Paradigm shift

A Paradigm shift: A change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms. A shift in the distinct concepts or thought patterns in epistemological context. That is to say, new premises.

All my life I've been a hard working Linux user. I tried to maintain my OS, keep up with my optimizations. But recently my attitude towards computing changed greatly. It was a slow change, spread over a year; but change I did. Before starting to explain what I am talking about I should say that there is no better way of doing things, there is only doing.

Anyway, I believe there are two different main paradigms in desktop Linux world. One that forces user to create his (or her) own system; and one that which does not, like Ubuntu. I used to hate Ubuntu, it was restricting, always dictating how my system should be (at least I saw it like that), and fixed releases, what a chore. And I used to love Arch. Building the system from the beginning, patching packages you want to patch, mixing things you want to mix. Having total control over you system is, I must agree, a special kind of technological high, even if there is no Snow Crash like drug is involved. But I guess I am getting older now. Work takes almost all my time, reading new legislations, new cases, writing essay, reading and commenting essays... I noticed that I don't have time to tinker with my system. Recently I was even becoming afraid that my system would break with that new update. My system was great, I had lovingly created it up from the command line and used it for years; but as I said, priorities change.

Nowadays I hardly want to use Arch, or something similar. I've been using Ubuntu for a while now and against what everyone things, I kind of liked Unity. But I were using a deeply customized Gnome 3 with Arch so I am hardly a judge of GUIs. Clearly, I am not one of the majority when it comes to GUIs.

I could muse a lot longer about merits of two different paradigms but this is a topic much visited in Linux world and I am sure everyone understands what I am saying here. So this is what I want to do: ask you a question. Did you went through a personal technological evolution of this kind? If you did, how and more importantly why it did happen? I would be very glad if you take time to comment on this.

Post Scriptum: As a side note, the reason I choose Ubuntu is that almost perfect feature called HUD. I use it almost constantly and it is great, at least I feel so.

Of Fanboys and Distribution Menageries

Opening the word processor is a rare thing for me. I usually make do with LaTeX. But it is needed sometimes, like when you have a desire to write for your blog, and the writing will end up copied and pasted anyway, and you want a completely unrelated way to start your post. That done, let’s start:

Our first topic of discussion is distribution menageries. Some people, with a drive I confess I cannot even begin to understand, install distributions. I am not talking about building a stable desktop for yourself with Scientific Linux and putting a Fedora or Arch next to it to play with latest innovations and software, I am talking about those people who install (and I took this list from an anonymous from Ubuntu Forums) Ubuntu 10.04, openSUSE 12.1, Ubuntu 11.10, Xubuntu 11.10, Mint Linux 12, Windows 7 and the last Kubuntu. Agreed, not everyone goes that extreme, but it is common to see people who installed 2 or 3 spins on same Ubuntu and something like a nonworking BSD. They speak of this on public forums without embarrassment; and as it happens, there is no embarrassment to be felt as all they get are pats on the back. This gives me, so conveniently, a way to introduce our next topic of discussion: Fanboys or fanbots, whichever you prefer. People who write window$, M$ (winzort is popular here) and claim that Microsoft is out to conquer the world. This last world conquering part is what really angers me; after all, world domination should be goal of every self respecting nerd; do not discriminate against Linux people, please.

Getting back to the distribution menageries and consequently getting into a fleeting feeling of bloginess and talking about myself, I have to say that I’ve never even owned a small one. Only distributions I used until now are Corel Linux which introduced me to Linux, Mandiva (it was Mandrake back then) Arch and Ubuntu. The last I have used for 3-4 months total over years, Arch I’ve used for years and years, Mandriva (and Mandrake) a little more than a year maybe. Mainly, I am an Arch user for the last 6 years. 4 distributions, that is. I should not even count Corel and Ubuntu as I can count the weeks I used them with my fingers, so there are 2 distributions I used and know. I don’t have any desire to use any other even in a virtual machine. But lately I’ve been thinking about using Scientific Linux with Xfce on top it; security and stability is slowly becoming a lot more important for me as the time goes by, a sure sign of aging I am afraid. I am not interested in the latest and shiniest any longer. Anyway, I don’t think I need to see openSUSE or Fedora to use Linux and become knowledgeable about it. This is all I will say on this matter; because, quite frankly, I can’t even begin to comprehend why this menageries exist. Illuminate me if you know.

Fanboys are a matter not so different. They also create and maintain menageries sometimes. But their biggest quality is their capacity for self promotion. You use Ubuntu, goooood for you; you hate Windows, I am there with you bro, screw logic; You need Pro Tools, don’t be a boob and use Ardour, it is better (With an added Ada and and dropped u, it will be better then everything). The real Linux people who know how Linux works and are able to use it beyond installing Mint because of Unity are the ones who spent time learning Linux; and with the effort they’ve spent they’ve also learned the value of effort itself and the definition of software. Last one is also available on Wikipedia, our possible savior from SOPA: “Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provides the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it” (insert random citation). If you don’t like how Windows speaks with your hardware, don’t use it; but Windows is not something to hate, it is software. A product. Hating Windows is just like hating goat milk and spending obscene amount of time on forums to bash it. Just because you want to play games but cannot run Skyrim on Ubuntu does not give you right to bash Windows. Windows and Linux are different things. There are even more amusing things they say: when one of them encounters a problem while trying to replace Windows with Linux and obviously fails, he says that “Now, I also hate Windows, bla bla bla...). Every time they criticize Linux, they feel the need to say how much they hate Windows. There are also insider fanboys. They hate things like Ubuntu, Unity or Arch. Why, I do not know. But their logic is clearly faulty: “I hate Unity so I went to Fedora, Linux is about choice”. Fishy, no?

Well, you now the adage: “The playas gon’ play. Them haters gonna hate.”

Catalyst fixes for GNOME 3 and Adobe Flash

Two simple tricks. I tried them with the new 12.1 and they work well. I don't know about older versions. Catalyst's performance on GNOME 3 and Adobe Flash was terrible; with these fixes, it is more than alright.

Simply add this to your /etc/profile file to fix GNOME 3:

     # Catalyst fix for Gnome-shell
     export CLUTTER_VBLANK=none

And for Adobe Flash turn your /etc/adobe/mms.cfg file to this:

     #Hardware video decoding
     #EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1
     OverrideGPUValidation=true

A wild Minty Customer appears!

First, I must say that all that follows here is my own demented view. But blog thingy already implies that, and about the 'demented'... well, going against the flow might always be demented, no? Our topic here is Linux Mint. It is very popular right now, but does it really deserve that much popularity?

I don't think Linux Mint is really important enough to give that much attention. Most of they have, they have because of Ubuntu. And all they contributed to the FOSS is some shiny panels and menus together with some non-crucial tools for package management, hardly worth mentioning in the greater scheme of the things. Cinnamon is still in the works but more on it later. Ubuntu greatly changed their Debian base and started projects like Upstart (which I am fond of), they made great leaps in desktop hardware recognition and use; Mint made some panels and menus. Comparison here is quite clear that I don't think my intelligent readers (let me butter you up a bit) might need more clarification.

Now, I know that those panels and menus are the face of Linux for the uneducated user, but those menus and the such do not really matter that much now, do they? I used their Gnome Shell menu(only the menu) in my Arch setup and I admit it was nice. But this goes on to show that it was just an extension. I am not sure how an extension can be claim to fame like we are seeing right now.

Usual argument here is “but Mint did what users wanted”. As an anarchist myself, I thing democracy is a bad, bad thing and seeing this mob rule working here is actually has quite bad implications. A FOSS project does not belong to the community, community only uses it for free and if they like it, they report bugs and do all the other assorted things they can do. A FOSS project belongs to those who wrote it and if you don't like how they do it, you can do it yourself if you are capable of. Cinnamon project is a respectable thing from this point of view and may claim some fame but as it came much later from this the fame I am talking about here, it is not really relevant to our discussion. Proprietary software needs to listen to the customers because of their own virtues and and thus conforms to their wishes, but FOSS has no such compulsions. Beauty of the FOSS, for me, is the underlying anarchy. “The Customer Is Always Right” writes Swapnil Bhartiya of Muktware, I don't understand this: What customer? Those who donated to Mint? As far as I know the laws, donation is a one sided transaction. Strength of FOSS is how it brings change and innovation without the great sword of customers floating on the top of its head. There is a strength in whims and in dreams of nerds. If you bring that sword into the fold, we have infinitely more to lose than we have to gain, foremost of them of the losing side is the freedom that seems so important to FOSS.

Linux Mint got their recent fame from this customer idea. While giving people what they want, thus making them happy is a good thing; it is really disturbing me how people on the forums and the blogs are starting to say that everyone should act like Linux Mint and cater to the wishes of 'the customers'.

PS: As a unrelated sidenotey question, Do you know any old anime that is similar to Full Metal Panic?

Best Desktop Distributions

Note: If you don't like this discussion, you can jump to the end for some The Sandman related humor. After all, a topic visited as much as this one should be... colored a bit, don't you think so?

A few days ago a friend, being new to Linux, asked me about different distributions and that led to a long talk about their merits and failings. So, being new to blog-sphere, I decided to play it safe and write about best desktop distributions. But I also thought that I could do this a little differently. Best as in best for the Linux Desktop. First let us find some criteria for choosing distributions:

1. Considering an usual desktop user uses around 1000-2000 package, the distribution must have over 10000 packages. Let's just say over 9000.
2. It must not be a cosmetic derivative, or a derivative of a derivative of a derivative of a...
3. It must be up-to-date. My criteria for this is two important packages: linux (* > 3.0.6) and libreoffice (* > 3.3). This packages manage to give a good sense of up-to-dateness for the desktop.
4. It must have an active community.
5. It must support both KDE and Gnome 3.
6. It must not be a testing variant.

If I have to defend my criteria a bit (which I should), I must say that a distribution aimed for desktop users must always stay on the top of the Linux discussions and must not sacrifice stability. If people everywhere are eating their keyboards talking about Gnome 3, a desktop distribution must offer it for use. LibreOffice must be up-to-date as it is probably one of the most important applications for the desktop. And it must have relative stability within its own definition, meaning stability as Debian understands stability and stability as Arch understands stability. Lastly, this list is aimed to the somewhat new users who knows about Linux a bit (maybe having used Ubuntu for a six-month-spin) and wants to go exploring. And it is written mainly because I enjoyed the discussion I referred in the first sentence and thought that I would also enjoy summarizing it (I did).

If you think that this six points cannot offer an objective perceptive, we can discuss it. Leave a comment. After all, this is just my opinion.

Depending on the criteria, these are distributions we end up with (sorted by the time I clicked their Wikipedia page) : Linux Mint Debian Edition, Sabayon, Gentoo, Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE. Only seven. Seems very few but if we are talking about the best desktop distributions, we must not show clemency. Moreover; isn't seven a good, nice, prime number? They must fulfill all six criteria I offered or they are not among the best.

Now a little deeper look into the six distributions. I think that distributions must be further classified by how they are released.

Short-term releases:

These are the distributions that are released by six-month intervals. Ubuntu family of distributions and Fedora belong here. This release format offers very good balance between stability and being up-to-date. But it might sometimes sacrifice stability. Fedora is known to be particularly unstable sometimes. Their short-term usage might also be annoying. As a last comment, their stability is more or less hit-or-miss; mostly hit with Ubuntu, but not so with Fedora.

Long-term releases:

These are, as the name suggest, follows a release circle but one that is longer than six months. openSUSE fits here. It is stable and up-to-date. Actually, only reason I don't recommend it is my own bad experiences with their repositories and;

Rolling releases:

These are my personal favorites. Arch, Sabayon and Gentoo fits here. The main attractions of rolling release are that they always stay up-to-date and once configured, you may forget about configuration. There are no six or eight monthly re-installs or big updates. Not having used Gentoo and Sabayon, I can't talk about their stability (maybe you might want to leave a comment about this if you used them); but Arch is stable. A very new user may not find it so, but for an experienced user there is not much of a problem. All-in-all, rolling releases offer good desktop experiences for the long-term use. Still, for the sake of objectivity, I must say here that openSUSE is probably more stable than these. Be warned: Gentoo is a source distribution.

Mixed releases:

These stands between rolling and fixed releases. Linux Mint Debian Edition fits here. It is rolling, but it stops to roll for a while when it nears the stable releases of Debian Stable. I know that I said the distribution must not be a testing variant but LMDE is a special case. They have created a curious mix between Debian Testing and Ubuntu and they have their own tools. They also release updates in bundles so stability is not a big problem even if it is based on a testing branch.

Now, for some humor:

As we have only seven distributions in our hands, I can't stop thinking about something else that is numbered seven. And if you don't know what The Endless family is, you can stop reading here.

Seven distributions, seven Endless. Let's match them:

Destiny is the Linux Mint Debian Edition. Because it is, well... Debian. A solid argument by itself, isn't it =)

Death is Ubuntu. Because everyone must encounter it someday. Maybe on your own computer, maybe on a virtual machine, maybe supporting someone else. It is the distribution you might know much about without actually even using it yourself.

Dream is Arch. Not because it does not want to change (although it also does not really wants to change) but you can shape it into almost everything Linux can be.

Destruction is openSUSE. Because it is somewhat of a rogue element. With next to nothing derivatives or anything.

Desire/Despair is Sabayon/Gentoo. Because you despair while compiling with Gentoo and desire Sabayon's binaries and then despair for customization of Gentoo and then despa...

Delirium is Fedora. Because it is Fedora. Cutting edge delight turning into delirium.

Thanks for reading all way to the here. See you later!