Linux FUD in College Education

My fiance started a new class this week - an MIS (Management Information Systems) class. While we were having dinner tonight she brought up the fact there are some - lets say - colorful definitions of Linux in her wonderful "Experiencing MIS" text book.

Under a section titled "What Does a Manager Need to Know About Software?" there are a number of things presented to the reader as "facts" that I just have to disagree with. It starts with a nice table describing that describes typical users for Windows, OSX, Unix and Linux desktop users. What is the description of a typical Linux user you ask?

"rare - used where budget is very limited"

That is right - the only reason to use Linux on the desktop is when you are strapped for cash. I guess Google never got that memo. The extra kick in the pants? Apparently the only commonly used application Linux has is:

"Open Office (Microsoft Office look-alike)"

Never mind that Open Office contains a sane menu interface instead of "ribbons".

In case the avid reader is curious about who created Linux - that information is here as well. Linux is developed by the "open-source community" which is described as:

"a loosely coupled group of programmers who mostly volunteer their time"

I guess they never got the memo that nearly 75% of kernel work is done by paid developers.

This is what is holding Linux back on the desktop folks. Not a lack of hardware support. Not a lack of user friendliness. Just good old fashion Linux FUD. The best thing you can do to fight things like this is to speak up and let the people spreading the FUD know it is not OK to spread misinformation. Although I must say it really irks me seeing information like this appearing in a higher education setting.

What is this wonderful text book you ask? As mentioned above it is titled "Experiencing MIS", written by a man named "David Kroenke", and published by none other than Pearson Education.

~Jeff Hoogland

Giving Android a Chance...

It has been about six weeks since I have posted anything - and even longer than that since I posted non-Bodhi related content. I'm currently working through my final semester of graduate school and what little time I have extra has been going towards working on Bodhi things of the late.

Today however, I am bothered enough by something to share my feelings about it. If you have been by my blog here before then you might know that I am not a fan of Google's Android operating system. In fact in the past I have written why I feel it is removed from other Linux operating systems. As of the Linux 3.3 series kernel though a pile of the Android changes where merged back into the main line kernel.

Because of this re-merging and the fact that it had been sometime since I last tried Android in any form I felt I should give it another chance. I know a good amount of people that tout it's virtues and would not use anything else on their mobile devices. The recent death of the computer I'd been using as a media PC for the last three years sent me searching for a new toy. The combination of my wanting to try a recent Android release and the need to replace my media PC lead me to pick up a MK802 Android PC.

I got my little device in the mail today. I ripped open the box, plugged in all the cables and soon had Android booting on my TV! I have three needs from a media PC:

1. Light Web Browsing
2. Pandora Internet Radio
3. Play Media from my External Hard Drive

The MK802 did the first two with ease - the web browser loaded right up and I was soon viewing the Bodhi forums without issues. To take care of my second need, I popped open the Google Play store and installed the Pandora application. 

The issues started when I attempted to play some media files from my external hard drive. I plugged in my drive to the USB port and popped open the file manager - I poked around in all the options but the drive was nowhere to be found. Then I noticed a notification in the lower right corner of the screen, it read:

Damaged USB Storage - You may have to reformat it.

I'd never seen this message on a system powered by a Linux kernel before. I'd seen it a couple of times when friends had tried using my external on their Windows or OSX PCs. My drive is formatted to EXT4 you see. Apparently this file system isn't support on my Android device. That is right, this "Linux" PC doesn't support my Linux file system.

The solution to this issue? I've been told I need to compile a custom kernel module to add ext4 support. If I am going to spend that much effort getting Android to work I would rather devote that effort towards getting Debian to boot on the MK802 instead. So much for Android being easy.

~Jeff Hoogland

Bodhi Linux 2.1.0 Released

I'm happy to release to everyone our first scheduled update release of Bodhi Linux's 2.x.y branch - version 2.1.0. For those that want to get straight to the disc images you can find them in 32bit flavor here and 64bit here. There are a number of wonderful changes/improvements to this disc over our 2.0.1 disc released a couple of months ago. I'm going to outline the more important of the changes in this post, but you can always find our full change log here.

Before I dive into the changes - I'd like to just remind all existing Bodhi users that since this is simply an update release, you can easily update existing 2.x.y installs to these changes via the package manager.

Profiles and Themes:
The first thing you will notice are four fresh themes along with the elegant E17 Black and White theme appearing on this version of Bodhi's LiveCD:

Software:
We have a fresh build of Enlightenment and Terminology pre-installed on the disc. Beyond that our repositories contain the latest LibreOffice 3.6.1, Firefox 15 and Chromium 21 among a number of other current applications. The default kernel for this release is based on Linux 3.5

Two major software changes I'd like to highlight. First is that this build is now utilizing a much more recent version of the LXDM display manager. This updated version compiled from LXDM's GIT sources fixes a long standing issue with passwords that contain spaces and also adds support for user lists at the login screen:

This version of LXDM also comes with a very nice configuration tool:

Second, the PCManFM file manager has been dropped in favor of the Enlightenment native EFM:

This file manager lacks some advanced features (such as connecting to network shares), but it does support some nice features such as image and video previews. Those users still wanting PCManFM will be able to easily install it via the package manager.

Finally, if you have any issues with this live CD or Bodhi in general please open a support request on our user forums. The comment section of this post is not the best place to trouble shoot things.

~Jeff Hoogland

Bodhi's ARM Branch Moves to ARMHF

After doing some research and testing for the last week I have arrived at the conclusion that Bodhi's ARM branch will best serve our users by moving our core from Debian Wheezy ARMEL to utilize Debian Wheezy ARMHF. I'm not going to get into the technical difference between the two platforms here - just know that in general ARMHF is faster.

With this change however, there are some slight changes to our ARM repo details. If you have Debian Wheezy ARMHF installed on a device and wish to add the Bodhi repo to your sources the line you want to add is:

deb http://packages.bodhilinux.com/bodhi/ debian stable

Then you just install our bodhi-desktop package as before.

With regards to our officially supported ARM devices, you can find download links to our brand new ARMHF images for the RaspBerry Pi and Genesi Smartbook on our ARM downloads page. Our RaspBerry Pi build is built directly on top of Raspbian and incorporates all of their changes and improvements.

~Jeff Hoogland

That Good Old Linux FUD

Who doesn't love a good Monday morning rant?

I caught this article on the news feed of my favorite Linux news site this morning and I must say it upsets me a lot. The too long/didn't read version of this guy's article is that Android is "usable" for most users, while he finds desktop Linux lacking in the usability department. He cites a number of reasons why the distribution he selected (Fedora) isn't "usable" compared to Android. Honestly all of them are your normal anti-desktop Linux FUD and I am tired of it.

Oh man - all your hardware doesn't work with the distribution you are using, but your Android device works great? Let me guess - you bought a device with Android preinstalled. Your "Linux computer" on the other hand you installed yourself. You also didn't research the hardware. You just expected Linux to work with every piece of hardware that exists. I'm not sure who told you Linux worked with 100% of hardware, but guess what? They lied. Linux works with a great deal of hardware, but not all of it. If you bought your own copy of Windows or OSX and tried to install it on non-supported hardware you better believe their parent companies would tell you to get supported hardware. Why are you treating Linux differently?

Next he goes onto to complain about the difficulties you have to go through when setting up a Linux PC.

Oh man - you downloaded an operating system that has free software principles and you expected it to utilize closed source tools by default? This surprises you? In under an hour on distrowatch you can easily find a distribution that comes with such tools by default. Instead this guy choose the wrong tool for the job he wanted to do and then opted to complain when it didn't work properly.

Next he moves on to complaining about bugs in the operating system.

Oh man - the giant piece of complex software (that you got for free mind you) isn't perfect? Not only that, but instead of having to pay of updates like some operating systems these bugs can often be resolved automatically via the package manager after reporting them? Windows and OSX aren't bug free either. Why are you expecting Linux to be?

Finally he complains about the release cycle of the distribution he is using.

Oh man - you selected a distribution with a six month release cycle, but you don't like updating/reinstalling every six months? I am simply going to make a distrowatch reference again here. There are easily dozens of active projects that this won't happen with. Sadly, you can only lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink.

In closing today I would like to share one last thought of my own regarding desktop Linux. We have not yet gotten to a software world where everyone is ready to install and configure their own operating system. Expecting this to be true is a folly. I would be willing to bet that almost every user that has issues installing Linux (on Linux friendly hardware) would also have issues installing Windows or OSX.

Installing an operating system requires a user to make at least some technical decisions - it is the nature of the beast. Expecting desktop Linux to transcend this is just foolish.

Finally - no matter how good a given piece of software is you can never account for all the carbon based issues that are bound to occur. You know what they say - every time you make something idiot proof they go and make a better idiot!

~Jeff Hoogland

HOWTO: Launch OMXPlayer via a GUI

I'm going to be on an ARM kick for the next two weeks before my fall classes start up. In addition to porting Bodhi to the Pi one of my goals is also to replace my media PC with a Pi. Even though the processor in the Pi is fairly weak, it can decode HD video using it's GPU chip if you use the proper media player. This means that your old favorites like VLC and mPlayer will not work, so we must turn to a tool designed just for the Pi: OMXPlayer.

Now because OMXPlayer is still very new, it is still very basic. So basic in fact it's key bindings (for play/pause/stop/quit) only function if the program is launched via the CLI. Knowing my Fiance and friends who often use the media PC would give me no end of grief if they had to open a terminal to play movies - I set about finding a solution. Today I'd like to share that fairly simple solution with you!

To allow users to simply "double click" on a media file via the file manager and have it open in OMXPlayer you need to create a .desktop file for OMXPlayer. Open a terminal on your pi and run:

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/omxplayer.desktop

For it's contents paste:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=OMXPlayer
Categories=AudioVideo;Player;
Exec=omxplayer -o hdmi %f
Terminal=true
Icon=emblem-video

Save and close the file (ctrl+x in nano) and you should be good to go! When you double click on a media file in your file browser simply select Open With: OMXPlayer! Please note some users have reported this doesn't work with LXDE - I cannot confirm this though as I only use E17 and it works fine there :)

Cheers,

~Jeff Hoogland

HOWTO: Clone all Programs Installed via Apt

Today I would like to share a nifty trick for cloning your application selections installed via the apt-get package manager. It is as simple as running two commands. First on the system you wish to clone, open a terminal and run this command (which is on pastebin due to blogger formatting issues).

Next, simply copy the package-list to the system you wish to setup a copy on. Finally open a terminal and run:

xargs apt-get install -y < package-list

In the same directory you copied the package-list file too. Please note that this trick only works when your two systems in question have exactly the same sources/operating system version.

Cheers,

~Jeff Hoogland