Looks More Like a Puma

Modern technology - the ability to do things with an increasingly smaller keyboard on a slower computer over an even slower network

You heard me right: “increasingly smaller”.

Package Manager - is the nicest way to get software I’ve ever worked with. If you’re looking for freeware, whether it’s a video editor or a ruby interpreter, you can find it and install neatly within minutes. Updates to the OS and all the software is integrated through the package manager so I automatically get security fixes for Ubuntu and new versions of my IM client all through the same helpful interface.

Geek Friendly - as in, an operating system that helps me do stuff rather than trying to continuously throw up road blocks. It’s nice to have an OS that doesn’t do its best to bury the terminal and actually comes with a C compiler installed.

Virus Software - I don’t use any. Whoop.

Community - is friendly and helpful. Ubuntu has it’s share of problems, but its community of users and (often emphatic) fans is a pretty good resource for solving problems.

Well this wraps up my little series about operating systems. If I haven’t bored you yet, go on over to computerworld.com for the OS Smackdown.

What the heck is Windows?

This continues my little series on what’s good and bad about the various operating systems for personal computers (by which I of course mean computers for persons, not non-mac computers). Last time I listed the things I hate about Linux, and the next entry in the series will be the things I like about Windows.

Performance - is the reason I got tired of running Windows in the first place. Windows seems to have a habit of bogging down in awkward places like when right clicking on anything in File Explorer, or when trying to use the Start Menu. I hate logging onto Windows machines in various labs because I inevitably end up waiting for about a minute while Windows “Loads my personal settings” (I don’t have any personal settings!), and then when it looks ready, you still usually have to wait for another 30 or 60 seconds before it becomes responsive.

Security - means you have install some kind of anti-virus software which is inevitably a resource pig. Sure security is a really hard problem, but they could at least do the simple things, like salting passwords. I can take a cd which I downloaded for free and put it in your Windows computer and it will tell me your password, because unlike every other system that stores hashed passwords, Windows doesn’t use salt them to make the hash unique for each machine.

Reliability - means most Windows user have to restart their computer. Often. And then there’s my favorite Windows anecdote. The US Navy actually had a trial “Smartship” program which integrated all of the ship’s systems together using a network of computers running Windows NT. It worked fine until one guy accidentally entered some wrong data which cause a divide by zero error which crashed the system leaving the ship dead in the water for 3 hours. Curiously, I haven’t heard anything about that program since.

The little things - which I had no idea were missing until I started using Ubuntu Linux regularly. Things like:

• Lack of ssh/scp. I don’t know of any built in way to communicate with a server in Windows
• Lack of workspaces. So simple and useful. So glaringly absent.
• Always on top. This is an option for every window in Ubuntu. Really simple. Really useful. Really not available in Windows.
• UI Customization. I can completely change every menu, icon, sidebar, and shortcut on my desktop in Ubuntu. In Windows, I can have my Start Menu on the bottom or the side or the top. And that’s about it.
• Notepad. The worst text editor ever written. Could they not put more than 15 minutes of effort into it, or better yet just bundle in one of the 5 gazillion existing free text editors?
• Printscreen. Why do I have to paste into Paint to get an image file?
• Cmmand prompt. Everything is backwards from all the other operating systems.
• “Are you sure you want to send file XXX to the Recycling Bin?” Isn’t that kind of the point of having a Recycling Bin? That you don’t have to be sure?

And finally, my absolute favorite is this dialog right here.


Seems innocent enough, until you try the “Restart Later” option. That makes the dialog go away for all of 10 minutes, and then it pops up right back in your face, asking you the same stupid question and giving you the same stupid countdown. Of course you’re trying to use your computer so you click “Restart Later” and of course 10 minutes later it pops up again with another dose of helpful Windows user interface…

Well, I guess that’s about it. Windows isn’t all bad though. Stick around through the commercial break and I’ll tell you what I like about it.

What the heck is Linux?

This kicks off a little series about operating systems. If you’ve heard of Linux but you’re really not sure what the deal with it is, here’s your opportunity. Stick around for a few posts, and I’ll give you what I think are the pros and cons for Ubuntu Linux and Windows. (For the mac-lovers who are probably steaming right now, I’ll try to work in some stuff about OSX. The thing about that is that I haven’t used it for any extended period of time and don’t know much about it).

Network Manager - is just plain flaky. It goes through phases for no apparent reason. It’ll go through a phases where it works perfectly, then one day it will suddenly not be able to connect to a usual wireless network. Eventually I figure out some trick to make work again (toggle the wireless switch…or the power) and that’s about when it shifts to a different phase with a totally different problem. This thing is so creative with the problems that it has, I sometimes have a hard time beleiving that it is a deterministic piece of software.

Hardware Support - is often lacking. Honestly I’m actually really impressed by how well this works on a variety of machines with a variety of peripherals. Still, it’s pretty frustrating when your printer is on the list that either doesn’t work, or only works after sifting through forums and fiddling with config files for a day.

Networking - is hard. I have yet to figure out how to get to windows machines on the LAN without knowing their IP address. I didn’t work on it for very long, but shouldn’t it be pretty straightforward?

Open Office - is the number one reason why I don’t recommend Ubuntu to every single person. Compared to MS Office 07, it is just plain lacking in terms of features, ease of use, and the experience in general. Every time I use it, I found out some little thing that isn’t there. The other day it was that you can’t crop pictures that are inserted into a text document. The day before that it was that charts in the spreadsheet program can’t be displayed in log scale. Admittedly, that’s probably a rarely used feature; but when you need it, there’s no substitute. And the only thing I know about the slideshow program is that I started it once when I had a presentation to make, tried to work with it for 5 minutes, then rebooted my computer into windows to use PowerPoint. I haven’t looked at OpenOffice Slideshow since.

So I was kind of shooting for a top 10 list, but I could only come up with 4. Next time I’ll be back with Things I hate about Windows (I wouldn’t expect it to be as short as this one).