Fragmentation in Linux hinders mass adoption

A few days back I ran a couple of posts titled Switch to Ubuntu Linux not Mac OS and Mac OS is better than Ubuntu: A myth. Both the articles generated significant interest amongst readers and there were quite a few comments. Most of the comments were in favor of the Mac OS and against Ubuntu. That led me to conclude that the Mac OS user community is extremely loyal towards it. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the Linux users.

Of course there were a few Linux users who defended Linux against the onslaught of comments from the Mac users, but they were far outnumbered. I thought that the Linux users were a loyal and dedicated group of people who were passionate about the technology and had a unified voice against proprietary systems. Sad to say but that apparently is not the case.

Why is that so? Probably the answer lies in the fragmentation that exists in the Linux community. There are a whole lot of Linux distributions available in the market and each have their own base of loyal users. But these users will not come to the defense of a Linux distribution or flavor which is other than their own. So with Ubuntu/Kubuntu, SuSE, Fedora, Linux Mint, Mandriva, and a plethora of other distributions around this fragmentation in user loyalty is hurting Linux and open source as a whole.

What is needed is a set of standards that would abide all the Linux distribution vendors together. Most versions of Linux run either Gnome or KDE as their windowing system. Most use a kernel that comes from a single source. But the package management systems do vary from flavor to flavor. We can argue the merits and demerits of each of these but we have to reach a standard approach. Proprietary systems like Windows and Mac OS do not have this problem. Apple and Microsoft can dream of any “feature” and then incorporate that in their system. Loathe it or like it those “features” remain with you. In case of Linux the user is the driver. He/She decides what they want to keep or discard. Though this choice makes Linux a lot more attractive to many, it appears  intimidating to others. This is where we have to make things happen. This is where Linux needs to change.

There is not doubt that technically Linux is probably superior to both Windows and the Mac OS, but unfortunately user adoption rates are dismal. One of the major reasons is the lack of standards and the sooner the Linux community understands this the better for them.

The most common response to a proposal to use standards is “how are the vendors going to make money?”. Presence of standards does not tie vendors up. Rather it opens up newer opportunities for them. For instance if Linux comes up with a standard for package management, that would enforce a uniform binary distribution format for all Linux flavors. This is good because vendors do not have to release versions of their products for .deb, .rpm and other formats. Where Linux vendors can make their offerings more compelling is in defining good UI features, making file management easier, making program management better, etc. The opportunities are endless.

Standards are needed. Lets think of them as a common minimum program to which every Linux vendor subscribes. This would lead to greater interoperability between different distributions and also make it easier for people to choose. A common minimum program would guarantee certain features in all Linux systems. The rest is up to the Linux vendors

Apple Mac OS soon on the PC (x86)

Maybe if Psystar has its way. Psystar is the company that was selling the Open Computer which is basically an X86 hacked to run Apple’s Mac OS operating system. Regarded as one of the best in the market, Apple’s Mac OS license has prohibited running of the operating system on any non-Apple branded hardware. Though in the enthusiast community the concept of a Hackintosh or a PC running Apple Mac OS is not new, Psystar is the first company to have taken the concept public. In the process it has drawn the wrath of Apple.

In yet another David vs Goliath battle, Apple launched a copyright violation lawsuit against Psystar. Many thought it would be an open-and-shut case for Apple. But Psystar did not back down but retaliated with counter lawsuits calling Apple’s business a monopoly and allegeing it to be anti-competitive.

Till now the lawsuit proceedings did not spring any surprises. The twist came in a recent report that said that Apple and Psystar have decided to resolve the dispute outside the court. Interesting! Apparently Apple was sure its case was watertight and most “experts” said that Psystar will not stand a chance in court. But the facts do not seem to be so.

So what’s the deal? Is Apple going to open up Mac OS? Or is Psystar going to capitulate to Apple in return of Apple not suing the pants of it? 

I sincerely hope it would be the former. With Mac OS open it is very likely that the majority of PC vendors would offer computers with Mac OS running. This would offer consumers a lot more choice and would surely end Microsoft’s hegemony. For Apple its an all win situation. Acceptance of the Mac OS will see an exponential rise potentially posing the most serious threat to the Microsoft empire ever.

Before all the Apple fans start abusing me, let me state that I am not on drugs. If Apple wanted to destroy Psystar it could have done so in court. In fact such an event would have deterred any and all potential Mac clone makers. But instead it opted for an out of court settlement. Is Apple’s case not ironclad? Does Apple want to become the next Microsoft (with Vista’s failure its potent timing) ? Does Apple want to have another shot at licensing its platform to third-parties?

Its getting more and more tantalizing.

Android can beat Apple and the iPhone

The latest entrant in the sphere of mobile operating systems in Google’s Android. The OS has been received well by the mobile content development community and has been gaining steady momentum. T-Mobile’s G1 has also received very good reviews and some(including myself) have called it better than Apple’s iPhone. 

There are quite a few reasons that are in favour of Google Android. Here are a few:

• Android is open source and free to use and customize. This also makes it more attractive for adoption by a large number of mobile phone vendors.
• There are certain features in-built like cut-n-paste that are still to make their way into the iPhone. 
• Android apps are developed using Java that run on a specialized virtual machine. This aspect makes it attractive to a larger pool of developers than the iPhone.
• The Android Market has set policies that would let developers keep a majority share of the revenues earned through it. This is in contrast to Apple’s App Store policies.
• Google has promised to have very little control over the Android Market.
• Coming from Google, Android has the backing of a behemoth and top-notch quality is ensured.
• Being open source, community based development can introduce newer features to this operating system much faster than any other.

In fact Android adoption has seen a steady rise. From developers to mobile phone vendors everybody seems to be jumping on to the Android bandwagon. Here’s a list of few news item that come up on CNET.com when you search for Android in the news section:

• Kyocera joins Android phone bandwagon
• Google Android and Symbian to merge?
• Report: Motorola expanding Android team
• Coders get 70 percent of Android Market revenue
• MySpace’s Android application goes live
• Maverick puts Google Talk on Android G1
• Motorola preps its own Android phone
• Capitalism still alive: EA on Android games
• Google adds Android app for Flickr photos

It’s pretty clear that interest amongst developers and vendors is increasing with respect to Google’s Android. Amongst mobile phone vendors Kyocera, HTC, and Motorola are already on to it. It’s only a matter of time before a lot more follow this trend. If this continues, Android’s appeal would surely surpass that of the iPhone’s. 

So is Android the beginning of the end of Apple iPhone’s dominance in the smart phone segment?

Mac OS is better than Ubuntu Linux: A myth

My post on switching to Ubuntu and not Mac OS generated a lot of interest both amongst Linux and Mac OS users. There were many comments on the post and some valid points were raised. Also there were a lot of myths that were put across. Here I try to dispel some of those:

The myths

• Ubuntu does not have a good UI : This is absolutely rubbish, checkout the new KDE that comes with Ubuntu.
• To install software a user has to use a command line on Ubuntu : Another false claim. The Synaptic package manager is brilliant and does not require interaction with the command line. There are some software that do need command line usage. Then again those won’t be ones an average user is going to use.
• You have to build software from source code on Ubuntu. This is not something an average user would be able to do : The software that come in source code form are definitely not intended for the average user. The ones that are meant for the average user come in binary formats that are easy to install.
• There are hardly any games on Ubuntu : For that matter how many games are there on Mac OS compared to Windows? So if it is ok for Mac OS users to run Windows through Parallels and play games on it then the same can be done on Ubuntu.
• Mac OS is great and thats the reason we have Hackintosh systems : Well Ubuntu comes free and can be installed on virtually any hardware. So the need for hacked systems does not arise.
• Multimedia playback support is not good in Ubuntu : Excuse me but could you define what is exactly meant by multimedia support? If its the capability to playback different file formats then I guess Ubuntu, for that matter Linux in general, has the most plug-ins. The reason they are not supported out-of-the-box is because of licensing problems. Yes Mac OS supports that, but then again you pay to get it. If you pay and get a commercial desktop Linux version you would get all the support you need.
• Mac OS “just works” and Ubuntu does not : What do you mean by that? What is this “just works” thing?
• Hardware support is limited on Ubuntu : The number of hardware components supported by Linux today is probably the second only to Windows. Check the HCL for Ubuntu.
• There are no Ubuntu based laptops available from the large PC vendors : Dell has a line of Ubuntu based laptops. Check them out. The fact that others do not sell them has no reflections on Ubuntu but on Microsoft’s licensing agreements with them. Dell is the only company who has the balls to take Microsoft on.
• I suffer from Apple envy : On the contrary actually. I love the Mac Book Pro and wanted to buy the new 15″  one. But then again I did not see a point in investing in something in which I would be locked in. Yes lock-in is a problem. Face it. The number of apps on Windows far outnumbers those on the Mac OS and that is one of the reasons why many people cannot switch to other operating systems from Windows.

Some truths

• Adobe CS3 and other Adobe multimedia applications are not available on Ubuntu : Quite true. But then whose fault is it? Ubuntu’s or Adobe’s? My take is that Adobe is being extremely short sighted in ignoring Linux. If they continue to do so they would pay dearly.
• Ubuntu does not have iTunes : True, but that affects people who are locked into Apple. Also Apple does not offer that on Ubuntu. And who is responsible for iTunes? Is that enough to not switch to Ubuntu? Someone wanting to use Google Chrome exclusively should then not consider Mac OS at all. Yeah we know that a Mac OS version is in the pipeline, but lets talk when it releases.

There is one thing that I have realized and that is Apple users are extremely loyal to Apple. Kudos to Apple to have achieved that. Windows does not have that. My previous article attracted comments from a lot of Apple loyalists. I was surprised that not an equal number of Linux supporters voiced their views. The only reason for this is the different Linux distros that are out there. Its probably time that they realized that even though it might be Fedora or OpenSuSE or Ubuntu or any other Linux variant, at the core they are all the same.

Google Android based T-Mobile G1 is better than Apple iPhone 3G

Looks like its game on. The T-Mobile G1 powered by Google’s open source Linux based operating system, Android, has already seen huge interest from the pundits and consumers alike. There have been recording pre-ordering for the G1 and it appears that the G1 will give the iPhone 3G quite good competition.

Personally I feel the biggest disadvantage that the G1 has is in the looks department. The design and looks of the G1 are nothing compared to the iPhone 3G. HTC just does not know how to make good looking phones. For them its all about using cheap plastic and tacky design philosophies.

Anyway. In a recent speed test done by CNET the T-Mobile G1 beat the pants of the Apple iPhone 3G with regards to web browsing. Click here to see the speed test video.

I am not sure how accurate this test is because web browsing performance depends on the network a lot. So even though the testers might have tried to neutralise the “network effect” I am not sure to what extent they were successful.

JavaScript is the future of RIA

A few days back I had written an article about JavaScript being the future of RIA. Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, etc. are all nice and good to have. The fact of the matter is that a whopping percentage of people still prefer JavaScript when it comes to implementing RIA solutions. 

To corroborate this claim of mine, I had been running a poll for quite some time now. After having got around 550 odd votes I think the time is now right to publish the results. The winner by a far and clear margin is JavaScript. Flex comes second. Here is graphic showing the results:

With the release of the new breed of web browsers that run on-steroid JavaScript engines this dominance of JavaScript in the field of RIA is most likely to increase.

The data presented here is not sponsored by any camp or company. Its strictly a poll that I ran in my personal capacity.

Switch to Ubuntu Linux not Apple Mac OS

For the past few years Apple has seen an increase in its laptop business due majorly to the dismal failure of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. Umpteen number of reports have been published telling people why they should consider switching to the Mac OS now that Vista has failed, but not a single one has surfaced that spells out the merits of switching over to a variety of Linux.

Linux on the server side is pretty well established with Red Hat Enterprise Linux being the dominant flavour there. It is on the desktop that there is an ongoing war mainly between three parties – Microsoft, Apple and the host of Linux vendors. The availability of a large number of Linux distributions may initially confuse a user but a harder look quickly separates the wheat from the chaff and Ubuntu/Kubuntu emerges as the best.

Traditionally Linux adoption on the desktop has been plagued by the notion that it was difficult to handle. Its really a misconception. Ubuntu has changed the face of Linux ever since its launch. The current versions are sturdy, have very good UIs and are intuitive. Program management no longer needs knowledge of the various packaging systems but is driven by an elegant UI. Productivity applications on Linux have come a long way and the crown jewel in this category has got to be Open Office. Not only do you get a great word processor, a brilliant spreadsheet program, a fantastic presentation tool and a good desktop database but you also get compatibility for Microsoft Office documents. In the majority of cases, MS Office documents can be opened in Open Office without any changes. For e-mailing, there is Evolution that offers connectivity to Microsoft Exchange and also Mozilla Thunderbird. Calendar applications are galore. There are a host of commercial and open source tools for multimedia authoring,image manipulation and desktop publishing. Applications like Scribus, Blender 3D and GIMP are the best-of-breed and have the capacity to rival their commercial counterparts. For web browsing, Mozilla Firefox comes pre-installed.

If you are a developer programming in open technologies like Java/JEE or C/C++, adopting to Linux is really easy. All major JEE vendors support Linux as a platform for their offerings. Eclipse, NetBeans and IntelliJ are some of the best IDEs around that have Linux versions. For C/C++ there is KDevelop, Anjuta and many more IDEs offering best-of-breed features. Microsoft .net developers might have it a bit more difficult. Although Mono allows you to run .net applications on Linux, tooling support till now is not the greatest. In any case, if some one is going to use Microsoft technology for development, its much more likely that she/he would stick to Windows. So thats not really a great problem.

Ubuntu has a large number of hardware drivers in it making it very close to being the best distro for plug-n-play. In fact in a few areas it surpasses the great Apple Mac OS. Here’s an example. The Linksys WUSB54GC USB Wireless Adapter worked out of the box on Ubuntu 8.04 whereas in Mac OS it did not.

Security wise both Mac OS and Ubuntu are equally good though some would argue that Ubuntu is probably better. There are GUI tools available to tweak the security settings in a system. 

In the look and feel department, Linux has improved in leaps and bounds. In Gnome and KDE you have two of the best windowing systems. With the KDE 4.1.1  environment, users get a light, responsive, and aesthetically appealing desktop that can rival even the Mac OS. Also with Compiz it is possible to extract effects from a Linux desktop that were hitherto unavailable on any other system. I doubt it exists in the Mac.

So why are people not going over to Ubuntu? Beats me. If you are looking for commercial technical support, Ubuntu does offer that. If you are looking at extreme personalization options Ubuntu offers that, probably even more than the Mac OS. If you are looking for easy upgrades to future versions, Ubuntu offers that. If you are looking for ease of use, Ubuntu offers that. If you are looking for robustness and security, Ubuntu is the best. Ubuntu can be installed on all types of hardware and even on older hardware. Mac OS does not offer this flexibility.

The more I use Ubuntu, the more I fail to understand the lure of the Mac OS. Is it the snob value or stupidity that make people consider a Mac over Windows and not Ubuntu?

New Apple MacBook, MacBook Pro laptops suck

Today was the big day. Apple fanboys the world over had been waiting for the latest from the stables of the Cupertino based company. And today they got to see it – the dream laptops from the company that is often considered to be the final word in innovation. Sadly enough Apple’s laptops disappointed. 

There was hardly anything revolutionary about them. Some different price points, loads of aluminum, a more powerful graphics subsystem, solid state hard drives and some gimmickry in the name of touch gestures and glass trackpads. These kinds of features and specs were being offered in laptops from other manufacturers for quite some time now. I not quite sure how much does the glass trackpad and enhanced gestures add to the value of the laptops. So what is there in these laptops that would make them a compelling proposition for a new buyer? The short and sweet answer is nothing.

In their presentation Apple admitted that the recent growth in sales of their laptops had been fuelled by the disgraceful failure of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. Accepted that Apple’s operating system is probably one of the best in the business but still how does one justify the cost of these machines? The hardware that is being used in them is the same as the ones in other laptops. So why the premium? Just for the OS? Is it justified?

Spec wise the new laptops spring no surprises. The standard Intel Core 2 Duo processors feature in all in speeds ranging from 2.0GHz to 2.8GHz. There is even an odd speed of 2.53GHz. Also the 2.8GHz speed processors come only in the 15″ MacBook Pro models and not the 17″ ones. Very odd indeed. The max RAM is limited to 4GB. Apple still does not offer a 64-bit version of the Mac OS on the laptops though both Microsoft and the various Linux distros do so. The MacBook and the MacBook Air also featured similar changes.

So what’s so different about these laptops? Practically nothing. In fact the new ones look bad. The serious coolness that used to be the USP of Apple’s laptops is missing in total in the new ones. A two-tone laptop from Apple? Come on. Was the design team on drugs when they approved this design?

In fact during the presentation Apple seemed to be more excited about the manufacturing process of the laptops rather than the laptops themselves. This, my friends, is really a huge disappointment. 

Apple has failed to live up to its own high standards of design with these new laptops. The specs have improved from the previous lineup but not to the extent to really turn heads. Sorry to say the new laptops from Apple suck.

Apple patents Mac OS dock; can have long term impact

Mac OS, arguably the world’s most user friendly operating system, has long been regarded as the final word on design and ease-of-use. One of its best features was the dock and it very quickly became an identifying feature of Apple systems as a whole.

Of course the dock has a lot of animations in it that makes it more fun for the user. 

Apple has now won a patent for this dock. This patent can have a lot of impact in the future design of user interfaces in operating systems. There are existing software like Object Dock and Rocket Dock that lets a user have a Mac OS like dock on Windows based operating systems. The recently released KDE 4 platform offers plasmoids that look and behave like the Mac OS docks. Also, very recently, Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth said that his company is putting in more effort on the GUI aspect of Ubuntu to make it more like the Mac OS. Chances are high that such an effort would also involve developing a dock for Ubuntu.

The question is would all these attempts and implementations be in violation of this patent? If so future UI development efforts would need to make a shift in their design paradigms. A bigger question is how would Apple deal with such potential violators? In a nutshell, this patent can have grave ramifications on the future of desktop computing.

$800 Apple MacBook soon: Hogwash

With the release date of Apple’s new laptops growing nearer, the web is live with speculations and rumours. A newer one is that Apple is going to launch a MacBook for $800. Apparently retail stores have already received price lists for the new laptops and they range from $800 to $3100.

And here’s why I feel that a $800 laptop from Apple is really a lot of hogwash. This statement is based on how Apple wants to be perceived. Ever since its shift to Intel based motherboards, Apple has gained more momentum with its laptops and desktop systems. In spite of this Apple has always maintained a very high markup on its hardware though the components it uses are pretty much the same when compared to Windows laptops. So why would Apple do so? Simple Apple wants to be perceived as an exotic entity. They want their customers to feel exclusive. What better way to achieve this than to markup their prices to the extent of putting their products beyond most people?

The only thing that would probably justify Apple’s pricing is their operating system. The Mac OS is right now the most user friendly system on the planet and Apple has every right to ask a premium for it. But when you add this premium to the already high markup that Apple keeps for commodity hardware, the final price just goes beyond most people. 

So the $800 MacBook is probably nothing but a lot of hogwash. What might be available at $800 from Apple maybe a netbook. What would Apple call it? The Mac NetBook?