After hearing one of my co-workers rave about how impressed he was with Fedora Core, I was going to give that a try. But the DVD he burned for me wouldn’t install for some reason. So I decided to go with Ubuntu. This was probably just as well, as we use a lot of Debian Linux stuff at work, and Ubuntu is Debian-based.

I won’t bore you with details of the install (which went smoothly), or with detailed lists of what I’ve done to customize my system. But I do want to point out some good links and highlights for the curious. Especially what I did about those pesky “can’t-live-without” Windows applications.

I knew that the main Windows application that I would miss was Photoshop. Yes, I know about the Gimp, and I’m sure it’s quite capable of doing 99% of the things that I do in Photoshop. But I’ve been using PS for about 10 years now, and I know my around that application. I’ve tried using the Gimp a few times, but I just can’t make myself use it enough to get used to that interface. I also know about Gimpshop, but I already own the real thing, and I’d prefer to use it.

Enter Wine. Wine is an implementation of the Windows API under Unix. And it really works. I just mounted my Photoshop CD, and ran wine Setup.exe, and Photoshop was installed into the default wine environment under my account. I did run into some glitches trying to run it at first, however. But after a bit of searching, I discovered that the solution was to remove some unneeded definitions for a Wacom graphics tablet from my xorg.conf file.

The other main Windows app that I thought I’d miss was iTunes. However, rather than running that under Wine, I decided to check out the native Linux offerings. I tried XMMS, but it was too much like WinAmp, and I didn’t like the interface. I also tried Rhythmbox, and it was okay, but just didn’t seem like I could tweak it enough. Then I found Amarok 1.4.2, which is what I’m running now.

Amarok has an interface and feature-set very similar to iTunes. It’s also very easy to hook into it and write your own scripts to interface with the player. I was able to whip up a perl script to send “now playing” song information to my web server very quickly. I just wish that there was a universally accepted way to transport song ratings from one system to another. I lost all my iTunes ratings, play counts, and such. It’s probably possible to extract that from the iTunes data files, but I don’t have enough spare time to mess with that. In any case, I’m pretty happy with Amarok.

And finally, I also found some simple instructions for running Internet Explorer under Ubuntu. This is great for web development, as I’ll be able to test pages with IE 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0. This procedure installs each version of IE into its own Wine environment, so you can run them all simultaneously without side-effects. I’m keeping my eye out for IE 7.0, but it might be a while, because it apparently depends on some bits of Windows XP that aren’t yet handled by Wine.

In any case, I’m still getting along just fine with Ubuntu. The main problem I’ve had so far is that some of my Firefox and Thunderbird extensions don’t want to work correctly (ForecastFox, for example). But I’m sure that the wrinkles will get smoothed out over time. If you are thinking of installing Ubuntu, or if you already have, and need some pointers on what you can do to tweak your sytem, try the following useful links:

• Mark Pilgrim’s Essentials, 2006
• Top 10 Ubuntu Apps and Tweaks
• 14 Days of Ubuntu
• Automating GNOME with Devil’s Pie

Sometime in the future, I might post more specific details on other utilities I’ve installed or configuration options I’ve tweaked to get my system set up the way I want. If you’d be interested in that, let me know!

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Aruba Networks was selected to provide the networking equipment for what is considered to be one of the world’s largest next-generation wireless LANs, serving more than 25,000 simultaneous users a day in some 60 countries. According to an Aruba press statement, Microsoft’s new WLAN will be deployed in 277 buildings covering more than 17 million square feet using Aruba mobility controllers, mobility software and some 5000 wireless access points.

What the press statement didn’t mention is that Aruba mobility controllers run the Linux operating system which Microsoft has aggressively targeted as being inferior to Windows as part of its “Get the Facts” marketing campaign.

It’s good to know that Microsoft is in line with my personal philosophy of “use whatever tool is best for the job”.

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If I was still working at my previous employer back in Alabama, I would be all over this. They are a big IBM user who are currently migrating their web platform from Microsoft’s IIS to IBM’s WebSphere. If I were still there, I’d have a much easier time converting all the Perl ASP code that I wrote to PHP than if I tried to rewrite everything in JSP.

This is definitely cool news for tech geeks in Big Blue evironments that like the security blanket of support contracts.

via: Sam Ruby

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Linux has other problems too. It’s likely that developer interest will wane when Apple is fully engaged on the X86 platform. While Apple ran on the PowerPC chip the amount of developer effort in the Open Source camps was nil. But now that Apple is using the same processor as everyone else, targeting the Macs will now be an easy decision to make. This will be at the expense of Linux.

And then there are the numerous developers who simply do not subscribe to the notions of the Open Source Foundation and its rigid licensing requirements. They will quickly see profit opportunities for OS-X/86 development without having to worry about what has to be shared and what can be sold for profit.

Huh? Dvorak doesn’t seem to grok the Linux and Open Source community. First of all, one of the first things that’s going to happen is that developers will port Linux to the new Intel-based Macs. Just like they’ve ported Linux to the XBox, Playstation, Game Boy, and just about every cell phone and PDA out there. It might not be the most practical thing to do, but it’s a challenge, and therefore it will be done.

Secondly, I can’t really see many Open Source developers suddenly getting dollar signs in their eyes just because Macs have a new CPU. Why should they? How many open source projects are written in assembly language? Not many, I can assure you. Mostly, they’re written in Java, C/C++, Perl, and Python. Some are written to be cross-platform to begin with. Others are targetted at a particular operating system. But few of them give a hoot about what kind of CPU they run under. And then there are the web-based projects built around PHP, Ruby, and/or Javascript, among others. These tend to be even more platform agnostic. They don’t care if they’re running under Windows, OSX, Linux, or FreeBSD. In fact they don’t care if they’re running on a desktop, a mainframe, or a Commodore 64.

The way I see it, Linux and its cousins have a lot to gain. With only one CPU to target, work will become easier for those working on Mac emulators. I don’t imagine that it will be long before we see something like WINE. Maybe MINE is in our future?

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