FOLLOW-UP: Some Recent Troubles with pCloud and Google Chat

Almost exactly 11 months ago, I wrote a post [LINK] about problems I was experiencing with pCloud and Google Chat. I don't have any updates about Google Chat (or Google Meet), but I do have an update regarding pCloud. In the previous post, I noted that for files & folders protected by standard encryption (as opposed to stronger zero-knowledge encryption, for which this problem doesn't exist in pCloud), some files & folders require multiple attempts to transfer; I also speculated that pCloud may have been secretly deleting files & folders. After having spent more time using pCloud, I've been able to verify that my files & folders protected by standard encryption have transferred properly, and I think I've figured out why they initially seemed to require multiple attempts to transfer.

As I understand, pCloud creates a temporary folder, essentially like a cache, on the local hard drive, to transfer files before they are uploaded to pCloud. The process of transferring from the local cache to pCloud is limited by upload speeds, which are quite slow (as I mentioned in the previous post). Additionally, once the pCloud program is closed and the remote drive is unmounted, file transfer stops, so many folders & files that the user might think were transferred might not have been transferred. A good way to verify this is to leave the desktop application for pCloud open, monitor how many files as well as what total amount of data still remain to be transferred, and only close the application when all folders & files have been transferred; I like to think of it as a practice similar to leaving a torrent open for uploading after it has finished downloading.

Google Chrome OS Flex and Broader Adoption of Linux

I recently read [Chin, The Verge (2022); Raphael, Computerworld (2022)] that Google is releasing a version of Chrome OS called Chrome OS Flex which can be copied to a USB storage drive and installed on computers that didn't come with Chrome OS. This seems very similar to how many popular Linux distributions work, so I initially wondered if Chrome OS Flex will succeed with the muscle of Google behind it where similar efforts by Linux distributions backed by smaller not-for-profit organizations have failed. At the same time, it seems clear to me that Google will not hesitate to use this as an opportunity to collect more valuable data from people who use Chrome OS Flex. This got me to think more broadly about how much ordinary people who might consider using Chrome OS Flex really care about their privacy (especially considering that such people would typically use Microsoft Windows 10/11, which are known to collect significant amounts of data from users) even after revelations about Facebook's practices, earlier revelations about government surveillance, and so on.

However, upon closer reading, I noticed that the first article makes clear that the target audience is schools & businesses which have many old computers whose Windows versions may no longer be supported. This makes more sense to me than targeting ordinary individuals, because I get the sense that the learning curve even to copy an ISO file onto a USB storage drive and install it onto a computer is steep for most ordinary individuals (despite the significant progress that distributions like Ubuntu & Linux Mint have made in making the installation process easy). By contrast, it seems more reasonable to expect specialists in schools & businesses to learn these things once and then do them for many different computers. Meanwhile, the second article makes clear that while traditional Chrome OS is capable of running many programs built for Windows, Chrome OS Flex will not have such capabilities. This suggests to me that while many schools may take up this opportunity given that few user-facing applications need to be installed on the computer and most user-facing applications can be accessed through web equivalents, this might not be the case for many businesses, so it is unclear to me which businesses will actually take this up.

Ultimately, I don't expect to see much adoption among ordinary individuals even though they aren't forbidden from installing & using Chrome OS Flex. That said, I would be interested to see how adoption evolves in schools & businesses over time.

Some Recent Troubles with pCloud and Google Chat

Originally, I was going to write a post just about my experiences with pCloud, following up on a recent post in which I wrote of wanting a secure cloud storage service that preserves data privacy and concluded that pCloud is the best option for my needs. Since then, Google forced me to migrate from Google Hangouts to the new Google Chat, so I decided to write about experiences with both of those in a single post. Note that this isn't a full review of either product, as I haven't explored either one in great depth. This is just a short write-up of my experiences using each product to satisfy my needs. Furthermore, in the interest of my own privacy, I won't be posting any screenshots.

pCloud

I have been using pCloud for the last 1.5 months. In that time, I have experienced a few benefits but significantly more concerning problems. The benefits are that the zero-knowledge encryption service seems trustworthy (to someone like me who has some technical knowledge but no specific expertise with encryption), the integration with Linux Mint seems reasonably good as it is possible to open both the standard and zero-knowledge encrypted folders using desktop file managers, the web interface makes sharing links with others easy, and it is cheap. Before I list the problems, I should note that I've only tried pCloud for my own purposes on my laptop that has Linux Mint 20 "Ulyana" MATE installed. Therefore, it isn't clear whether the problems are specific to this setup.

The problems are as follows.

1. For folders protected by standard encryption, some folders don't transfer properly and may require multiple attempts to transfer, whether using the desktop file manager or the web interface. It may take a few sessions to figure out which folders didn't transfer properly. (It may also be possible that pCloud, having the encryption keys, is secretly deleting folders. This would be extremely troubling, but I haven't paid close enough attention to know whether a folder didn't transfer properly or whether it did but was later deleted.)
2. File transfers are very slow, because while some transfers can go up to 20 MB per second (which is reasonable given that I have an Internet connection that allows for up to 100 MB per second in each direction), most file transfers are only around 1 MB per second. Any transfer that involves copying thousands of small files & folders especially seems to create a bottleneck and slow things down further. For this reason, it took me many hours over several days to transfer hundreds of gigabytes of files to pCloud.
   
3. The web interface doesn't allow for uploading folders as such (only file contents within an existing folder).
4. When transferring to folders protected by zero-knowledge encryption, timeouts occur unpredictably and require encrypting and again decrypting those folders. Additionally, such transfers have unpredictably but on multiple occasions (though certainly not on every occasion) caused the desktop to freeze.

These problems are troubling enough that I wouldn't recommend pCloud to others, despite the fact that it is one of the few secure cloud storage providers that protects data privacy (at least with zero-knowledge encryption) and ostensibly gives Linux users the same benefits as users of other operating systems. I'm a patient person and I've spent enough money on this, so I'm willing to put more time into making this work. However, if these problems keep occurring regularly or if I see even worse problems like evidence of pCloud deleting files that were uploaded without zero-knowledge encryption, I will likely switch to Tresorit and keep looking for other alternatives too.

Google Chat

Without even getting into the particular issues with Google Chat, I'd like to express how strange it is that Google seems to change its messaging platform around once every 4-5 years. It feels like Google thinks it has to catch up to other services or like Google really doesn't care about its messaging platform.

Having said that, there are benefits and problems with Google Chat. I do appreciate that it has migrated my previous conversations from Google Hangouts. Additionally, many of the features, like document sharing within conversations, seem pretty nifty. However, there are two big problems that I have with the design of Google Chat along with its companion program Google Meet.

1. The version of Google Chat that is integrated into Gmail is missing quite a few features compared to the way that Google Hangouts was integrated into Gmail, like seeing contacts who are online (as opposed to only seeing previous conversation threads, which is a problem because before, I could have a chance of seeing someone pop online that I haven't talked to in a while and would therefore get the idea of reaching out to that person, whereas now, seeing only recent messages self-reinforces a narrowing group of conversations). The separate Google Chat website at least has the date or time of the most recent message in a thread (whereas the version of Google Chat integrated into Gmail lacks even this) but does not have the aforementioned feature of seeing contacts who are online.
2. Splitting voice or video calls out of Google Hangouts and into Google Meet is problematic because Google Meet lacks the immediacy of a Google Hangouts call: when a call is placed on Google Hangouts, the website or app will immediately ring for all recipients, whereas when a Google Meet link is created, the sender must wait for recipients to react to a single beep indicating a new message containing the link.

I think I can get used to Google Chat and Google Meet soon enough. If nothing else, perhaps it is an ironic consolation that I won't have to deal with it so much because the group of people that I keep in touch with over Google Hangouts (and now Google Chat) has significantly narrowed over the years (as I now keep in touch with most people through platforms other than Facebook products or Google Chat).

Manually Creating a Rudimentary Searchable Image Tagging System

This post is the third in a series of three posts about some changes I have been making in my personal life with respect to how I interact with online social media platforms. When I published the second post in this series, I was on the lookout for secure privacy-respecting cloud storage services. As of this post, I still haven't committed to a specific service. One of my requirements has been that the service should allow me to share certain files or folders securely with others. Unfortunately, unless I use a service like Google Drive which has just as little respect for data privacy as Facebook does, it isn't clear how I can easily tag images with details about people, location, and other comments in a way that I or others can easily search. My proposed solution, involving BASH scripts, is far from perfect, it is very much a work in progress, and it is arguably somewhat specific to my particular situation. Follow the jump to see more details.

Looking for Secure Cloud Storage that Respects Data Privacy

This post is the second in a series of three posts about some changes I have been making in my personal life with respect to how I interact with online social media platforms, and how that affects this blog. When I published the first post in this series, I had completely deleted the Facebook and Twitter pages associated with this blog, and I mentioned that I was on the lookout for a secure cloud storage site that respects data privacy (which meant options like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Flickr were not going to satisfy my desires). Since then, I have conducted almost all of my frequent conversations on platforms not owned by Facebook, and I have been in the process of conducting all other infrequent conversations away from Facebook platforms too. However, I have still been on the lookout for such a secure cloud storage site that would also allow me to securely share files, especially pictures, with others, without compromising the privacy of my data. This post goes over some information that I have compiled over different potential candidate services. This is not a review, because I have not actually tested any of these services yet. Follow the jump to see more about each candidate and where I lean.

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 June 19

There were two posts this past week that got a handful of comments, so I'll try to repost a few from each.

2011 June 20: Linux and My Computers' Hardware

An anonymous reader said, "DELL Latitude E6400 with Linux Mint 11 (64bit). Everything works flawlessly on the E6400. Touchpad, audio, sleep, hibernate, wireless, wired, microphone, audio volume buttons. Just like it was made for this laptop. The only thing I really do not like on the E6400 is the LAME Intel graphics hardware. I would pick ATI/AMD or NVidia graphics hardware over Intel graphics hardware any day--twice on Sunday. I also recently had Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS 64 bit desktop on the E6400 and had no problems at all. I moved to Mint 11 because I really like the work they did to bring in the visual elements and general usability. The Mint Gnome menu arrangements and color schemes are much easier on my eyes and brain and I like that it is ready-to-go upon install without modifications/additions. I highly recommend Mint 11!"

Review: Porteus 1.0

An anonymous reader (seeming to either be the lead developer or someone close to the development of Porteus) said, "Thanks for the review! I'd like to add that the installer uses SYSLINUX tools and a preset configuration file, which allows users to boot into KDE or LXDE without logging in via the CLI (though text mode is available as well from the boot menu). The boot parameters also allow users to boot with persistent changes and/or a copy2ram function. Skype didn't work on 64-bit because you were using a 32-bit binary on a 64-bit system, and Porteus is not a multilib environment. We do have a package manager included (it's further down in the system menu, 'Porteus Package Manager' or 'PPM'. This is still in beta and we're still working on populating it with modules. If you'd like Skype for 64-bit and it's not in the repo, let us know in the 'module requests' section of our forum, and someone can whip one up for you :). Thanks again, and I'm glad you liked it!!"
Commenter Barnaby had this to say: "Further to the 32 bit Skype on a 64 bit system which obviously did not work, I think the idea is for people to create their own modules from other formats with the easy to use Modules tool. Automated conversion into modules is one of the greatest strengths of Slax and now Porteus."
Another anonymous reader had this gripe: "I tried Porteus. I liked most of it, but I hated the primitive way of 'persistence' or saving config setups. You have to hack config files to specify some 'save.dat' file. In 2011, why not just make persistence auto like Ubuntu, et al, do??? Also, I wanted to auto boot with lxde and copy2ram but again, this is very complicated. I do not want to type boot cheatcodes every time I use the distro. Maybe there is a hack to do this. BTW, Puppy has a friendly way of using a 'pesistence' save file ...no editing of config/boot files."
Yet another anonymous commenter said, "I agree with the negative comment about the the office suite selection. However, it was choosen because of its compactness. Would abiword and gnumeric be some better options?
For those who would like to have the openoffice suite on porteus instead of the koffice suite (the latter being Porteus standard because it is lighter, so to respect the small size of the distribution), openoffice is installed rather fast in cli mode, see post 6 of KSA_ARAB: https://porteus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=58 Installing packages could be a very fast process once you catch it. Different possibilities are available, amongst other Porteus package manager. It is also a very good idea to install porteus hdd, also called the (Slackware) frugal install (some kind of poor man's intall), instead of running it usb or cd. A few hdd procedures are available on the Porteus forum."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. Unlike this past week, where I did have two reviews planned, I don't have anything planned for this coming week, but again, I'm sure I'll be able to think of something to write about. Remember, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing to, commenting on, and sharing these posts!

2011 June 20: Linux and My Computers' Hardware

A couple things (which will be mentioned later in this post) prompted me to write this, so here it is. This is an overview of the two computers on which I have installed and used Linux regularly and things related to regular Linux usage on those computers.

First Computer (Past)

Sony VAIO desktop with Intel Pentium 4/HT processor at 2.8 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB hard drive, integrated ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card with available 1920 by 1200 resolution (used 1280 by 1024), integrated sound card, used in conjunction with a 21 inch Nokia CRT 4:3 monitor, Sony speakers, keyboard, and mouse, and Logitech QuickCam Communicate STX webcam

Second Computer (Current)

ASUS U30Jc laptop with Intel Core i3-370M processor at 2.4 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB hard drive, integrated Intel GMA 4500HD graphics card with available discrete NVidia GeFore 310M (512 MB graphics memory) graphics card with 1366 by 768 resolution, integrated sound card and speakers, integrated keyboard, integrated webcam and mic, used in conjunction with Microsoft USB mouse

Follow the jump to see the rest.

Adobe Flash Troubles: 64-Bit or 32-Bit PAE?

I am a big fan of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, though unfortunately I haven't been able to watch full episodes of either show in a while because of college work. I have, however, been able to watch clips here and there on their respective websites, but I cannot do the same thing on Hulu, the awesome website that aggregates segments from different TV shows and supports it through advertising. The reason for that is because I supposedly don't have a valid working version of Adobe Flash, and that is probably because I'm running a 64-bit Linux system on my laptop that has a 64-bit processor. As far as I know, Hulu is the only problematic site, because YouTube, online games, and other sites that obviously use Adobe Flash work fine.
I know that 64-bit operating systems are able to recognize RAM amounts greater than 3 GB, which is important for me because my laptop has 4 GB of RAM, and I'd like to put all of that to good use when necessary. I have also heard, though, that using a 32-bit Linux distribution with a PAE modification in the kernel (or something like that) allows the OS to recognize and use up to 4 GB of RAM, up from 3 GB previously. Linux Mint 9 LTS "Isadora" is supported for another 2 years from now, so I'd like to continue using that until either Linux Mint 13 LTS "M[...]a" comes out or, if that doesn't happen, for the next two years, at which point I will likely switch to a snapshot of Debian-based Linux Mint (or maybe #!, I'm not sure). When that happens, I'll choose either between 64-bit or 32-bit with PAE. My question is, do the benefits of a 64-bit OS outweigh the loss of Hulu viewing, or will switching to 32-bit with PAE be the better option with few side effects otherwise? Please let me know in the comments below. Of course, ideally, in one or two years, I'll actually be able to use a working version of Adobe Flash on a 64-bit Linux distribution.

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 February 13

I was getting a little scared that I wouldn't write this post for this week because I didn't post that much this past week, but thankfully, neither of those things happened. There was only one post that got a handful of comments this week, so I'll post all of those.

Not All is Fair in Linux

Reader dick had this to say about issues in Linux Mint: "I had the problem with Linux Mint that I did an Opera update from the normal method. The update went fine and all seemed to be well. I logged off. Next morning I was unable to log back in. I can't get back in with fail safe Linux Mint or any of the older versions either. Just totally blocks me out. I don't want to replace this if I can help it because I have some old photos of my grandfather, grandmother, and baby photos of my mother that I got from a distant relative who has since died and they are irreplaceable and since my grandfather was born in 1838 and grandmother 1878 and mother in 1902 they are missing from my immediate family as well. Any ideas on how to log in when you can't get there from here? Is there any way to easily get the home files from a different distro and put there some where safe? I realize I should have backed up before the update but have never had a problem with Linux Mint before. This is Linux Mint 8. Shame because this is essentially the first real problem I have had with Linux Mint and I had grown to depend on it just working without problems." I do believe that as with Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala", Linux Mint 8 "Helena" had quite a few problems of various kinds, so a system upgrade might be in order.
An anonymous reader had this suggestion: "If you have a problem with Ubuntu or Mint you can't say you have a problem with Linux (as a whole). Please, change the title of your post." I responded to this with the fact that this is an ongoing debate in the wider Linux community, so by saying "Not All is Fair in Linux", I was also implying the presence of strife in the community.
Reader revdJenk said, among other things, "I have LinuxMint 10 64bit, running on my LinuxCertified brand laptop with GM45 Intel video, and running compiz on advanced setting. I haven't experienced any of the issues you or the other commenter are mentioning."
Another anonymous commenter said, "Missing font issue you run into all the time. These days I just do PDF if I have to print else where. compiz has had issues for years. The closed source nvidia driver is not really compatible with it. But due to the type of incompadible you could go many months to years before its shows itself." Yes, but unfortunately, I needed to make a couple last-minute edits before printing; my original course of action was to just send myself a PDF file and print that out.
Reader NotZed said, among other things, "For printing - i'd recommend creating a pdf file locally and then taking that to another machine if you have to print on it. No matter what environment, missing fonts, software version differences and so on are always an issue. This is basically what PDF was invented for."

Thanks to all those who commented on posts from this past week. Due to things like exams, I may not be able to post too frequently. (If you see posts coming later this week, it probably means I wrote it much earlier and made the post automatically get published at a set time.) Once again, if you like what I write, please do keep subscribing and commenting!

Review: Debian 6 "Squeeze"

After a wait of 2 years, Debian 6 "Squeeze" has finally been released! Yay! It's now officially termed "stable".
Some highlights include changes in supported architectures (e.g. ARMEL instead of ARM), choice in using either the Linux kernel or FreeBSD kernel under the Debian GNU tools, a Linux kernel that is now made completely of free software, GNOME 2.30 with some updates from 2.32, KDE 4.4.5, Xfce 4.6, LXDE 0.50, IceWeasel 3.5, OpenOffice.org 3.2, more packages available, an improved installer, and more "pure blends" for different users.

Main Screen + Main Menu

With this release came a couple articles and a bit of back-and-forth discussion online about the continuing relevance of Debian. The original article posited that Debian is becoming irrelevant because its most famous derivative Ubuntu has it beat on the user-friendly desktop side and Red Hat and SUSE are also much more popular on the server end. A different article argued that Debian, far from becoming irrelevant, is essential for the ongoing survival of derivatives like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, MEPIS, and #!. The original article's author then responded by saying that if need be, although it would be a royal pain to do so, the developers of these derivative distributions could probably continue developing packages for their systems if Debian suddenly disappeared.
I take issue with that, because distributions like Linux Mint, MEPIS, and #! have smaller developer bases, so their time is already taken up by developing the smaller add-on packages to make their distributions unique; they have neither the [wo]manpower nor the funding to possibly continue developing core packages without the help of the Debian developers upstream. Plus, Linux Mint, although currently a primarily Ubuntu-based distribution, is also continually maintaining a rolling-release Debian-based distribution, so it needs the work of the good Debian developers even more in that sense, especially considering that the Ubuntu-based version of Linux Mint will diverge a bit more from Ubuntu in not adopting either Unity or GNOME 3 and not using Wayland for a while.
That said, I did read an interesting comment in one particular release announcement of Debian 6 "Squeeze", and that says that almost all the features present in the current stable Debian release were present in the most recent Ubuntu LTS release (10.04 "Lucid Lynx"), which came out just under a year ago. I would also add to that the fact that Debian stable releases are not supported any longer than Ubuntu LTS releases, which are supported for 3 years after release. Therefore, unless unbeatable stability or low resource usage is paramount, I would say for now that there's no compelling reason to use Debian 6 "Squeeze" over Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx". Of course, that case might become more compelling when Ubuntu uses Unity in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "P[...] P[...]", as Debian will likely stick to a more traditional GNOME setup and will probably appeal to more users disenchanted with the current direction of Ubuntu.

But I'm not here to argue if Debian is relevant or not. I'm here to try it out. I tried out the standard GNOME and KDE live systems through a live USB made with MultiSystem, and installed the KDE version in VirtualBox with 1024 MB of RAM allocated to the guest OS. Plus, there's a little bonus at the end (which I won't reveal right now), so follow the jump to see how it all goes.

HP + Linux = Ending the Microsoft Addiction?

HP has been best known for its peripheral computer devices, especially printers and scanners, though it is also well-known for its desktop computers, and, to a lesser extent, laptops and netbooks. Its printers and other peripherals are held in high regard for fully working with Linux distributions out-of-the-box, but it has never officially supported Linux among its product portfolio. Sure, it has sold business-/enterprise- and server-grade computers with SUSE (SLED, not openSUSE), but those are tucked away in dark corners of its website; even Dell, with its on-again, off-again, relationship with Ubuntu, does sort of advertise its Ubuntu-based machines. Well, that's all about to change at HP.
Today, HP first announced a couple WebOS-based phones and a new WebOS based tablet to compete with Apple's iPad. WebOS is HP's mobile operating system based on Linux; as far as I know, other than using the Linux kernel and base GNU tools, WebOS is not related to Android, and the two will probably compete in the mobile marketplace. But the most exciting part came later: HP announced that not only would WebOS come in phones and tablets, but it would also make its way into its printers and PCs. That's right: HP is introducing its own Linux-based competitor to Microsoft Windows. Sweet! This could, after all, be the oft-proclaimed year of the Linux desktop.
Of course, with this new announcement comes new responsibilities; now HP has absolutely no excuse for their peripherals not fully supporting Linux, considering many of them will run Linux under the hood. Then again, as I said earlier, HP has been pretty good to Linux so far in terms of peripheral support.
But there's another aspect to HP's WebOS announcement. If you noticed, WebOS is supposed to be a mobile platform; yet, it's being ported to conventional desktops as well. This is similar to how Ubuntu's Unity interface, originally designed for netbooks and similarly small screens, will become the default interface for desktops as well, and how future versions of Google Chrome OS will likely be very much like Android scaled up for netbooks. In addition, it looks like GNOME 3 was also designed with small form factors in mind, what with the Activities feature and the panel only being able to show the active task, and this has been scaled up for traditional desktops. I think there's a new trend here of creating new interfaces designed for mobile devices and then scaling them up for desktop use, and I think for that reason it's true that the future of end-user computing is in mobile devices. A while back I wrote a post about how Microsoft's push for Windows 7 on netbooks was misguided and that it should scale up the Windows Phone 7 interface instead to make better use of hardware resources, similar to how Apple scaled up the iPhone's iOS for use in the iPad instead of trying to cram in Mac OS X. Well, now that we're seeing mobile OSs being scaled up to full desktops and not just netbooks, I don't think Microsoft is just misguided anymore — I think they're dead wrong, and I think it's already costing them.
The only concern I have though is that WebOS on desktops and laptops may be relegated as a lightweight "instant-on"-style OS secondary to Microsoft Windows, similar to what Asus did for a while on its laptops and netbooks. Then again, HP seems to be pretty darn serious about WebOS for desktops, and not just because consumers want something fast; they recognize that consumers also want the same polish found in modern mobile OSs, so I don't think WebOS will be playing second fiddle to Microsoft Windows on future HP desktops/laptops.

FOLLOW-UP: Linux and Breakfast Cereals

I wrote a post a couple months ago regarding Mr. Graham Morrison's assertion that the overabundance of choice in the open-source software community is its failing and Ms. Caitlyn Martin's counter-assertion using the example of breakfast cereals. In it, I mostly agree with Ms. Martin's statements, though I do question the use of breakfast cereals as an analogy because that industry has not ever been so thoroughly monopolized like the PC OS industry.
One of Mr. Morrison's gripes was the confusion in package management, with so many different front- and back-ends. While I still believe that the multitude of front-ends can only be good for users (as anyway most distributions' preferences in that regard are pretty clear), after having talked to a friend in college who is extremely familiar with Red Hat and Fedora, I'm rethinking my stance on the multitude of back-ends.
DEBs are fairly standard (they're just glorified compressed files), so as long as all the required dependencies are present, a DEB from KNOPPIX should work on Linux Mint as well. For RPMs, the situation is a bit more complicated, because RPMs themselves are a good deal more complicated than DEBs. As it turns out, there's a good deal of variation even within the different implementations of RPMs. For example, RHEL (and CentOS) and Fedora use the original kind of RPMs. Mandriva and SUSE have modified the RPM format to fit their needs, as has Scientific Linux (otherwise based on RHEL). Thus, an RPM on Mandriva won't work on SUSE or Fedora; the differences can be so large that it would be like trying to install an alien file format (e.g. DEB).
So my question is, why have all these differences sprung up? For example, the Skype site shows different RPMs for Fedora and openSUSE. (Then again, it shows different DEBs for Debian and Ubuntu as well.) Why can't the maintainers of these distributions pare away the differences as much as possible to maintain inter-distribution compatibility? Wouldn't this just make everyone's life easier?

Fedora 15: A Potential Savior?

One of my friends was showing me today a Gource-created video of his semester's work that he made on his Fedora 14 "Laughlin" laptop. It looks really nice, but even though it has a quad-core processor, 4 GB of RAM, and a very nice AMD ATI dedicated graphics card (I don't know exactly what model/specs), it still took a couple hours to do (i.e. far longer than it should have).
I told him that I'd love to be able to do a similar thing on my laptop, but given that it has even lower specs than his, it would take even longer. This is also because Linux Mint 9 LTS "Isadora" doesn't properly recognize my NVidia graphics card, so I can only use the Intel integrated card which works fine for me now but would choke under such processor-intensive activities. He then told me that Fedora 15 will have native support for seamless switching of graphics card drivers (especially these NVidia-Intel setups).
Linux Mint, I've loved using you for the last year and a half, but I'm definitely going to be looking into this more closely, because I really do want to use my laptop to its full potential in Linux. If Fedora 15 is relatively stable, I'll probably be using it until Linux Mint gains similar support (and if it comes in the rolling "Debian" branch, I'll just use that then). In any case, I'm excited!

Featured Comments: Week of 2010 November 21

I want to apologize for not having posted this yesterday as usual. I was traveling back to college (more on that in an upcoming post) and didn't have computer access all day.
There were quite a few comments on posts this week, so I won't repost all of them.

Adafruit Bears Fruit for Microsoft

In response to my question about why Microsoft seemed so defensive, an anonymous reader had this to say: "Because Microsoft stir hackers' defiance whenever they say they have protected their products. For Microsoft, it was just saying "I challenge you to hack my ultra-securized device", and some hackers successfully took in the challenge. the Microsoft PR guys are just brilliant, they just took advantage of the company's reputation and the situation actually did beget creativity, the sort of creativity that will eventually benefit the Redmond-based behemoth."
Another anonymous commenter counters this: "Why do you think the developer at Microsoft who claimed that it would be easy to hack really telling the truth? I think it is just a post-construction when they realized that it was impossible to stop. And then everything is back to normal again, MS is and will remain evil :-)"
Another anonymous reader thinks it's because of sheer ignorance on Microsoft's part: "The data format was not "ultrasecurized" at all. They didn't know what was going on they just heard "kinect hacking" and gave a generic response which applied to a physical type hacking, with soldering and all. This was not a physical hack but a reverse engineering of the data format."

Ubuntu to Become a Rolling Release Distribution

In response to the update about the news being not-quite-true, reader T_Beermonster wrote, "I think that's a shame that they back-pedalled. Since I went rolling release with aptosid I don't think I'd be willing to go back to a step-change release model. I can see why it may be easier to sell support contracts for a step-release model but I don't think it actually offers any benefit to a desktop user."

Linux Mint: Good for Low-Requirement and Paranoid Users

Reader Arjun Krishna had this to say about it: "Windows is one of the worst OSes I have ever had. Linux Mint 10 "Julia" is definitely one of the most stable and user-friendly Operating systems in the world! Open SUSE is also a good alternative to Linux Mint, in case the system is older, and has less RAM. In any case, any Unix based OS would be much better to work with than a Windows based OS."
Also, commenter herbalfroot wrote, " Everyone for whom I have installed *buntu and mint have nothing but praise for the desktop they now have. These include non-technical users. I roll my eyes to the sky whenever I hear 'Linux is too difficult for the average user'."

Thanks to everyone who commented this week. Unfortunately, for the next two and a half weeks, I'll be quite busy, so don't expect to see a whole lot of new posts. In any case, as always, if you like what I write, please subscribe!

Linux Mint: Good for Low-Requirement and Paranoid Users

Two days ago, I helped a friend (whose identity I will not reveal here) perform a Linux Mint installation on her computer. That computer had Microsoft Windows 7 on it which was becoming extremely slow and unreliable by her own count. Because of this, she was willing to try something new. She doesn't really do much aside from web browsing and document creation; hence, I figured that something like Linux Mint would be perfect for her.
I let her try out what she would use most before installing, and she seemed happy with it; even during the installation process, I only helped if she had a question for me, which is a testament to how easy Linux Mint (version 9 LTS "Isadora") is to install. I showed her around the Software Manager, which allowed her to install things like Skype and Chromium. All in all, the installation and configuration process took about half an hour, and she seems quite happy with it so far. (In fact, I'm envious of her, because her laptop can suspend and hibernate well in Linux Mint, whereas mine can't.)
Yesterday, I talked to another friend of mine in the area, and his parents have set up parental controls in tandem with an antivirus program on his Microsoft Windows XP computer. It slows his computer down and he can't visit sites like YouTube and Google sometimes because they are occasionally listed as "inappropriate". (Proxies don't help because most of the big proxies have been blocked by that program as well; also, he's well past the age where parental controls would be necessary.) I told him about the concept of a Linux live CD and how he can either install it to bypass Microsoft Windows XP and its programs or just work from the live CD and not leave a trace. He seems really interested in that now (though we'll see how it goes).
My point in all this is: can we please dispel the myth that Linux is "too hard to use for a new user"? If the user is like the first person mentioned and doesn't do much more than browse the Internet and create documents, the user will probably never see the command line — ever. If the user is like the second person, there really isn't a substitute for a Linux live CD (because the obvious solution (removing the program) isn't an option for obvious reasons).

Why Safe Browsing Habits Don't Guarantee Anything

I see on sites like MakeTechEasier, Dedoimedo, and others that promote Linux articles that say that Linux shouldn't necessarily be promoted for any inherent security advantage over Microsoft Windows because browsing safely can prevent any problems from appearing. This also means that there's no need for antivirus software on Microsoft Windows because safe browsing habits alone will prevent viruses and other malware from appearing. I have two issues with this.
For one, on Linux, while it's common sense to exercise safe browsing habits anyway (i.e. not going to sites that scream "I WILL INFECT YOUR SOFTWARE"), it's not necessary to do so, because malware written for Microsoft Windows won't work on Linux, and in any case, the malware won't have administrative privileges to run (unless the user expressly allows such privileges, which can happen especially if it isn't immediately clear that the malware is malware (so the user thinks it's a harmless program)). Of course, there is a new bug out there that can automatically obtain superuser privileges in many Linux distributions, but that's a different story entirely.
The other problem I have with this is that it happened to me yesterday. I was in the library yesterday on a networked Microsoft Windows XP computer checking my email and reading the news when I suddenly saw a program called "ThinkPoint" hijack my desktop session, telling me that my computer has viruses that I need to remove (but to remove them, I supposedly need to pay a monthly fee). Obviously, "ThinkPoint" itself is a piece of malware. These news sites work perfectly fine on Linux and have worked well on Microsoft Windows (until now). I had to call our school's tech support, and (shockingly) they were very helpful, pleasant, and quick to respond to my issue. In fact, I am typing this post from the same computer now. I want to thank IS&T for being so great about this, but I also want to say that practicing safe browsing doesn't guarantee full safety from malware — antimalware software is still necessary on Microsoft Windows. So please, Dedoimedo (and other sites): even if you've never had an issue and you've always practiced safe browsing, that may not work out for everyone else, so stop acting like it will.

NVidia, Linux, and Hardware Acceleration

When I got my Asus laptop, I immediately installed Linux Mint 9 "Isadora" GNOME and searched for the proprietary NVidia graphics driver. For some reason, at that time, nothing turned up. I didn't really worry about it, as I could enable 3D acceleration and desktop effects anyway, and they worked really well, as they still do. A few days ago, I got the idea of looking again to see if I could install those proprietary drivers, as those might give my computer using Linux Mint even greater graphics capabilities. To my pleasant surprise, this time, the drivers were found and had already been downloaded; all I needed to do was click "Activate", and I did. I then restarted the computer and logged back in, only to find that I could no longer use desktop effects. Well, that was strange. The thing is, I have 2 graphics cards in this computer (an NVidia GeForce 310M and an Intel GMA 4500); Linux Mint recognizes both (as tested in the terminal), but I don't know for sure which card is being used. Furthermore, deactivating the driver brought back desktop effects. Has anyone else had similar issues? Does anyone else know what to do in such a situation? Thanks in advance!

Featured Comments: Week of 2010 September 5

This is the start of a series on featured comments and who wrote what in the posts for that week. I won't republish all of them, but I'll try to get the major ones.

Counter-Debunking the 1% Myth

This was the only post that week that attracted comments.
Reader John points out that while computers preinstalled with Linux in poorer countries often have the hard drives wiped and replaced with Microsoft Windows, "that cuts both ways. I've never bought a copy of Linux pre-installed on a PC, but instead just downloaded it for free and installed it myself. I'd guess that's how the majority of Linux systems come into being."
An anonymous reader makes a very good point on why the 1% figure has to be too low: "I keep asking the folks that's saying 1%. What's your ± %? How can you have a percentage at 1% without any margin of error or standard deviations. Those missing figures alone put it (well) over 1%."
Another anonymous reader describes his/her personal experiences with Ubuntu: "My South Africa relative said they never heard of Ubuntu not any of their friends use linux. among the hundred of computer users I known, none of them used linux in their daily work. My first experience with linux (RH 7)is wifi card not working. I could not watch DVD. Even until now (Ubuntu 10.04) after installing linux, I still need great effort to download codec to play mp3, dvd etc (which is a standard usage for notebooks)."
Barista Uno is just tired of the debate: "Aren't we all wasting our time that could be better spent elsewhere?" On the other hand, GreyGeek77 points to a possible source of the myth: "I believe the prime source of the 1% MYTH was Microsoft, as revealed in the combs v Microsoft case file:
http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/9000/PX09445.pdf"

Thank you all very much for commenting on the post, and please continue to do so. I really do appreciate all of your input, and stay tuned for more posts!

Counter-Debunking the 1% Myth

Caitlyn Martin of O'Reilly Broadcast has another interesting article about why the figure of Linux market share is quite a bit more than the oft-quoted 1%. She starts out by doing a bit of math: (1 Linux netbook)/(3 total netbooks) * (18 total netbooks)/(100 (desktops + laptops + netbooks)) = (6 Linux netbooks)/(100 (desktops + laptops + netbooks)) — Linux netbook sales alone constitute 6% of the total desktop market. I can't argue with that. It's also a really impressive number; the number for total Linux desktop sales (that includes desktops, laptops, and netbooks) will obviously be higher — I don't know by how much, but the total number is certainly at least 6%. I think it's great that Linux desktop sales have come this far.
The bigger question regards the meaning of this number, and I believe the problems with this article occur before and after the calculations. For one, the author starts by saying that Linux market share in servers and embedded systems is significant. I don't think anyone ever doubted this, and several studies have shown that Linux distributions are in fact in the majority on these types of hardware. Therefore, I think it isn't quite right to start the article like this when the title clearly indicates a discussion about Linux desktop market share. That said, this is a fairly minor issue.
The article's argument gets more murky when Steve Ballmer is brought into the discussion. It has been written repeatedly that the presentation referenced clearly shows that the biggest threat to Microsoft Windows is illegally copied versions of Microsoft Windows (not Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD). Why? This is the case in many countries with poorer populations, as people simply can't afford to buy a licensed copy of Microsoft Windows. Furthermore, Linux adoption in these countries is low because the computers sold there often don't have the tools (Internet connection, working USB port, working disk writer drive) to create a live CD/USB, and there's no cost advantage to using Linux as people will just copy Microsoft Windows. A lot of commenters in the linked article also point out that in these countries where unlicensed use of Microsoft Windows is rampant, it is cheaper, in fact, to buy a machine with Linux preinstalled and then wipe the hard drive and install an unlicensed copy of Microsoft Windows. I don't doubt the verity of this. That said, the 6% figure is for the US, where unlicensed Microsoft Windows use is likely to be much lower; therein lies another problem, as statistics for US Linux market share is being compared to statistics for worldwide Microsoft Windows market share.
And why should Steve Ballmer know about precise statistics for Linux and Mac OS X usage? It certainly is easy to look at sales statistics and see what percentage of computers are sold with licensed copies of Microsoft Windows; also, as Microsoft "phones home" to see which copies of Windows are licensed and which are not, it should be pretty easy to tell how many unlicensed copies of Windows are being used. While one can safely conclude that the rest of the pie is occupied by Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X, it is not so clear how much each contender has of that slice of the pie. I guess one way of telling how many people use Mac OS X is by tracking sales of Microsoft Office for Mac, but this is problematic as many Mac OS X users stay away from Microsoft Office and instead use iWork, OpenOffice.org/NeoOffice, or a web-based productivity suite.
So why would Steve Ballmer put Linux market share at or above Mac OS X market share? Microsoft knows that it can compete with Apple's Mac OS X in terms of features (in some ways) and price, so Mac OS X isn't really considered a huge threat. On the other hand, Linux can do most of the things a typical computer user wants (e.g. web browsing, productivity, peripheral support) for free, which does technically pose a serious threat to Microsoft Windows. At the same time, Microsoft has repeatedly accused the free software community (and Linux in particular) of infringing upon its patents. Therefore, Microsoft is pegging Linux market share that high in order to justify those accusations — if Linux market share is that high, then of course Linux needs to be stopped before such patent infringement gets out of control! (This is what I would imagine a Microsoft executive saying at such a presentation.)
I won't argue that Linux desktop sales make up at least 6% of total desktop sales. Usage is a different matter entirely and should not be treated the same as sales figures.

Linux and Breakfast Cereals

I got the idea for this post from this article (Caitlyn Martin, O'Reilly Broadcast), which is a response to this op-ed piece (Graham Morrison, TechRadar).
I find it a little ridiculous that Mr. Morrison can seriously claim to not understand Linux package management after dealing with it for 12 years. But, then again, the article seems to support this as well. Follow the jump to read more about this.