Freedom Dreams

Jokosher is one of those really annoying applications at the moment. The ones that look all nice and lovely, and seem like they should be able to do exactly what you want…. only, they’re not finished.. and they crash every few seconds. Today I’ve been recording my Freedom Socks podcast with it, and it has been interesting, to say the least…

Firstly, yesterday, we started off using the Jokosher from the repos. It sucked, it literally crashed every minute or so, which was very frustrating, as the software looks so nice. However, I finally got the svn version, which runs slightly better, and ended up recording, today, using that.

Then, once we had recorded everything, it froze up, and I tried re-opening it, but that failed. I then changed computers (I could not stay at my friends house forever xD) and tried opening it on my pc. This involved creating an extra directory in home, since Jokosher uses static links to files :(. And, of course, I had the same problem. I eventually solved that, by deleting the levels directory.

So, yeah, Jokosher has so much potential, but is currently so much annoyance… I guess trunk being more stable than an actual release kindof tells you something. However, for what I want (recording from multiple sound cards, and mixing), it seems the best free tool. I’ll probably end up persevering and using it again next time.

So, yesterday I finally installed gnewsense on my two machines. It was doing some weird stuff, and I didn’t know why, so I was going to write an irate blog post. However, I now know what was going on, but it brings me to the same conclusion - Gnewsense is not a viable alternative for most people.

So, I install it on both of these machines. Well, on one machine ethernet didn’t work, but I had tested it with the livecd and expected this.  The wireless card on my other machine also required firmware, but it worked out of the box with gnewsense. Before we all give gnewsense a pat on the back for having hardware support, let my explain what happened when I installed updates - both the wireless and the sound stopped working. A package had been removed, since it contained firmware - now this makes sense, and is the way gnewsense works in order to fuffill its goal, but it means two things:

1. The gnewsense deltah-h cd I was using contained the non-free software required by my graphics card. Yes, let me say that again the gnewsense cd contains propreitary software.
2. Regreesions are happening, quite major ones where sound or 3D stops working for many or all people, which is just not something most people will accept, without caring an awful lot about the ethical issues. Not only this, but if someone asks why some of these regreesions happened, you must tell them: sorry, we lied to you - gnewsense wasn’t actually all free software, so we had to remove the bits that weren’t.
   Now, I think most of the people who are ready to use gnewsense will understand the technical difficulty in separating out all propreitary software - but for new GNU/Linux users it will just sound highly hypocrytical, and make gnewsense seem even more pointless than they already though it was.

Now, there was something that rms said in his talk at manchester about people being cowards if they don’t use 100% free software. These are words that I’ve thought about a few times - he is calling 99.99% of the population cowards. But, then again, it is in Stallman’s nature to say such things. His point is partially valid, IMHO, but it is more laziness than cowardice.

We should be trying to introduce people to free software by starting off with gnewsense, as someone on irc said - it is a journey. Think about it - fair trade and free range groups concentrate on getting people to buy increasing ammounts of ethical food, rather than saying that people should switch 100% straight away.  We need to first show people firefox, then openoffice, then ubuntu, then gnewsense.

So, yes, the message of this blog is that giving out gnewsense cds to windows users will just give them a perception of a technically inadequate and hypocritical system. Far better to give them ubutnu cds, explain its weaknesses to them, and let them realise the need for gnewsense themselves.

I just bought an old system from my friend for a small fee. Its not all that powerful, with only 256MB of ram, but thats twice as much as the pc that was in my room previously. (We do have a much more powerful family pc though).

Now, one great thing about free software is that it will run on much slower machines than propreitary software will. I could actually run compiz on this machine, but it slows everything else up - to get windows aero in a similar state you would need a machine several times more powerful.

Frustratingly, the machine is not as fast as I thought it would be. Perhaps I don’t have enough swap, or perhaps its the many services that run with (x)ubuntu (i had debian with xfce on my even older machine).

However, the thing that really got me thinking was this - how does free software’s ability to run on older hardware relate to Moore’s Law? Gradually the free software most people use regularly is requiring more memory (look at how memory hungry firefox and openoffice are). The ubuntu live cd for example wants >384MB to run, and I think there was controversy a while ago about fredora upping their requirements.

So, we know that the mainstream free software distributions is gradually requiring more powerful hardware, which is not really such a bad thing, since more poweful hardware is becoming more and more affordable (Moore’s law), and free software distros don’t require the expensive specs that vista does to run decently.

This brings me to my question, is the rate at which free software “slows” (for want of a better word), the same as the rate at which propreitary software slows, and at which hardware speeds up (albeit with a certain offset)..
OR is free software slowing at at a lesser rate, which would mean that the gap between the “midrange pc” and what gnu/linux needs to run well growing. Surely the conclusion of this would be that those who run free software would only need a pc ten times less powerful than the affordable midrange pc.

Since this would be such a startling and dangerous (for the hardware industry) thing, I presume it would be the first - same rate but with an offset. After all, it turns out that our needs do grow - 640k wasn’t enough for anybody.

Does anyone have any ideas on this?

Hey everybody, its rant time!

So, firstly theres the annoying issue with wordpress. Yes, thats you you annoying blog site. Eating up my cojmments and putting them in the wrong places. It only seems to do it occasionally, so its hard to diagnose, and I cba doing anything about it - but an irritance none the less.

Then, theres firefox, good old Mozilla Firefox 3 beta 5. No-one quite knows why its the default in hardy, considering it is supposed to be an LTS. Maybe it makes sense to work towards having firefox 3, but the thing its ITS SO DARN CRASHY. Yes, and (afaict) this is not Ubuntus fault. Its you firefox!
CRASH. Reload. Do something. CRASH. Reload. Try something else. CRASH.
And you may think I’m exagguariting when I describe it like that, but I’m not! It seems to have got worse, to the point where I can have 4 crashes in under one minute - I’m serious! I mean what on earth is going on? I guess it must be something to do with my particular setup. However, I’ve tried running in safemode and removing all plugins, but just the same: CRASH CRASH CRASH.

Well, at least I have a clue whats causing it. Its when I close a tab of a complicated page (thing Google Reader or Google Mail) in a particular way, either whilst a different tab is active (middle click) or when there are only two tabs open. So I know what to avoid, its less annoying. But all the same, a crash every 10 minutes, it takes the p*ss.

I tried talking to a #firefox guy about it, but it seems difficult to get debug information from my version of firefox. He said to try the official builds, so maybe I will when I get the chance. Maybe see if has been fixed in the nightlies. Weirdest thing is, I had no trouble before beta 5 (other people have been noticing this too). But, the annoying thing is, Mr Crash Crash Crash is in a long term support release!!!?!?!?!??!?!?!

Okay, enough of that rant, and onto another Docuemnt Formats, an absolute pita. My brother did a document at home, using OpenOffice on Windows (we’ve never bothered buying Word, and OpenOffice is so much better than Works; also, fwiw, its my printer and not my brother that is the freedom hater). Anyway, he takes it to school, and happily it opens. A vast improvement over a few months ago. However, here’s the wonderful thing - the reason it works is because of a filter designed to add .docx support - yes! that wonderful lie of an open standard and pile of mess OOOXML makes an appearance. However, as if the irony was painful enough, Word and its plugin, in their infinite wisodm decide to save the document, after my brother has made some changes, in .docx. Yes, thats write! It steals a .odf, rapes it and leaves it as a .docx!!!!!!!!

So, now my brother comes home and complains to me about the fact he can’t open his work! So, I endure the 20 minute wait to get OOo beta 3 running, only to find, the document is NOT OPENED PROPERLY!!!!! And, of course, I know this is not Open Offices fault, its god damn OOXML. Open standard with multiple implementations my foot:

1. Its not open, because no-one can understand the mess of a “specification” that they have put out (oh, im sorry, theres a newer one, but that ones just imaginary isn’t it). Which is why Open Office have a hard time writing import filters.
2. Microsoft Word does not implement it! The files it produces differ from the spec!!!!!!!! No wonder its not compatible!

Btw, the point about multiple implementations is that OpenOffice is not an implementation of the Open Shamdard! No, its just for compatiblity with the non-OOXML files that Word produces. And as you can see, that format is lovely and clear, and OpenOffice are finding it easy to implement….. NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And, that brings me onto one last annoyance, lack of ext2/3 support in Windows. (My brother wanted a look at one of my old documents). I have to install this rubishy freeware. Actually, the freeware itself is okay (its not freedomware, but seeing as you’re running windows anyway, who really cares), but if Windows crashes, as is its favorite pastime, every mounted ext3 must be checked at next Linux boot. Maybe I need to find something that can easily be turned off when not in use.

</rant>

I’ve switched to the Ubuntu Hardy Beta as my main OS, which is also a switch from using KDE to using GNOME. However the DE switch didn’t really affect me much.

The main things I like about GNOME is the fact that firefox and compiz integrate well (the later is probably partly the ubuntu team’s work.

However, I do have a few issues with the system (which isn’t surprising for a beta).

• Firefox 3 can not handle apt: links properly without being told where the apturl binary is.
• Firefox plugins (ie. java and flash) do not load as expected and I had to do some jiggling to get it to work. (Firefox seems to look in /usr/lib/firefox-3.0 and /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9b4, but surprisingly not /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins or /usr/lib/firefox/plugins)
• The add user dialog box does not work (probably due to bugs in the new policykit  integration)

And there a few things I would like to see added in future versions:

• The ability to restore items from the trash
• A passwordless login option for gdm (I solved this rather messily by using null passwords for non sudoer users)
• Policykit intergration into more apps. It would be great if the “permission denied” dialog in gedit would let me esculate to root, it would save me so much time.

I also found pidgin to be an annoyance. It does not show msn personal messages which for me, is quite important. In fact, I am now using Emesene, which is designed specifically for the WLM (aka msn) network so does the important things like personal messages, offline messages and even has a plugin for the Plus! colours. Also, it is quite similar to the layout of the official client without the ugliness that aMSN has. All in all, I would recommend it it as a drop in replacement for people who currently use the MS client, especially as it is still being actively developed.

I also had a mess about with the gnome themes, which despite what the KDE folk might say, was nicely customizable.  I got interested in the application transparency that murrine can provide. Unfotunately, this is only available in the svn build. So, no problem - im confortable with compiling my own stuff. However, I wanted to try and install it via a deb package, to make future maintenance easier. So, I’ve been trying out packaging which isn’t all that hard, once you get the hang of it. Hopefully I’ll be able to put these skills to use. I’m building up a (very small) apt repository.

So, in the end after some “learning” (can be frustrating sometimes) I got murrine installed. So, a few plugins later and I have transparent apps (fwiw emesene has support built in).  However, there were a couple of things bothering me:

1. tbh, its not all that great - just the transparent gnome-terminal would have sufficed for me. It looks a bit messy at times (perhaps more blur is needed?)
2. Why is this not in the distros yet? Vista has had this for a year! Where is the innovation of the open source community? Or is the answer see 1, is it just not a big deal to most people?