excuse you from not supporting one of the most common practices in company network environments. I mean, it took us like five years to get you to add that damn option in the installer so that it didn't choke on a fat dick trying to the apt repositories. Now this. Amateur.

And while on the subject of proxies, it looks like your new shiny empathy client doesn't support proxies. Yep, there's a bug for that. Yep that's some empathy right therr. Obviously you totally understand your users get their shit done. Otherwise you wouldn't change my default chat app that fails to download my contact list, even from a server that's behind the proxy.

Problem #2? Wee! Something about my xconfig borked during an upgrade. And now I get a fucking strobe light prompt. I know you want to always give me a challenge to get a reasonable display, but do you actually have to try to damage my eyesight? What the fuck happened to bullet proof X? oh, right maybe that was only for intrepid, because, you know why add a useful feature if you're just going to keep it around for every subsequent release and not rewrite it?

Problem #3? Google reader on firefox is crazy slow. I mean, ff3.5 on jaunty worked just fine. But it's ok, nobody uses google reader. Yep, there's a bug for that, too, with a bunch of awesome Ubuntu contributors saying "me too!" "me too!" OMFG this bug is going to get fixed if we all keep saying me too! How many users does it take to fix a bug? None, you dipshit. You need a dev that gives a fuck.

Problem #4? I'm sure pulseaudio has something to do with this, but the volume on my computer appears to have exactly 3 notches between quiet and SUPER FUCKING TRIPLE SONIC BOOM YOU WIN! Ubuntu -- damaging your senses, one sense at a time. Maybe Linux is totally awesome if you're blind and deaf, and you just connect a serial console to your ass.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, there's a bug for that. Filed in March 2008!

Ok fine, I'm totally going to schedule three work days to upgrade when Lactating Leper comes out. If only there was some calendaring app that I could use to remind me.. because as far as I can see, Evolution is actually devolving. Come on Novell! just a little more. You've almost killed it! Only a few more smacks!

Target: Lusers

Just came across this wonderful email from the Fedora Advisory Board. In it, they try to describe who they're creating the Fedora distribution for. Here are their four criteria:

1. is voluntarily switching to Linux
2. is familiar with computers, but is not necessarily a hacker or developer
3. is likely to collaborate in some fashion when something's wrong with Fedora
4. wants to use Fedora for general productivity, either using desktop applications or a Web browser

This seems like a reasonable thing to do. I mean, it's always good to try to understand your user, right? Unfortuantely, the above description fails fantastically in so many ways. Look closely, and you'll see what they're really trying to say:

1. You're a freetard. If you're voluntarily switching to Linux, so that means you already find intrinsic value in it. Well, the software itself isn't up to par with the other stuff around, so what does Linux have that other's don't? We all know the answer to that one: freedom. But you know, the best way to improve your general purpose operating system is to build it for the tiny number of specific people who have already chosen to use your system. Everybody knows that.
2. You don't need any support, cuz you ain't gettin' any!
3. You can tolerate bugs, because our shit is full of bugs. You are also willing to file bug reports, only to see them linger forever. Another way of reading that is: you don't actually have a real life and you don't have anything else that you need to get done.
4. You only need a subset of features that Windows 98 had.

Brilliant! I think they've just created a nice 4-point summary why Linux is still on the sidelines of the desktop OS battlefield.

Here's an idea

If you're a freetard, but you need to run Windows at work or something, I've got an idea for a utility that will keep you true to the cause.

Well, a mockup for it anyways. I call it kanye-freetard-notify:

Suggestions box

I had to start using an Ubuntu box at work again, so I've got some fresh (or refreshed?) hate to unload. Since some of you seem to think I'm doing this to be constructively critical of Linux (you can think whatever the hell you want), I'll write these as if I was dropping notes into a suggestions box:

Please add a --shit-that-fucking-works flag to apt-cache search

How many hours do I have to waste wading through the monument of shit known as the debian package repository? I cringe to think of all the hours wasted arguing about how to correctly package apps and libraries that just don't work to start with. As a user, I don't care that the repository contains fuckteen different twitter clients. Could you just tell me the three that work? Oh wait, actually, this is open source, so could you tell me which one is th only one that kinda works?

Not only are you distracting me with having to try shit that doesn't work, you also are bewildering me with choices, most of which I don't care about, and most of which I have to spend time figuring out that I don't care about.

If you haven't seen this talk on the paradox of choice, go see it.

Everytime I use apt, I think I experience all the negatives that this guy talks about. 10 bazillion packages! Hurray! I don't even feel like trying to find one anymore.

I'm sure somebody is going to point out that on Ubuntu, that's why they separate main and universe and multiverse. Like main is supposed to be the good shit, and the rest of it is, like, whatever. Well you know what? If I stick to just the main repository on Ubuntu, then the whole thing sucks African gorilla cock. So don't go telling me that it's great because there's all these packages but then only 100 of them are actually useful. Because if you compare that set to what's available on a real desktop OS, it's just pathetic.

Please don't switch the Chromium PPA builds to 64bit on Ubuntu AMD64

The Chromium project recently made some noise about going 64 bit. I'm pretty sure that the Chromium PPA folks are going to switch to the x64 build for Ubuntu x64 as soon as they can.

Can I jus remind you that the Flash plugin for 64 bit is still alpha? and still crashes all the fucking time?

The greatest thing about the Chromium PPA is that its 32bit! I can actually use a stable flash build (though there are other issues), and it kinda mostly works. I can't say that for 64bit firefox and 64bit flash.

A lot of people have been using 32bit stuff for a long time. And especially in open source, that's the only way you know that something has a chance in hell of working.

Oh and BTW. Did anyone notice that Snow Leopard implemented browser plugins in separate processes? They pretty much made nspluginwrapper. Except it works, apparently.

So let's take stock. Yes, nspluginwrapper has been around for a long time. It's kind of a good idea and kinda works. Then Apple folks decided to do it, and it was done.

Sadly, so typical. The freetard line about, "oh open source is so flexible, it often implements new things first". Well you know what? When an idea is actually good, commercial companies still seem to be able to better implement these new things in less overall time.

Anyways, I think I've got a few more suggestions, but they'll have to wait.