5 Things Ubuntu STILL needs your support on

I have been an avid Ubuntu user for 4 years and Linux user for 10, there have been significant several improvements over the years that have made it a pleasure to use Linux 80% of the time.

But listing these will help guide the next few releases and help early adopters understand the risks.

 

TOP 5 Missing Features in UBUNU (and Linux)

5. Speed

Ubuntu boots up way faster than Windows XP, Vista and Win7. However, once Gnome (or KDE) startsup the user-perception of performance lags. Ubuntu/Gnome and Kubuntu are markedly slower to start applications than Win Xp or Win7.

4. Office 2010-like features

OpenOffice and OfficeLibre don't compare with Microsoft Office 2010. Features like One Note and Smart Art, MS Visio (yes, it's still better than Dia), has left the open source community challenged to meet or beat the new features provided in Office. 

3. Better screen real estate utilization

Screen real-estate is precious, and Win Xp did an awesome job on rendering the toolbars and icons to optimize on both low resolution monitors as well as high resolution monitors. For WSXGA screens, XP is still far better that Gnome 2x. A partial workaround is to use a compact theme, but it does not suffice. KDE does a better job than Gnome, and XP does a better job than KDE in screen real estate utilziation.

2. Support for Apple products: iPad, iPod

Support for iPads and iPods is essentially missing. You cannot use iTunes on Linux. Shame on Apple. Not only is iTunes a poorly designed and resource hungry software, it is not cross-platform. Windows is the only 'other' OS that is supported.

1. Support for Netflix

Shame on MIcrosoft and Netflix. Microsoft has not allowed DRM to be ported. Netflix seems committed to Silverlight. The combination has left Linux and Android operating systems in the cold, when it comes to Netflix movies. This is major strategic risk to Netflix. Not from Linux, but from Android users. Watch for Amazon in the this space. If Amazon supports a true cross-platform movie-watching experience Netflix will have a serious competitor.

+  = No Linux or Android

Conclusion

If you are planning to check out Linux and any of its distributions for the first time, I strongly reccommend Ubuntu/Gnome or Kubuntu which is closer to the Windows user experience. Be aware of the missing features on the platform. In the next 3-5 years, Linux needs support from you and the corporations to be a viable platform for day to day computing needs.

 

 

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• Linux Office Suites
• Links 2/4/2011: Scientific Linux 6.0 Released, GNOME 3.0 Delays
• What will the new GNOME desktops mean for other Linux desktops?
• Gnome 3 Beta
• Maia Kozheva: The Kubuntu Wishlist
• OpenSUSE 11.4: SUSE Linux Revitalized
• Ubuntu Linux and GNOME: The Disputes continue

3 rules to understand attitudes and actions

Here are my 3 rules to understand people's attitudes and actions.

 

Rule #1. If you want to understand people's attitudes, first understand their motives.

Rule #2. If you want to understand people's actions, understand their incentives.

Rule #3. If you want to understand people politics, read Rule #1, Rule #2.

 

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Case in point 

 

When the Demon wants your Wallet

Ubuntu 10.10 has an issue when you run Gnome and KDE.
On startup KDE prompts 'KDE Daemon' has requested to open the wallet 'kdewallet'.


The solution is to install WICD

rohit@lenovo:~$ sudo apt-get install wicd

 

[sudo] password for rohit: 

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

The following extra packages will be installed:

  python-iniparse python-wicd wicd-daemon wicd-gtk

The following NEW packages will be installed:

  python-iniparse python-wicd wicd wicd-daemon wicd-gtk

0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Need to get 562kB of archives.

After this operation, 3,121kB of additional disk space will be used.

Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y

WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!

  python-wicd python-iniparse wicd-daemon wicd-gtk wicd

Install these packages without verification [y/N]? y

Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/universe python-wicd all 1.7.0+ds1-5 [76.8kB]

Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main python-iniparse all 0.3.2-1 [19.8kB]

Get:3 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/universe wicd-daemon all 1.7.0+ds1-5 [277kB]

Get:4 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/universe wicd-gtk all 1.7.0+ds1-5 [147kB]

Get:5 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/universe wicd all 1.7.0+ds1-5 [41.0kB]

Fetched 562kB in 6s (80.3kB/s)          

 

                                      

 

Preconfiguring packages ...

Selecting previously deselected package python-wicd.

(Reading database ... 258926 files and directories currently installed.)

Unpacking python-wicd (from .../python-wicd_1.7.0+ds1-5_all.deb) ...

Selecting previously deselected package python-iniparse.

Unpacking python-iniparse (from .../python-iniparse_0.3.2-1_all.deb) ...

Selecting previously deselected package wicd-daemon.

Unpacking wicd-daemon (from .../wicd-daemon_1.7.0+ds1-5_all.deb) ...

Selecting previously deselected package wicd-gtk.

Unpacking wicd-gtk (from .../wicd-gtk_1.7.0+ds1-5_all.deb) ...

Selecting previously deselected package wicd.

Unpacking wicd (from .../wicd_1.7.0+ds1-5_all.deb) ...

Processing triggers for ureadahead ...

ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot

Processing triggers for man-db ...

Processing triggers for python-gmenu ...

Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/desktop.en_US.utf8.cache...

Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...

Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ...

Processing triggers for menu ...

Processing triggers for python-support ...

Setting up python-wicd (1.7.0+ds1-5) ...

Setting up python-iniparse (0.3.2-1) ...

Setting up wicd-daemon (1.7.0+ds1-5) ...

 * Starting Network connection manager wicd                              [fail] 

Setting up wicd-gtk (1.7.0+ds1-5) ...                                           

Setting up wicd (1.7.0+ds1-5) ...

Processing triggers for python-support ...

Processing triggers for menu ...

localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/locale: 828 KiB

localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/man: 20 KiB

localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/gnome/help: 0 KiB

localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/omf: 0 KiB

localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/doc/kde/HTML: 0 KiB

 

Total disk space freed by localepurge: 848 KiB

Weather.com Software Platform: Open Source

This is a snippet from a 2004 article that I never publicly published, but is serves as a good case study relevant in 2011 (and beyond).

In 2004, weather.com site served more than 50 million pages on stormy days, and it ran almost entirely on open-source software and commodity hardware. The Atlanta-based Web site’s adoption of a new architecture and open source products “has slashed IT costs by one-third and increased Web site processing capacity by 30%”  (King 2004). However cost slashing was not their primary goal of switching to an open source product. The quality of open source products was its main “selling” point. Weather.com claimed that their transition from IBM’s server software product to open source Apache Tomcat to run their website served correct operations, ease of use and better quality attributes overall. Of course, there are different organizational dynamics that lead to a decision to drop COTS (and support) to an open source solution.

Performance and scalability issues were cited as the main reasons for switching to Apache’s web server. The team switched from IBM’s commercial offering to Apache’s open source implementation primarily for its quality. Apache’s open source web servers host 68% of web servers in the world according to an August 2004 analysis of Netcraft (Gustafson, Koff).

 

Graph: Totals for Active Servers Across All Domains June 2000 - June 2010

 

IBM has since started to use a modified version Apache Web Server in it’s commercial offerings. This is a trend that is likely to repeat itself across multiple technology domains depending on various factors: it remains to be seen if the penetration projections hold true over time.

6 Traits of an Impoverished Leader

Impoverished Leadership Style

1. Uninvolved: Is not involved with the effort at hand
2. Unmotivated: Does not motivate and is not moved by the effort
3. Indifferent: Does not care about the outcomes or your efforts
4. Noncommittal: Does not provide straight answers and is not ready to support the effort.
5. Resigned: Is not positive about the effort and is basically non caring.
6. Apathetic: No emotion, no enthusiasm.

Have you worked for a manager in your career that you thought was disconnected and unmotivated? The LeaderShip Grid (developed by Ohio State University) defines what they call the "Impoverished Leadership Style". Rest assured - this is a common leadership patter in dysfunctional organizations.

Offline Desktop Blog Clients for Linux

Live Writer works like Microsoft Office (or OpenOffice Writer), once you're done writing your document, you can simply Save, and/or Publish to your blog.

I have Live Writer installed on my XP slice that I run on my linux laptop. Running Virtual Box does take away CPU when running XP - and frankly I wanted to be able to use Linux for all my needs.

I was disappointed. After using several offline desktop oriented blog clients for Linux , the verdict is that none of them offer the features that LiveWriter does.

GnomeBlog (Blog Entry Poster)

 

This is the User inteface - it is minimal, does not have off line save options, cannot be used by any serious blogger.

 

 

If you're looking to post casual updates, almost tweets or micro blogs - from your desktop then this may be a fit. But why bother? Just get a Twitter account and use TweetDeck that runs on Adobe Air.

GTKBlog

For some reason GTK blog looked attractive but would never run on Ubuntu10.10 - I did not bother to find out why. I did get a screen shot from their website.

rohit@lenovo:~$ blogtk

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/usr/bin/blogtk", line 14, in <module>

    import gtkhtml2

ImportError: No module named gtkhtml2

Ok -so its missing some dependencies - and needed to be installed - it wasn't there in the repos. I don't want to compile it from source. Just.

ScribeFire

So I proceed to install ScribeFire - which is an add on to both Chrome and Firefox.

 

Let's you open it from Chrome (or Firefox) and lets you manage the text offline.  

You CANNOT place images in Offline mode. This is a huge flaw.

 

Drivel Journal Editor

 

Drivel has more features but does not handle images in offline mode with any grace.

Drivel, too cannot manage images without being connected to the Internet. 

Conclusion

None of the Desktop Blog clients on Linux manage images offline with any grace. LiveWriter from Microsoft is superior to all Linux Desktop clients that I have used.

If you were to still choose, I would go with ScribeFire. Hope that someone will take the time to upgrade or write a new Desktop blog client in 2011.

DreamWeaver 3: how to publish (1999)

Here's a tutorial I had written back in 1999 when managing web-sites was a big thing and Dreamweaver was the most advanced tool on the market

 Go to Sites>Define Sites

You will see this window

Click on New

 

Fill it out as follows

 

Now after you fill out the Local Info. Fill out the Web Server Info

 

 

Good. Now fill out the Check-in Check out window info

 

Site map layout is next

 

 

Home Page: enter your own path to the index.html that lives on your hard drive. (in the above picture I store it in a a folder called rohitsood.com which is in a folder called www which is under a folder called MyFolder in C drive). Give your own path or browse to it.

 

Next few settings are simple

 

 

Click OK and Done. You can connect and “checkout” the site. From Dreamweaver.

 

 

 

 

Dream Act will Support Small Business and Entitlements

In the next two decades America will see a structural shift and displacement of its demographics that it hasn't experienced in the past 50 years. Baby Boomers will retire and depend heavily on entitlements like Medicare and Social Security. A significantly contracted workforce will threaten the stability of the United States government and it's global economic power.

Fast Forward 2010: Immigrants Have a Dream

Structural adaptation, and realignment is going to be desperately needed starting 2011.

The Dream Act, that is currently stalled in Congress, will boost small businesses and the American economy over the next decade. The bill indirectly provides necessary relief to citizens and retirees. Here's why: as children of immigrants in schools and colleges across America graduate - a permanent residence status ("Green Card") will legally permitted them to start small businesses all over. This educated and skilled workforce will provide, fill and generate jobs at all scales of businesses and support entitlements via taxation. However, a vast majority of the American population feels threatened by a misguided notion that illegal immigrants hurt the economy and legal immigrats "take our jobs". The immigration grid lock over the past 10 years has led to a brain drain via "outsourcing" of services and manufacturing. This is not sustainable. Continuing to penalize children of immigrants is not a good way to move forward.

The Dream Act supports children of illegal immigrants to gain a status that allows them to work, open a business and go to college in the United States.

We need to legalize the next generation so they can support small businesses.

Our greatest danger is to brand children of immigrants and college graduates from other countries as "aliens" who need to "go back". A regression in a skilled workforce will cause a stagnation in the U.S economy. If the policy of the new congress is to promote a reverse brain drain via a strategic policy of inaction, future congresses will face an imminent threat of economic depression. It is in our best strategic interest to allow future hardworking children of immigrants in America to realize the American Dream.  

InoxMovies.com - an example of what NOT to do

One message for "InoxMovies.com" : Establish an Exception Handling Architecture

 

Server Error in '/' Application.

---

Server was unable to process request. --> Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException: Server was unable to process request. --> Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[SoapException: Server was unable to process request. --> Object reference not set to an instance of an object.] System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.ReadResponse(SoapClientMessage message, WebResponse response, Stream responseStream, Boolean asyncCall) +431766 System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] parameters) +204 WebReference.SeatBook.ShowSeats(Int64 TheatreId, Int64 BookingId, String ShowClass, Int64 NoOfTickets, String PartnerId, String PartnerPwd) +195 seatlayout.Seat_Layout() +743 seatlayout.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) +3161 System.Web.Util.CalliHelper.EventArgFunctionCaller(IntPtr fp, Object o, Object t, EventArgs e) +14 System.Web.Util.CalliEventHandlerDelegateProxy.Callback(Object sender, EventArgs e) +35 System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +99 System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +50 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +627

 

---

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.3603; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.3082

 

Removing Oxy Mouse Pointer

I have been using Linux off an on for the past 10 years for personal needs. Having never tried KDE, I installed it on the latest Ubuntu distribution. It is quite fancy and has lots of good features, however it has its share of issues too.
Surprisingly one of the features leaked into my Gnome sessions: the mouse pointer.

For whatever reason KDE's Oxygen theme with its weird mouse pointer would refuse to go away in Gnome - no matter how much I tried changing the theme.

rohit@lenovo:~$ uname -a
Linux lenovo 2.6.32-24-generic-pae #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Aug 20 15:37:22 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

After scouring the net, and not finding much help I decided to "reset"; this turned out to be difficult as well. No matter which other default theme I selected, it still did not remove the offending pointer style. Oxy persisted. Here's what worked - I  removed the theme files under ~/.theme. Brutal, but it works. Now I have a nice black pointer.