LevelsOfDetail

I don't know how many posts I've written like this over the years. Too many, probably.

With the release of Ubuntu Feisty, I yet again welled up with enthusiasm for a Linux desktop. Finally, something that'll work, I thought.

I created a partition on my desktop at home, as well as my laptop, both which were previously exclusively running Windows XP. I spent a lot of time getting the little things to work, which actually led to three of my most popular blog posts ever.

I never start noticing the holes until the initial enthusiasm wears off. And it's not like I couldn't have seen them beforehand. Linux still has poor printing support, as well as sophisticated photography workflow tools. Both areas still have a lot of proprietary technologies involved. Fonts don't look as good, even with a lot of work.

VMware Workstation to the rescue, I thought. And while Workstation 6 is definitely the best release yet (and it could actually run all the Windows programs that I wanted just fine, including photo stuff, printing with real Canon drivers, EAC, DVDFab Decrypter, etc.), you inevitably start to question your decision when you find that you spend your time in a VM all the time.

Unfortunately, the host still matters for desktop use.

I did a mental exercise of listing the pros and cons of having each OS as the host. With Windows, I get good hardware support, good performance, better ACPI functionality, and better sound. With Linux, I get, well, "freedom." Practically, this means I can avoid various forms of lock-in, like filesystems and maybe even file-formats. Linux also certainly appeals to the tinkering side of me as well.

But in the end, I feel like I have to go with what gives me more choice, and what lets me take better advantage of the hardware, and what lets me get more done.

Some may argue that Linux being open and free, gives you more choice than Windows. I don't think things are so clear. While Windows does cost a bit, there are tons of open source programs available for Windows as well. All the best ones (like Firefox) have huge userbases on Windows. If there isn't a Windows port, I can always run it in a VM. If it's a console program, I can just ssh to the VM to get a 'native-like' experience, and if its a X program, I can just run an X server on Windows. If you flip it around and look at Linux, sure there are lots of great free software applications out there, but there are virtually no commercial ones¹.

As far as the hardware argument goes, I don't think too many people will argue for Linux having better hardware support. Sure it's getting there. And sure, there are exceptions. But as far as I can tell, my printer doesn't work very well, neither does my wireless card, ACPI suspend/resume is still a bit spotty, and I still have trouble getting multiple apps to talk to the sound card at the same time². All of these work reliably on Windows.

And finally, for the 'get more done' argument: It's true, I actually enjoy tinkering, and putting in a little elbow grease to get some esoteric hardware to work. Linux lets me do that much more than Windows. You have the source code you if you need it, you have great automation tools in the form of command line tools and scripting languages, and there's a lot of informtion on the web. But when it comes down to it, there's still a fundamental difference. On Windows, you can do this type of tinkering as well, but you don't have to. With Linux, it's still the case that inevitably, you get lost in terminal + text editor-land in the midst of trying to do some simple desktop task. It's getting better, but it's still not quite there.

So yet again, I return my home desktop to Windows³.

P.S. It's interesting to see the ultimate convergence scenario coming closer to reality. Eventually, virtual machine technology should get to the point where different PCI devices should be able to be passed through to specific VMs, and with all the major desktops moving to the "windows rendered to offscreen buffers" models, you can start to see how the GUI might start coming together.

¹ There are a few notably exceptions, such as VMware products, and some other apps here and there. Far from a comprehensive selection though.

² Admittedly, one of these apps is Workstation, which still insists on opening /dev/dsp. ALSA support from VMware should just be a matter of time, though.

³ XP x64 edition, to be specific. Part of the reason I opted for Ubuntu was the availability of the 64bit distribution to work with my recently acquired extra 2 gigs.

Just because I don't use Ubuntu regularly at home, doesn't mean it's the same at work ;-)

For some reason, I just cannot get Arial to look good on my Ubuntu box at work. I've tried all the various fontconfig settings, and nothing looks as good as how it looks on Windows. The closes result I've gotten is to turn off anti-aliasing, and use full hinting. That makes it look like Arial from 1995. But even then, the spacing is wrong¹.

Anyhow, so until they fix it, I want to turn off Arial, and use Bitstream Vera Sans instead. Sure I could delete the font, but this is exactly what .fonts.conf is for. Here's the little piece:

 <match target="pattern" >
   <test name="family">
     <string>Arial</string>
   </test>
   <edit name="family">
     <string>Bistream Vera Sans</string>
   </edit>
 </match>

You can pretty much use this trick with any font.

¹ I believe this is a long standing freetype bug. It also appears when you try to use fonts like MS PGothic and MS PMincho using their embedded bitmaps.

I've decided to try starting a website dedicated to various Ubuntu tips. The "beta" version is available at:

http://ubuntutips.kendeeter.com

This is meant to serve the same purpose as MacOSXHints, but for the Ubuntu community.

I realize there is a lot of good info on ubuntuforums.org already, but the information there is unstructured and sometimes difficult to peruse. This new site is intended to filter out the noise and provide a concise archive of various tricks that can benefit all Ubuntu users.

Update 5/24: Still no website yet. No luck with drupal, and geeklog and joomla were both disappointing. I might have to spend the weekend to build something from scratch.

So my experimental website doesn't work :-).

I'm not sure what the cause is, but once you sign out of an account, you can't sign back in.

There's a long thread about the problem on the Drupal site. I tried many of the suggested fixes, but it still fails to log me in correctly on both my home machine and work machine.

This probably has to do with how php has so many settings that are determined by your webhost, that it makes it rather difficult to write portable code.

Perhaps I should try another CMS. Plone looks interesting but also very complicated. Plus dreamhost doesn't run Zope. Aren't there any simple python-based ones?

Sometimes, you can choose to get what you do want, but if and only if you're also willing to take some of what you don't want. Other times, you can choose not get what you don't want, but then you also can't get what you do want.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to assign Windows and Linux to the appropriate categories, though I'm quite sure this applies to more than just operating systems.

To make up for my half-assed last attempt, I've decided to go all the way, and start a real community-driven site with its own domain.

www.ubuntutips.net.

I'm still calling it a beta, but feel free to register and comment or even send tip submissions to me through the link at the top of the page.

So I've been happily using Thunderbird 2.0 at work to connect to our Exchange server at work. It was going so well, that I decided to try it out at home.

Install Thunderbird 2.0 on Feisty... connect to vpn... type in account info... download headers from folders... so far so good.

Thunderbird claims to implement offline mode. This is simply a necessity nowadays, especially when it comes to accessing work email. Even Outlook can do it

So I give it a try.. disconnect the vpn... click on the folder.

Then pops up a dialog 'cannot connect to imap4.vmware.com'. Awesome, shouldn't I be in offline mode?

Then I discover that you actually have to mark folders individually to be available in offline mode. Tedious, but fine, whatever.

Try it again... 'cannot connect to imap4.vmware.com'. Uhh, why are you telling me if you've cached the messages? I can go to File -> Offline mode or whatever and then things begin to work. But I shouldn't have to tell Thunderbird that I want to go offline. Offline IMAP support, to me, really means "don't totally suck when you can't connect to the IMAP server". But clearly Thunderbird doesn't mean it that way.

The worst part: If you forget to explicitly set yourself into offline mode, then go to click the top of the tree for your IMAP account (the tree item with the name of your account), it goes and tries to refresh your list of folders... and guess what? 'cannot connect to ....'. Well if there's no server, then there must be no folders, right? Thunderbird will proceed to remove all your IMAP folders from your folder view, and you won't be able to get to them until the IMAP server is reachable again, and to add insult to injury, it will need to re-sync all your folders all over again.

Lesson learned? All IMAP clients are broken in some way. I guess the only way to fix it is to use the OfflineIMAP (separate program) + dovecot combination, and point Thunderbird at that.