Ubuntu Linux

Last week when I was driving home, I decided I should switch from Windows XP to Linux, Ubuntu Linux to be precise. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean installing it on an old machine or using a dual boot installation together with Windows. I mean switching actually for real!
Why? My computer was ready for a complete cleanup and reinstallation anyway. Windows Explorer kept crashing, leftovers from deinstalled programs messed up the system. It didn't feel right like it used to. It occurred to me that I had no excuse to keep using Windows anymore. Since I left OS/2 nine years ago, I always had some special purpose Windows-only software to keep me from switching to Linux. But I realized that there is nothing left. And if I get in real trouble, there is always my company laptop to help me out.

Ten years ago, Linux had a bad reputation when it comes to usability. This reputation is changing. More and more people are saying Linux isn't that hard to learn. I tried Linux on old machines several times. I never found anything easy about it.
Also, I have always been a little bit annoyed by Linux evangelist's claims of Linux being a better system. For them perhaps it is a better system. They can't imagine how Windows is so popular and so many people still chose MSIE over Firefox. With the best intentions they are improving their software usability targeting a broader audience. But with their poor marketing skills I think they are unlikely to reach them.

The recent promotion of Ubuntu Linux feels a little bit different though. Their slogan “Linux for human beings” tells us that usability is their primary focus, not just an afterthought. Are they succeeding?

In some ways they are, in some ways they're not. I found that there are roughly two kinds of software components in Linux. One kind is the obvious components everybody needs. These are surprisingly easy to install and use as long as you stick with the main stream functionalities. The other kind is the special features and specific user preferences they forgot about. These are hard to find, need editing of difficult text files or require manual installation of additional components. For example, installing OpenOffice and Firefox is easy, but getting the Java plugin to run in Firefox or getting the RSS reader to launch on system startup requires a lot of searching and reading (or they hid the easy functionality really well).
And there is nothing in between. Either it is very easy or it is very hard.

For me as a technical guy, it all feels like a large puzzle where you can put the pieces in the right place and still decide what the resulting picture should look like. For me, Linux brings the fun back in using my computer at home. I never used my computer as much as last week.

For a broader audience, I'm not so sure. They're doing a good job but they have a long way to go.

The advantage of community software is that they welcome you to help improve the system yourself. I'll think about this and see what I can do. As for now, I still have a lot to learn about the system.

Mozilla XForms headache

I upgraded the Mozilla XForms plugin to the latest version (0.6) and discovered it doesn't like my tutorial example forms anymore. A list of error messages is not the worst result. The example from part 4 crashes Firefox. In Linux the process is killed instantly. In Windows you get the chance to complain about this to Microsoft. Of course you should always send an error report to Microsoft, even if you know the software is not theirs in any way. Otherwise those guys would get bored and eventually they would lose their job cutting the costs of Windows and increasing Microsoft profits. Don't think Windows would get any cheaper. It won't.

I "fixed" part 4, meaning it doesn't crash or show error messages. Most of it it was my own fault. The ugly work arounds and strange behaviors were causing the errors. The translated help messages under the F1 keys don't work anymore for now. The original XForm can still be found in the ZIP file, which does run on the 0.5 version of the plugin. Be careful with that!

Again I think it's wise to wait for a more stable XForms plugin for a while. Error messages is one thing, but completely crashing the browser and all other open tabs, is something I cannot appreciate as a result of reading broken data.