Recently, Intel announced that they have sold around 500,000 Classmate PCs to Portugal (these are a competitor to the XO). The part of the story that caught my attention, though, was the decision to let the parents of the children who will be receiving these laptops choose what operating system they want installed, Windows or Linux. At first, this idea strikes me as a bad idea, for two reasons.

First, the likelihood that parents will be able to make an informed decision is almost zero. Most parents are likely to know almost nothing about computers and so they will have to base their decision on pre-exisiting biases, if they have any, and any information provided as a guide to them. The information given to them is almost guaranteed to be lacking at best and biased at worst.

Second, if every parent gets to decide what OS their kid gets, then schools have a mixed set of Linux and Windows laptops. This is likely to create compatibility issues and all sorts of problems. Sure, mixed environments can and are done, but why create one unnecessarily?

Letting the parents choose does not have to be a bad idea, though. Another way to interpret letting the parents choose is that each school chooses based on the input of the parents. This would actually be smart, because (a) the whole school uses one OS or the other and (b) only the parents who care (have some idea about the options) will get involved in the OS decision.

It is hard to say what Intel and Portugal will decide, so I guess we will just have to wait and see.

You may remember that just a few days ago I wrote about the apparent incompatibility between some Foxconn motherboards and Linux. I concluded:

My belief is that these issues are not at all malicious, just a mistake that no one bothered to look for. The good news is that developers will probably learn soon that these mistakes lead to bad situations.

More recently, it seems that more light has been shed on the situation. A ZDNet blog post says that Foxconn has said that the problem seems to be in the BIOS software they purchased from American Megatrends and that they will be releasing a fix very soon.

I told you so.

If you think I wrote this post just to say “I told you so,” though, you are mistaken. There is a lesson to be learned here for PR people.

Let’s look at three cases where Linux users were blocked out of something: Citibank’s website, Foxconn’s motherboards, and the Fox News website. In the case of Citibank and Foxconn, the story turned into a huge anti-Citibank/Foxconn story. On the other hand, the Fox News story, at least eventually, turned into what could easily be seen as a positive story for Fox. Why? Really the only way in which these cases are different is that in the case of Citibank and Foxconn, the customer support essentially blamed the user. In the Fox case, however, Fox not only promptly fixed the problem but was also very transparent about the process.

The lesson for customer support people: don’t blame the user.

Microsoft has just launched a new advertising campaign, the “Mojave Experiment.” The idea of the new campaign is that a bunch of computer users who have negative impressions of Vista, but who have never used Vista, are shown a future version of Windows, codenamed “Mojave.” They are given a tour of this “new” version of Windows, asked for their impressions, and then told that “Mojave” is really Vista.

I applaud Microsoft’s marketing department for finally getting started what has the potential to be a very successful advertising campaign, but at the same time I would like to point out that the “experiment” is heavily rigged. As others have pointed out, when you have someone whose job it is to make you like what you are being shown and that person gets to control every almost everything about the demonstration, it is really hard to not be impressed.

This gave me an idea. What if someone did the “Ubuntu Experiment.” All they would have to do is get a few people who have never used Linux and tell them they are being shown “a new incredible operating system.” Then just show them Compiz Fusion, tell them they don’t have to worry about viruses, tell them it comes with a replacement for Microsoft Office, show them how easy it is to install new applications, and so on. I almost guarantee everyone would be impressed.

This would certainly be amusing and it might even take some of the momentum out of the “Mojave Experiment” while bringing attention to Ubuntu. If anyone out there wants to do this, feel free to take the idea.

The evidence shows that Microsoft’s marketing department has not done particularly well with Windows Vista. Almost every story you see about Vista is a negative one. Even I, as a Linux user, think that Vista is better than its reputation. But Microsoft’s marketing is not always a failure, it appears.

Recently, the story broke that Citibank blocks Linux users out of its website, even though the website works just fine in Linux. If you want my opinion on this sort of thing, you can look at this post. To summarize, I don’t think that these sorts of cases where Linux is “blocked” are malicious in any way. Instead, they are simply an attempt to save money by not doing quality assurance on another platform or just plain laziness. What bothers me about this particular case is not the act of blocking Linux users, but the way the customer support responded.

While responses varied, one manager said that the website only supported “secure operating systems,” meaning Windows. Another support person said that only Windows offered “real security.” I don’t even need to know what to say except that Microsoft’s marketing team should be having a party. If they have people convinced that Windows offers superior security to Mac or Linux, that is one of the best marketing jobs I have ever seen.

Let me put it this way: the number one reason I do not run Windows is that I don’t want to think about security all the time. Perhaps I am just paranoid, but I don’t think any modern operating system offers “real security,” let alone Windows. I challenge anyone to tell me why Windows has “real security.” I recognize that it is perfectly possible and do-able to keep Windows virus-free and that any day a virus could appear for Mac or Linux, but Windows does not offer “real security.”

Sorry if this was a “duh” post, but I had to do it.

Recently, an Ars Technica article pointed out that, while Microsoft is in a strong position to push its web presence, it needs to act fast if it wants to be a part of cloud computing. A completely agree, but this could really be said of a lot of companies and of open source software.

Right now, only a small handful of companies really have their foot in the water, or, more accurately, the cloud. These companies are Google, Adobe, Mozilla, and perhaps a couple more. Apart from those companies, everyone needs to act fast - including open source software.

Just like if Microsoft does not move fast they will be left out, if open source software does not move into the cloud, it will be left out. We need to make sure that does not happen.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site.

Part of the idea of “brainstorming” is that ideas are never shot down, so it should not be possible to “kill” an idea, even if you are the creator of the idea.

While this could complicate things a little, I think that overall, having unstable drivers available to users would smooth users’ experiences by making more of their hardware (hopefully) work.

The idea is to make sure that almost every common task can be done with some defined number of clicks. This would greatly increase usability and ensure that nothing is too difficult to do.

The wallpaper for Hardy Heron looked professional and amazing and I think that it is important that Ubuntu continues to have such good themes, since it is the first thing a new user sees.

Today’s big story seems to be a piece of code in a Foxconn motherboard that checks what the operating system is and, based on that information, uses a different piece of code for each OS. Unfortunately, the code for Linux seems to cause some major errors, due to an allegedly incorrect implementation of the ACPI standards, as best I understand it. The news was first broken, I believe, at the Ubuntu Forums by someone who went out of their way to decompile the motherboard code causing the errors, just so they could track down the problem.

This, and other similar stories, are interesting, because they can be viewed in two ways. On one hand, it is easy to see them as a malicious attack on a specific piece of software. On the other hand, I suspect that the real problem is one of the developers not bothering to really test their software on systems such as Linux. My belief is that these issues are not at all malicious, just a mistake that no one bothered to look for. The good news is that developers will probably learn soon that these mistakes lead to bad situations.

The problem for the software creators is that people who use niche operating systems, browsers, or other software tend to be the kind of person who would decompile a bunch of complicated code and track down the issue. Quite often, these tech savvy people also know how to get a lot of attention. All of this together means a PR nightmare. Eventually, companies will realize that any money “saved” by ignoring a particular platform is likely to end up costing them more than they “saved” due to the PR issues it is highly likely to create. Hopefully, these sorts of issues will go away at that point.

A while back, as you may remember, I did a quick look at NimbleX, as well as some of the features of the then upcoming NimbleX 2008. Just a few days ago, NimbleX 2008 final was released, so I decided to check it out. I am not going to do a long boring review and I will say up front that I have only been running it on and off for a few days from the live CD. In other words, I am really just doing a quick look at some of the features.

NimbleX, which is based on Slackware, is advertised as a customizable and slim Linux distro. The CD comes with many desktop environments including KDE, Fluxbox, Enlightenment, Openbox, and more. The default, not surprisingly, is KDE 3.5.

Upon booting from the live CD, you are presented with a login screen and nothing to tell you what the username or password is. You can find this information on the website (just entering root and no password works), but I wish that you didn’t have to look this information up. Oh well, just a minor issue. Once you have successfully logged in, you get a fairly standard KDE 3.5 interface. One feature I really like is an icon on the desktop that, when clicked, starts up Compiz Fusion, with a nice full set of effects (wobbly windows, desktop cube, menu effects, etc.), not just the minimal set many distributions use. I really like the idea of having a button on the desktop to start Compiz Fusion and I have not seen this idea anywhere else yet. It could be even better if things like wireless networking settings were put on the desktop, too, but I really cannot complain, since no one else, that I know of, puts anything like this on the desktop.

As you start to use NimbleX, you will quickly notice that there are an amazing number of applications installed, which is quite impressive, since NimbleX is a very slim distro. you should note, however, that the K office suite is included in place of OpenOffice. You can always create a custom NimbleX CD from the NimbleX website with OpenOffice, though.

In all these applications, you get some applications such as GParted and Partimage that make NimbleX a useful system maintenance CD. Also included are several already-configured servers, that can be started with the click of a mouse.

One thing I noticed, and liked, about the applications menu is that almost every application is named in this form: Application Type (Name), so it is easy to tell what each application does, even if you don’t recognize it.

I did notice a few bugs, but not many. When I start Compiz Fusion, the icons for the workspaces stretch horizontally and when I try to boot up in any of the non-standard modes, such as the web browser kiosk mode, X fails to start on my hardware. Hopefully, these bugs will be fixed soon, though.

Other features of NimbleX include the custom CD creator on the NimbleX website, which lets you create a custom version of NimbleX with the applications, artwork, and settings you want, and the sub-100MB edition, which, as the name implies, is a furthur stripped down version of NimbleX.

If you are looking for a small, customizable Linux distro, you should definetly check out NimbleX. Additionally, if you want to create a customized CD just for your needs, NimbleX is probably the easiest way to go. Even if you don’t fit into either of these categories, you might want to download the NimbleX CD just for the chance to check out some unusual desktop environments without having to download a million CDs.

A lot of people view Windows as Linux’s main competition, largely because Microsoft has, by far, the majority of the market and is considered “the standard” by most people. Mark Shuttleworth and I disagree.

The Var Guy, and plenty of other people, are reporting that Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, said during his keynote at OSCON, that Linux must not just match but exceed Apple’s Mac OS X, strongly implying that Apple - not Microsoft - is Linux’s main competitor. I agree. Here is why:

First, Microsoft has not shown that is headed anywhere except down. Net Applications shows Windows taking a steady fall since 2006, which appears to be as far back as their data goes. Unless Microsoft really gets itself together, there is no reason why this should change.

Second, I honestly cannot come up with many arguments for Windows, but I can come up with some for the Mac, even if I don’t agree with them. Seriously, why choose Windows over Linux?

1. It is the standard and everything is compatible with it.
2. You prefer Windows’s way of installing software…?

I am sure I am missing something, but I really cannot figure out what. On the other hand, why choose the Mac over Linux?

1. The closed system. Personally, I don’t think that is an advantage, but you could make the argument that things work better because Apple controls so much of the ecosystem. Let me put it this way, no one has proved that either the open approach or the closed approach is the “right” way.
2. You prefer the Mac’s way of installing software…?
3. You like the Mac interface better than any of the other options.
4. I would guess that more (edit: I should add “external” here.) devices work under Mac OS X than under Linux.

Once again, I am sure I am missing some arguments here, but my main point is that, as a technical user, I can see the argument for the Mac, but the argument for Windows seems… weak.

Overall, it looks to me, and some would very much disagree with this, like the future is not going to be Windows, so why fight it?

I very much feel that part of the key to Linux gaining mainstream adoption is to have various interesting, innovative pieces of hardware that ship with Linux. Apart from some non-computer devices, such as the Chumby, all we have really seen are UMPCs. (OK, I know someone is going to correct me, so let me just say that is all I know of.) The problem is, it takes a lot of work to come up with a really innovative new form of computer, or even an innovative modification of an existing form. Techchrunch’s new project gave me an idea, though.

Techcrunch has begun a project to create sort of a thin, touchscreen, tablet for surfing the web and other basic tasks. The tablet should run all open-source software and cost less than $300. Certainly these are ambitious goals, but it sure would be cool. Eventually, Techchrunch plans to ship the device.

The idea this gave me is that perhaps the best way to get some really cool new computer or computer-like devices based on Linux in stores is for fans/enthusiasts doing DIY-type projects to invite any manufacturers to copy them. This way, a major manufacturer might see a really cool idea, pick it up and start selling it. Basically, let the community develop the hardware and software how they like it and then work with manufacturers who are intersted to get the device to a mass-market. (Just to be clear, this is not exactly what TechCrunch is doing, it is just inspired by what TechCrunch is doing.) Obviously this would depend on some really good ideas coming out of the community, but I have no doubt that that happens all the time. Go look at Brainstorm.