Over the weekend I struggled to get Flash working on my Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix build. I turned to Twitter and Google for support, and was dismayed by the response.
Some, like Canonical's Jono Bacon, were very helpful. The rest offered the somewhat standard Linux supporter's line:
"What are you talking about? Linux is as easy as Windows."
After trying to get Flash installed for hours - using Firefox's extensions directory, the command line, and everything else I could find - this wasn't super helpful.
Not that I'm much more helpful when others ask me for assistance. I'm a Mac user, and my typical response tends to be,
"What are you talking about? Mac OS X is even easier than Windows!"
In either case, telling the drowning woman that it's really easy to swim ("Just type "apt-get swimming lessons") or, worse, yelling at her for incompetence ("I can't believe you're telling me that you don't know what to do with a .dmg file! It's soooo much easier than Windows!"), really doesn't help to win people over to Linux or the Mac. Learning a new operating system is like learning a new language: talking louder doesn't improve communication.
Here's a hint for the Mac and Linux faithful: you won't convert Windows users by talking down to them. Focus on the positive aspects of your own operating environments and then demonstrate empathy and patience while showing newbies how to get around on Linux or Mac OS X.
Using such means they, too, will come to have the same superiority complex that we Mac and Linux users have.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Microsoft likes to tout the cost savings that derive from paying Windows-skilled employees less money.
That's great, if you're an employer, but if you're an engineer who needs to feed her family, the money is in Linux and Mac OS X skills, as highlighted in a recent post on the site of the Free and Open Source Software Learning Centre:
(Credit:
Indeed.com)
Of course, once you look past the operating-system data, it's clear that open-source skills do, on average, command less of a premium, perhaps because they're in more abundant supply. Because students are more likely to have JBoss or MySQL experience upon graduation than Oracle or WebSphere experience, for example, there is greater supply to appease demand and, hence, reduce salaries, on average.
This is almost certainly the reason that Windows skills command lower salaries, too: Microsoft has done a great job of seeding the education market with free or low-cost versions of its software, making Windows and other Microsoft technologies pervasive and cheap to learn.
Are these lower salaries necessarily bad? Probably not. So long as the demand for such skills remains strong, taking a lower paycheck in return for greater job security is probably worth it.
If you're a student hoping to get a job after graduation, your best bet is likely to aim for the largest and/or most resilient markets.
With open source increasing its share of enterprise computing, it's a safe bet to invest in open-source software skills. There's safety in numbers.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
"When you strike at a king, you must kill him," said the great Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Apple, in toying with but not killing Microsoft in enterprise computing, has unwittingly granted its rival a new lease on life with Windows 7.
At least, that's the position Likewise CEO Barry Crist is taking in a recent blog post. In some ways, Crist depends upon neither Apple nor Microsoft killing off the other, as his company makes audit and authentication solutions that span different operating systems: Mac OS X, Windows, Unix, and Linux.
(Credit:
Likewise.com)
The company also makes awesome T-shirts, as shown at right. The T-shirts highlight the importance of technology that enables heterogeneous operating system environments. Homogeneity is boring and, frankly, impractical. That's where Likewise comes in.
It's also where Apple failed in missing, intentionally or not, the Microsoft jugular, and in giving Microsoft a good model from which to copy a modern operating system, as Crist explains:
Apple significantly helped Microsoft "get it right" with Windows 7. Our technical team has looked at the Windows 7 beta. This is a team that doesn't throw out idle praise and certainly doesn't pull any punches when reviewing Microsoft technology. To say that the early returns from our team on Windows 7 are positive would be an understatement. Microsoft appears to have delivered. And the timing for Microsoft could not be better.
I doubt Apple has much appetite for the enterprise. Not yet, anyway. It's still too much of a boutique brand, albeit one that I love and which is catching the interest of an increasing array of enterprises. Yes, Microsoft has its issues, including a new federal CIO that has a penchant for Macs and Google, but Apple may have missed its chance to mortally wound it. Update 4:10 p.m. PST: Whoops! I meant to say above that I doubt Apple (not Microsoft) has much appetite for the enterprise.
But that's just fine for Crist. His business depends upon multiple-choice exams, not essay-based exams that plumb the depths of why Windows is the only good answer to every question. So long as enterprises want to run more than Windows, Crist's Likewise will sell a lot of software.
And T-shirts.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
In a sign that Apple's Mac OS X operating system has gone truly mainstream, computer science programs like that at the University of Utah have formally announced classes like "Mac OS X Deployment v10.5" focused on administering Mac OS X.
While a quick scan of computer science courses at Harvard and Stanford doesn't reveal any Mac OS X-centric courses, and a quick Google search doesn't reveal much more, it's possible that the University of Utah, which has several OS X classes, is the vanguard for OS X's classroom uptake and a clear signal of enterprise adoption.
The description of its newest class hints at bigger and broader OS X enterprise rollouts:
On February 9th to the 11th, we will be offering Mac OS X Deployment v10.5, which covers deploying your Macintosh systems initially, deploying the OS systems for various uses, and providing updates and maintenance for the Macintosh system. For any of you who manage large Mac labs or businesses that are migrating to or integrating Macs, this would be a great class for you attend.
Universities, for all their attempts to be counterculture, tend to follow general industry trends. They have to, if they want to serve their customers. If the University of Utah is offering OS X administration courses, it's because there's a market for the classes being fed by increasing enterprise adoption of the Mac.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
Al Gore may have invented the Internet, but Microsoft's head of research, Rick Rashid, has an even bigger claim: he invented Apple.
Speaking at a recent Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Rashid makes the claim that he wrote Apple before Apple was cool, as captured in All Things Digital:
If you use a Macintosh or an iPhone, which honestly, I would not recommend, you would be using code that I wrote more than 25 years ago. If you'd asked me 25 years ago if I thought code I was [writing would be] running today on a cellphone, my reaction would have been, 'What's a cellphone?' It just shows you things really do survive and get used in interesting ways.
It also shows why the US copyright system rewards those that implement ideas, and not merely those that have ideas, or why it's critical to move beyond "mere code" to implementing it in killer products and a rising company, as Apple has.
It's nice that Rashid was involved in writing Mach, the microsystem kernel powering Mac OS X today, but I'm guessing that Rashid would have preferred to have his company follow through and write OS X, rather than Vista.
Maybe in 25 more years, Rashid.
In a clear indictment of Microsoft's Windows strategy, new research suggests that up to a third of all new Windows Vista machines get downgraded to XP, either by the hardware vendors like Dell, or by customers.
That is a massive number. Ironically, it's a number that works to the short-term advantage of Microsoft's top and bottom lines, but it still represents a vote of "no confidence" in Microsoft's Windows strategy.
Microsoft's only hope at this point is that customers will forget Vista as rapidly as they did Millennium and ramp up anticipation for Windows 7. Actually, it's real hope is that Windows 7 will be worth waiting for.
No one is buying Apple's machines because of an upgrade from OS X 10.3 to 10.5. They're upgrading from Windows XP or from the iPod or iPhone. They want, in other words, a different computing experience, not merely an improved operating system. No one thinks about operating systems anymore. Or not much.
Until Microsoft finds some compelling reason for people to care about its operating system, or provides differentiated value beyond the operating system, it's going to find that Windows 7 won't solve its ills. Midori, which blends the cloud with the desktop, is a much smarter bet. Windows 7? It feels like more of the same Vista problem.
In a January 2008 survey by Changewave Research the obvious became even more obvious: Mac users are very happy with their Macs, while Windows users live in the doldrums of computing Hell.
Surprising? Nah. The percentage of new home computer buyers who reported being "Very Satisfied" with their chosen operating system was as follows:
- Mac OS X "Leopard" - 81 percent;
- Windows XP Home - 53 percent;
- Windows XP Pro - 51 percent;
- Vista Home Premium - 27 percent;
- Vista Home Basic - 15 percent
Perhaps this is just a reflection of choice. Meaning, those who actually get to choose their operating system are much happier than those who have it foisted upon them by Microsoft's overwhelming dominance of the personal computing industry.
Grandma hacks Ubuntu
Last week Lenovo lent me one of its X61 ThinkPad laptops so that I could give Ubuntu Linux a try. Having had a bad experience with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop a few years ago, I had sworn off desktop Linux and determined not to return.
A week into a new trial with Ubuntu Linux, however, it's clear that desktop Linux has come a long way. I found it extremely easy to use, including when I had to install a program (Skype) that wasn't included in the supported applications list. This is an operating system that my grandma could (and, in fact, did) use.
This isn't to say that my week with Ubuntu Linux was uneventful. I had a few struggles, which I'll detail below. These struggles, however, were almost entirely due to running Ubuntu on unsupported hardware, and not any fault of Ubuntu (or Linux) itself.
... Read more
I finally decided to put my OS where my mouth is. Or, at least, where my typing fingers are. I'm typing this from a Lenovo X61 ThinkPad...running Ubuntu 7.10. I'm going to spend the next week or so reporting on the experience, including some first-person accounts from the lady who has cut my hair for the past 21 years, Valerie, and my grandma, whom I've noted before has been locked out of the Linux experience.
Well, today we're going to see just how much substance there is to my prior contention.
Before I begin, I have to admit that I'm going to be biased by the hardware I'm using...in a positive way. Before switching to the Mac, I was a hardcore IBM ThinkPad devotee. This is my first experience with the post-IBM ThinkPad, and it's an impressive piece of hardware. Equally important for this review, it seems to work flawlessly with Ubuntu.
... Read moreOne of the first questions most venture capitalists ask would-be entrepreneurs is about the size of the target market. Selling into a niche market is generally frowned upon.
That is, of course, unless you're Kleiner Perkins and you want to throw $100 million at startups focused on the BOOMING iPhone applications market. With all of 10 million iPhones projected to be sold by the end of 2008, it's unclear how this is a good idea.
Perhaps the iPhone user demographics are such that an overwhelming majority want to buy applications, but I doubt it. Look at the Mac market. I'm a rabid Mac fan, but if I'm starting an applications company, I'm not going to go public on a Mac-only platform.
... Read more
