Ubuntucat

I’ve moved this post to be a page, but I didn’t want to delete the comments associated with this older post.

You can find the page here.

I’ve been a Ubuntu Forums member for well over three years now. I am also now a moderator of the forums. For a while now, I think my wife has considered me a bit of a weirdo, as I’m constantly writing support to and getting support from all these people I’ve never met and probably will never meet in person.

But recently she’s joined up an online forum herself and realized that, yes, if you have a relatively obscure interest and not many people share that interest with you in “real life” (i.e., among your in-person friends and acquaintances), then online communities are a good place to get support and information.

No one close to me uses Ubuntu as her primary operating system. I’m surrounded by Mac and Windows users. So if I have a question about Ubuntu, where do I go? Online. It makes only logical sense.

It also means that all the naysayers who think “Oh, no! What if Ubuntu becomes really popular and everyone starts using it? The online forums will overload! There will be too many support requests for the forums to handle” are ignoring the fact that for many people online forums are a fallback. If “everyone” started using Ubuntu, most people wouldn’t go to a forum to get support with technical issues. They’d go to their tech-savvy family member or friend, just as they do now with Mac and Windows. It’s only the tech-savvy family member or friend who will have to resort to forums when she is unable to figure out the problem herself.

I realize there exist people who generally prefer online communication to in-person contact (sometimes I do, depending on the context), but for many folks, online connections are just fillers for a void in in-person connection.

Did you read an article or blog post hyping up Linux as a cure for all computer problems? Did it give you the impression that Linux is for smart users and Windows is for suckers? Did you think Linux would do everything Windows did… but better? More importantly, after being misled by pro-Linux propaganda, were you extremely disappointed about having to return to Windows?

I’ve read many such stories on the Ubuntu Forums from disgruntled would-be migrants to Linux (Ubuntu, specifically, since it is the Ubuntu Forums, and I am a Ubuntu user). This duped user has had too much trouble migrating to Linux (usually a combination of culture shock and incompatible hardware) but doesn’t want to deal with security problems in Windows.

Well, here’s my advice to this user:

• You can secure Windows. If the only reason you’re migrating to Linux is security, look into a program called SuRun. It allows you to create a security setup similar to the sudo implementation Ubuntu and Mac OS X use. So you can run almost always as a limited-privilege user, and when you want to temporarily escalate to administrative privileges (say, for Windows Updates or badly written programs that require you to run as an administrator), you can do so with a simple right-click and password authentication.
• You can experience open source on Windows. If switching to Linux is too much of a culture shock, you can ease yourself in by exploring various open source Windows applications.
• Hold out for compatible hardware. If the idea of eventually switching to Linux appeals to you, keep your Lexmark printer and Broadcom wireless card for now and use Windows. But the next time you’re in the market for a peripheral or hardware component, do a little bit of research and find one that’s Linux-friendly.
• Hold out for preinstalled Linux. Taking that last bit advice one step further—the best way to have a positive Linux experience is to experience it the way most Windows users first experienced Windows: preinstalled and preconfigured. Let Asus, Dell, or HP handle all the setup and configuration. Keep using that Windows computer until it’s “too old,” and then buy a new computer with Linux preinstalled and just turn it on and have it just work. No fussing with editing text files. No installing drivers. No recompiling kernels.
• Just give up. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with sticking with Windows if that’s what makes you happy. If you have the money for it, if it allows you to run the software applications you need, and if a Linux migration is too much of a headache for you, stay with what works for you.

I grew up in one of the wealthiest towns in its state. If you told people you were from my town, they’d call you a “Richie.” Nevertheless, many people in my town identified themselves as “middle-class” or “upper-middle-class” instead of as “upper-class” or “rich.” There were many people in my high school who, when applying to college, applied for and qualified for financial aid.

Many times people use the term rich as a monolithic one. The rich are rich and the poor are poor. To a certain extent, that’s true. Even if you’re on the lower end of rich, you are in a very, very small minority percentage-wise of the US or world population. But there are still varying degrees of “rich,” and they do lead very different lifestyles.

What got me thinking about this was a thread on the Ubuntu Forums asking what will happen when Mark Shuttleworth’s money runs out. Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Ubuntu Linux, and his initial investment was about US$10,000,000. He also spent, before he set up Ubuntu, about US$20,000,000 to fly into space as a space tourist. In 1999, he sold his company Thawte for about US$575,000,000.

Now let’s think about the typical rich town resident (like the people in my town). My parents were both university professors, so we were barely rich enough to live in the rich town, but we did. A lot of my friends’ parents were doctors or lawyers. Doctors and lawyers can make a lot of money—six-figure salaries, maybe eventually a million a year. If you were a millionaire, you were rich, even in the rich town.

But there is a huge difference between being even a millionaire and being a half-billionaire.

If you’re a millionaire, you can afford a nice house in a rich town, but you’re probably still paying a monthly mortgage. You can go out for meals at fancy restaurants every now and then, you probably own a couple of expensive cars, and you can pay your kids’ college (that’s university, for you non-Americans) tuition without taking out a loan. You’ve still got to be mindful of your money, though. You can’t spend recklessly, and you can’t just quit your job.

If you’re a half-billionaire like Mark Shuttleworth, you don’t have to work. You can invest your money, and the interest you earn on that money per year is probably more than most people earn in a lifetime. In other words, Mark Shuttleworth has about as much money as five hundred millionaires. If he lived to be 100 years old, never invested any of his money, and just had the US$575,000,000 from the original Verisign deal, he could spend US$21,288 every day and run out of money only a little after his hundredth birthday.

That’s more than half my yearly salary he could spend every day and not go broke for another 65 years. Do we have to worry about Mark Shuttleworth running out of money? I highly doubt it. And, hey, he set up Ubuntu on the Isle of Man for a reason. The guy is not dumb. I don’t know if Ubuntu will ever be profitable, but I know it’s not going to die in my lifetime for lack of funds.

When Google Chrome hit the scene a little while ago, I was excited. Scott McCloud’s online comic book (although confusing at times) was a good sell on Chrome’s features, and I particularly liked the way it handles each tab as a separate process.

Immediately, on my computer at work, I installed Chrome and started using it as my default browser. The speed was amazing. In terms of rendering pages, it seemed to be as fast as Opera, and the interface responsiveness made it seem even faster. I also dug how Chrome’s version of the “speed dial” was dynamic based on the pages you’ve visited (in Opera’s you have to set the speed dial pages manually).

But, alas, Chrome (like Opera) has annoying tab behavior. It opens new tabs next to the current tab. That doesn’t work well with how I browse. I like to open links in new tabs at the end of the row so that I can get to them eventually. I don’t like to switch to them right away after closing the current tab. I tried to put up with it for a while, but Firefox is the browser that works with my style. Maybe someone will come up with a preference hack for Chrome that will change the tab behavior. Until then, I’ll remain a Firefox user.