200th Post: Preview: ArchBang 2010.09 "apeiro"

Happy 200th post Das U-Blog! I hope you readers have enjoyed reading these posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them! And, as always, if you have not already done so, please take a moment to click any one of the various subscription buttons to get updated on new Das U-Blog posts as they come out (either by email or in your favorite RSS/Atom reader)

Main Screen

1. This is not a typographical error.
2. This is not "CrunchBang ('#!')".
3. THIS. IS. ARCHBANG! [insert dramatic music here]

Of course, the real story is slightly more nuanced (did I use that word right?) than that. ArchBang, while not a badly-spelled version of #!, is actually inspired by (but not derived) from #!; it aims to be to Arch Linux what #! is to Debian (and was to Ubuntu before version 10 "Statler"). That's right: ArchBang is an Openbox derivative of Arch Linux. I was actually looking for other reviews of Linux Mint "Debian" when I found this article whose comments section linked to an article on #! and ArchBang. Naturally, I was intrigued upon seeing Arch's response to #!, so I went ahead and downloaded the ISO image to try it. Please do note that to better reflect this distribution's advertised capabilities as a solution for old computers, I have decreased VirtualBox's RAM allocation for this distribution to 192 MB (keeping video memory at 12 MB). Technically, the minimum requirements are 128 MB of RAM, but I think 192 MB is a reasonable stand-in for an old computer these days. Follow the jump to see how it fares in these harsher conditions.

How I Multiplied Subscribers and Page Views in 2 Weeks

Blogger Page View Statistics

I can't claim to speak for all bloggers when I say what I'm going to say. Whatever "advice" (if that's what it is) I give will probably be applicable only to bloggers who write about Linux/free culture/open source topics, as that's what I mostly write about (with the occasional diversion, like this post).
I would like to start this post (well, it isn't technically the very beginning anymore) by thanking Linux Today for posting some of my articles (mainly Linux distribution reviews); I would not have so many comments (which I hugely value and would love to see even more of) and subscribers if it wasn't for Linux Today accepting my submission of the KDE distribution comparison test. Since then, I've been able to get a couple more articles on Linux Today's home page, for which I am equally (if not more) grateful.
Well, there's one way to do it: submit your articles to Linux Today, as you will not regret it (and your article will most likely be accepted; furthermore, once you get your foot in the door and the article is positively received by the community, your future articles are more likely than the previous ones to get accepted).
I also want to thank TuxMachines for picking up on a couple of my review posts, as this has also hugely contributed to the traffic seen on this site; I didn't even send in the submission links, so I am hugely grateful for readers and editors of TuxMachines finding my reviews. In addition, I want to thank TechDirt for accepting my story on Microsoft's shutdown patent.
I have also created a Facebook page (and a "Like" widget for this site) and a Twitter account for this blog. If you are on these social networks, please do take a moment to either "Like" this site on Facebook or follow it on Twitter. While the Facebook page's notes application isn't working quite right (I'll try to fix it soon), I update the Twitter page with posts as they are published. That said, these are relatively new additions, so I don't think they really impacted the statistics.

Statcounter Page View Statistics

The Blogger statistics show that until August 29 or so, I was getting around 30 page views a day. It's not bad, but it could certainly be better. My comparison test was posted on September 1. That was when the page views went way up. I went from 35 page views on August 28-ish to 3500 page views on September 2. The Statcounter statistics tell a similar story: I went from about 27 page views on August 30 to 2700 page views on September 3, and now I'm averaging around 400 page views or so every day. I went from about 1000 page views total then to 10000 page views now, which is an increase of a full order of magnitude.
Subscribers are much harder to retain, as most people who visit blogs do not stay long to look around at other content besides what they've just looked out (which is why I am really thankful for the readers of this blog who do just that). That said, Feedburner's statistics on subscribers does show a tripling of my subscriber level; where before I was averaging 5 subscribers every day, now I'm averaging around 15 (and there was one day when I peaked at 39).
So, to recap: if you write about free software and related news and reviews, do not hesitate to submit posts to sites like Linux Today, TuxMachines, and TechDirt. Also, please do take the time (as I have) to list your blog on Technorati, BlogCatalog, and other blog catalog sites. These will all certainly contribute to higher traffic and more subscribers.
Dear readers, thank you all very, very much!

Sometimes, Apple Doesn't "Just Work"

I was at a presentation this morning where the presenters were discussing research opportunities at MIT (called "UROPs" (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Programs)). The presenters showed a video about UROP that was put together last year to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the inception of UROP.
Before I continue, I would like to mention that at MIT, almost all of the school run computers (in the "Athena clusters") run Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS, which is really cool. In fact, the Athena software is optimized to run on Ubuntu 10.04. Weirdly enough, I can't run the Athena software on my computer even though I run Linux Mint 9, which is basically Ubuntu 10.04 with some theme and included software changes. That said, I have exclusively seen Apple MacBooks used at presentations like these at MIT. This presentation was no exception.
The lady who started the presentation said a couple of things in general about UROP before showing the video. The video was on a separate DVD, and I saw her insert the DVD into the laptop. What happened next surprised me. There was no dialog upon insertion of the DVD asking what to do. She had to manually open the DVD's contents folder and search for the correct video. Even when that was done, she wasn't entirely sure which program to use (I suspect this is her first time using a Mac, considering that she struggled a little even to open the contents of the DVD); despite there being VLC Media Player on the laptop, she wasn't sure whether to open the video with iMovie, iDVD, DVD Player, or VLC. (She eventually picked DVD Player, and it worked.)
Macs are supposed to be easy to use and they are supposed to "just work". Then there's this. Your move, Apple.

I wanted to end this article by expressing by deepest thanks to the huge flood of visitors and commenters on this site. I never thought my article on KDE distributions would make it to Linux Today's front page; I feel extraordinarily lucky that it did. I also want to add that if you like any of the other content on this site, please sign up for updates through RSS or email; both options are pretty high up on the sidebar. I may even have an article exclusively for subscribers (at least initially) coming up, so that should be an incentive to sign up. If you haven't done so, please do it now! Finally, the next article (which, incidentally, is not that exclusive article I just talked about) should address the concerns of many of the commenters on the KDE comparison article. That should be a big hint as to what it is.

Review: Blogilo 1.0.1

This is not a typical review for this blog, as it is a review of a specific application (rather than of a desktop environment or operating system). However, I figured I should publish this anyway, as Blogilo is a desktop blogging application for KDE (though it works in GNOME as well, provided the Qt libraries are present).
I was going to write and publish this entire review from Blogilo. It seems nice enough, and it has many rich text features present in Blogger's online client. However, it doesn't yet have support for Blogger labels. Most importantly, however, it refused to publish this post to this blog (or, more accurately, it crashed when trying to do so). Hence, while Blogilo looks like a very promising project, I cannot as yet recommend it for actual publishing.

On a slightly related note, this blog now has a Facebook fan page! The Facebook box is on the sidebar (and a few things have been rearranged). If you enjoy the content of this blog, I would greatly appreciate it if you "Liked" this page on Facebook or subscribed to the RSS feed (or subscribed by email). Thank you!
(UPDATE: I have submitted this blog to a few indexing sites like Technorati. I am simply republishing this post to complete the indexing process. The Technorati code for this blog post is ZRH2VH7EDPKM.)

Another Look at this Blog

Some of you may be wondering what all of the various objects on this blog are. I will try to explain this to the best of my ability.
On top, of course, is the title of this blog. Clicking on the title takes you to the main blog page (or refreshes the page if you are already there).
Each post has a date, title, and content. Clicking on the title brings up the full post (with comments).
At the bottom of each post is a link to share the post to various social networking sites. These consist of Facebook, Google, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Slashdot, Delicious, Digg, Blogger, Wordpress, Google Buzz, and Yahoo! Buzz. If you would like to see additional sites included, please list them in the comments section. I would greatly appreciate it.
Follow the jump to read more.

Android, Open Source, and the Free Market

Glyn Moody has a piece on why Android will beat the iPhone.
To summarize, the reason for this is twofold: Android is making its way onto more platforms than just smartphones (it is also making its way into TVs, set-top boxes, GPS devices, et cetera), and there are apps for the Android allowing for the creation of even more apps for oneself or for further distribution, so the app ecosystem can grow much larger.
The latter part reminds me of a quote (which I can't find verbatim at the moment) I read in the book The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford (which, incidentally, I will be reviewing in a future post) that describes how Soviet officials visiting the US observed the production and sales of cars (I think) and wondered who could possibly be planning it all. (The answer, of course, is no one (aside from the company with its production and sales targets, but ultimately, the customer decides).) Similarly, Apple's apps must all be evaluated by Apple and must be in the correct programming language and must be appropriate (according to Apple) to make it into the app store. It is a time-consuming process, as the app must be available to everyone. With Android, however, users can make apps for personal use without any evaluation process of any kind. No central authority determines which apps make it through and which don't. As long as the user has a good idea (for themselves) and some programming ability (though with the App Inventor, even this is not necessary anymore), an app can be born. Sure, there will be a lot of apps of poor quality, but let the consumers, not any company, decide which apps are worth downloading.
The former part reminds me of a discussion I was having with my relatives on when open source should be used as a business model. One of my relatives said that the reason why Sun was financially doing so badly before being bought by Oracle was because they open-sourced their flagship product (Solaris, which became OpenSolaris) despite not having anyone outside the company to make meaningful contributions to the project. The same was true of their SPARC processor line (which was an example of open source hardware) — it didn't really work well with any other existing hardware, so other developers couldn't really contribute to the project meaningfully. Android, on the other hand, is a good example of an (mostly) open source project because it is being ported to so many different kinds of hardware by so many different developers and companies.
Maybe the competition between the iPhone and Android isn't really fair because Android is present on so many more kinds of devices compared to the iPhone OS.
(UPDATE: TechCrunch agrees with me. Sort of. Yay!)

I want to end this post by asking you to subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog and/or follow this blog on Blogger if you have not already done so. Both can be done in the sidebar. I've also added a lot of other different subscription/sharing options, and I would greatly appreciate it if you could subscribe.
What do you think about the Android vs. iPhone rivalry? Is it fair? Who will win? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.