Ubuntucat

I’m going to present you with several possible narratives that outline how Linux could be adopted by “the masses” in the future, if ever:

Narrative 1
People continue to buy Windows-preinstalled computers but at one point the Linux developers are such geniuses that they are able to make a foolproof installation that detects and automatically works with 100% of peripheral hardware, even the hardware from companies that refuse to port their drivers to Linux or open source their drivers. Suddenly, self-professed computer illiterates and non-tech-savvy users everywhere will download .iso files, burn them as disk images, set their BIOSes to boot from CD, install Linux on their hard drives and be glad to be rid of Windows. Microsoft declares bankruptcy and everyone starts dancing and singing the last part of “The Age of Aquarius.”

Narrative 2
The thousands of Linux developers of various versions of desktop Linux decide to abandon all of their projects and create one unified Linux distribution. To keep it unified, they change the licensing from the GPL to strictly closed source, so that others won’t fork into disunified Linux distributions. Since there’s no such thing as having too many chefs in the kitchen or any loss of efficiency through needing a consensus before action, this unified distro quickly surpasses Mac OS X and Windows in terms of looks and functionality. Once again, preinstallation and proper marketing are irrelevant to consumer Linux adoption. Everyone, even those who consider themselves computer illiterate, decides to download and install this new operating system. Open source developers everywhere can rejoice because yet a third proprietary operating system has won a place in the market. Hurray for open source that’s now closed source!

Narrative 3
Ex-Windows power users keep downloading and trying various Linux distributions. Some abandon Linux at the first sign of trouble. Others stick with it or happen to luck out with very Linux-friendly hardware. They build up a solid user base for consumer Linux and buy the very few Linux preinstalled options from large OEMs like Dell and HP. The large OEMs realize there is money to be made in selling preinstalled Linux computers to consumers. One model in particular seems to sell extremely well and the distro that comes with that model becomes the de facto standard Linux distro. Any commercial software ported to Linux has a software package easily installable for that distro. All non-commercial Linux applications are also sure to provide, along with the source .tar.gz file, packages compatible with that distro. Whenever non-tech-savvy users ask their Linux-using friends what computer to buy, if the Linux-using friends know the needs are basic enough (email, music, web, word processing, photos), they suggest a Linux preinstalled solution. Eventually a large enough contingent of tech-savvy and totally-non-tech-savvy Linux users has to be recognized by hardware and software companies, and Linux ports become a necessity for economic viability for these companies. The only reason to use Windows is if you like it better than Linux, not because you’re stuck with some Windows-only hardware or Windows-only software.

Narrative 4
Ex-Windows power users keep trying to migrate to Linux. Some try and fail. Some try and succeed. Linux users keep begging large OEMs to preinstall Linux. When they see Linux preinstalled, they rejoice for a little bit but then most of them continue to build their own computers and install Linux themselves or buy Windows-preinstalled computers and install Linux themselves. OEMs say “We’re not going to offer preinstalled Linux any more, because it’s clear that Linux users would rather buy Windows computers anyway and install Linux themselves.” So all potential Linux users have to install Linux themselves or find someone to install and troubleshoot Linux for them.

About the narratives
If you read a lot of disgruntled Ubuntu users experiences, you’d think that narrative 1 and narrative 2 were really how Linux would make a place for itself among “the masses.” Right now, we’re stuck in narrative 4, and really it’s narrative 3 that would make Linux successful with “the masses.” Now I know some Linux users don’t care about the masses. They say as long as Linux works for them, it doesn’t matter who else uses it. That’s fine. But then don’t celebrate when you get more hardware support and more applications ported to Linux because of an increase in Linux consumer use. And don’t pretend that all Linux distros share your values. Ubuntu’s first bug has precisely to do with taking market share away from Microsoft.

And to those disgruntled migrants who think they have great suggestions for how to make Linux accessible for the masses, know that the Linux developers are all working as hard as they can to make good software, and recognize that good software alone won’t bring Linux to the masses. There are market forces at work. In the computer industries, money talks. If you want to do Linux for the masses some good, buy Linux preinstalled.

I believe in choice. I will celebrate the day when Windows users can actually choose Windows instead of just being stuck with it. I will celebrate when you can go into Best Buy and see Linux preinstalled computers there to try out, and the sales staff will be able to talk intelligently about the differences between Windows and Linux. I will celebrate Dell recommending something on its website other than the latest version of Windows. I will celebrate TV advertisements explaining the advantages of using Linux. I don’t want all the masses using Linux. I just want them to be able to buy a Linux computer and use it right away without having to worry about hardware compatibility and burning .iso files correctly.

We go to a church that’s fairly up with the times. You may recall the Easter Mii invitation from about a half year ago. That was our church. We’ve historically met in industrial-like spaces with coffee tables and IKEA furniture lit up with candles and lamps. Recently, though, we moved into an older church building (with a Julia Morgan-style architecture), and there were some concerns among our congregation that the pews and old-style furnishings of the building might take away from the hip spirit of our church.

I have to disagree. Basically, some people thought our church was about the furniture, and a lot of us felt the church is about the people. Yes, the furniture is an expression of who we are as people. Nevertheless, we are still the same people if we worship in pews in an older building. Well, now that we’ve actually made the move, and I’ve actually experienced worship in our new (or old, depending on how you look at it) building, I have to say I like this better. We did manage to move around some pews and put some coffee tables in. We also brought in our sound system and projector. But there’s a homey quality to the old building that appeals to me, and having younger folks inhabiting the older space gives it a fresh feel that doesn’t remind me of the church I was in growing up (which was mainly populated by older folks like my parents).

I have nothing against old folks and will probably be one in a few decades. I just want to feel young while I still am, and it’s great to be in an old building with a bunch of young people. I’m digging the retro.

For years I’d been hearing about yoga, knowing my friends had done it and seeing TV and movie characters engage in it. I’d never done it before, though. That changed recently when my wife invited me to attend a “mellow yoga” class with her. It was an interesting experience, definitely. I wasn’t too keen on the poem-reading and om-chanting, but the actual yoga exercise was relaxing and fun.

Of course, I was also totally lost. The instructor kept telling us to do all these poses I didn’t know (the names I’d heard before but the details I had no mastery of), some of which were supposed to be done with our eyes closed (I had to peek to make sure I was doing it right). Not a big fan of the tree pose (in which you balance on one foot while the sole of the other foot is on your calf or thigh). There was this great reclining pose we did at the end that I thought I’d fall alseep in, though—that I could have done for hours.

In the end, I decided I may go to another yoga class every now and then, but it’s not my cup of tea for on-a-regular-basis-exercise. Squatting and twisting requires too much coordination and intense muscle pressure. I’m more of a runner/walker.

I do believe that fat people are often discriminated against and mistreated in society. I think there is too much of a stigma attached to fatness and an overglorification of thinness. That said, some people are overweight, and I love seeing those people work hard to lose it and actually succeed. I realize reality TV shows are manipulative and always have the main purpose of getting high ratings, no matter what the cost to the participants psychologically, but I feel that The Biggest Loser is probably one of the best reality TV shows out there in that it actually helps people get healthier.

Yes, it does that silly thing where some contestants have to vote off other contestants. I think that’s ridiculous. The only people who should be eliminated are the ones who lose the least amount of weight. There should be no voting.

And, of course, they do the duh-duh-duhn focus on faces in reaction to scale readings right before the commercial break for maximum manipulative suspense-milking.

Oh, and the whole show is a just a long advertisement for 24-Hour Fitness gyms.

Nevertheless, when I see these people going from 350 lbs. to 180 lbs. and also getting rid of their health problems (diabetes, heart disease, etc.), it’s pretty inspiring, especially when I know many of them probably have a genetic predisposition to gaining weight. Anyone who knows me well knows I am a nurture person all the way, and it’s not because I don’t believe in the power of nature—I just don’t believe in giving in to nature if you also have the power of nurture. I’m genetically predisposed to being diabetic, but I’m not going to just throw in the towel on that one. As long as I can, I want to avoid being diagnosed with diabetes, and when I am finally diagnosed, I want to put off needing insulin shots as long as I can and also avoid losing my eyesight or limbs as long as I can. My wife and I had together all four of our grandmothers outlive their husbands, so, as a male, I’m genetically predisposed to dying earlier than she does, but I want to maximize my life as long as possible.

If you’re fat and happy with yourself and healthy, that’s great. Stay that way. But if you’re fat, have related health risks, and think that your genetic predisposition cannot be overcome, then I think you need to start exercising and eating healthily and fight what nature has thrown your way. You may have to exercise more and eat more healthily than some folks who are naturally skinnier, and that’s life. And some naturally skinnier people may actually have health issues despite society telling them they “look” a healthy weight, and shame on them.

It is an injustice that anorexics get treatment and pity while overweight folks get mistreatment and ostracization. That doesn’t mean they don’t both have problems. Would I love to see a The Biggest Gainer? In theory, yes. But people who are excessively skinny and have an eating disorder could gain weight just for the show and then still remain psychologically anorexic or just add bulimia to anorexia. You can tell when you watch The Biggest Loser that these people are already psychologically ready to be thinner. The problem is purely physical, and psychology comes into play only as far as competitiveness and motivation are concerned.

Waiting for my DVR to record the next episode…

I did it. I wiped Mandriva clean off my computer, backed up my important files, and installed Ubuntu 8.10 beta on my Eee PC, and so far the experience has been wonderful. There were a few bumps along the way, of course:

• The first time I copied the live CD contents to my bootable USB key (actually my Sansa Clip player), I tried to boot off it and got some weird busybox error message. So I copied the files again, and the second time I booted, it worked.
• Hotkeys and wireless did not work out of the box (and unchecking the restricted driver in the hardware manager did not work, as some people have indicated it would). However, installing the Eee-specific packages from the repositories and rebooting did help. Volume hotkeys still did not work, but I was able to easily set alternative key combinations for volume, and those did work.
• The annoyance of autologin and the Gnome keyring prompt persists with Network Manager (and, yes, I looked around for solutions and found no working ones—one Launchpad bug seemed to indicate that setting a blank keyring password would solve the problem, even though it didn’t). So I just replaced Network Manager with WICD.
• Resume from suspend-to-RAM works about 2/3 of the time. I still just shut down.
• After removing readahead, though, the boot time is just under a minute, which is a huge improvement from when I had Ubuntu 8.04 installed, which booted in about 1 min 40 sec.
• Shut down initially did not work and required the manual editing of the /etc/init.d/halt file (as had previous Ubuntu releases).

Other than that, it has worked a dream. I’m very happy with Intrepid on the Eee. I did one update and left it at that (if I did daily updates, I’m sure one of them would break things, and as the Eee is my main computer, I can’t afford to have that happen).

To anyone who says I should file bug reports on this stuff while Intrepid is still in beta, bug reports have already been filed on all of these, so the developers are quite aware of these problems. I don’t know if they’re a top priority to be fixed or not, though.