Xfce

I have been doing some off-and-on research for a while now on netbooks, with the idea of getting one to run Linux on as a home computer. The search has been getting more serious lately. While varying back and forth on different options, I'm currently leaning toward an Acer, running Debian with Xfce.

A pair of articles (as well as Matt Gemmell's iPad photos+posts on Flickr) floated into view the past few days that have added some wrinkles, specifically an iPad-shaped wrinkle.

iPad vs. Netbook

The first, from LinuxCommand.org, "Will The iPad Kill The Netbook? "

Ever since Apple announced the iPad, there have been countless stories in the press about the iPad's effect on the netbook market. I'm a big fan of netbooks and I agree that the netbook market is in trouble but it's not because of the iPad.

The author, William Shotts Jr, goes on to discuss how Microsoft has been systematically attacking netbooks thanks to its Linux threat. Which is intriguing, but of more interest to me is the notion of the iPad as netbook replacement. Shotts shoots down this idea:

[...] the iPad should not be directly competitive with netbooks at the conceptual level. In many ways the iPad is a remarkable device for content consumption. Unlike a Windows computer, it requires virtually no system administration. This makes the device a perfect "television of the future" where one just uses it to passively consume content. However, its lack of a real keyboard and limited connectivity options makes it a poor choice as a portable Internet interaction device; a role that the netbook hardware platform excels in.

Replace "portable Internet interaction device" with "portable word processor and coding device" and that describes my needs. I'm an excellent typist, fast and pretty darn accurate (depending on my caffeine intake ;) which makes typing-related activities a strength for me — I'm afraid I'd lose that advantage with the iPad's virtual keyboard, no matter how "magical" it is.

(See also the TechNewsDaily article that Shotts links to, "Is the iPad Killing Netbooks?")

Reading is Fundamental

Next is this from The Guardian UK, "Apple iPad: will it lead a reading revolution?", which looks at the device from the perspective of another favorite activity of mine—reading. Or more accurately, from that of writers and publishers: in fact, written by someone in the publishing industry who doesn't quite get what's going on. (See the comments for more on that.)

There's no denying the attraction of an ebook reader, if for no other reason than being able to carry around the collected works of, well, pretty much everybody in your messenger bag. However, I'm content with the analog versions most days, and usually limit myself to reading two or three books simultaneously. ;)

As far as the ebooks I read, they're normally found at Project Gutenberg, not the DRM-hamstrung ones from Amazon, iTunes, or any other virtual bookstore.

Still, I found myself browsing the iPad Guided Tours videos on apple.com yesterday, considering the idea of eschewing a netbook and going for an iPad. It was very, very tempting.

Then I saw the "from $499" price tag and came back to Earth.

Numbers Game

It's $499 for a 16GB WiFi-only model. $599 gets you 32GB, $699 = 64GB.

If you want WiFi and 3G, it'll set you back $629, $729, or $829 dollars.

Really?

I can get an Acer Aspire One netbook with an Intel Atom N280, 1GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, 10.1" display with Bluetooth and a six-cell for $340. If I don't mind going down to a 160GB disk, the price drops to $299. (If I browsed around some more, I bet I could find an even better deal.)

I can't even buy the lowest-end iPad for that. And how many years from now would I have to replace the iPad?

Magical Mystery Tour

Don't get me wrong—the iPad is a gorgeous, ingenious device. I've had a chance to play around with one. It is tempting, and for some people makes a ton of sense, especially when compared to a full-sized, few-1000-dollar laptop. Apple has already made a metric crapload of money from iPad sales—hell, they just passed Microsoft in terms of market cap value.

As a decades-long Apple user and evangelist, I never thought I'd consider buying a machine that wasn't a Mac (or whatever Apple put on it), much less one that came with Windows installed.

Yet for my needs—a word processor/coding/browsing/email/music machine with an actual keyboard—Apple won't be adding my dough to the pile this time. And Linux will get another full-time user.

Or, Think(ing) different(ly).

In familiarizing myself with Linux as an OS and a community this last few years, I have of course come across the various internecine wars that have flared up during Linux's evolution. I won't try to summarize the kerfuffle for the uninitiated. Suffice to say that the conflicts start with the name of the OS itself ("Linux" vs. "GNU/Linux") and blossom from there.

This is not a bad thing in and of itself -- choice and change are welcome -- but as a long-time Mac user approaching this personal terra incognita the result is, frankly, vertiginous. I just want to get some work done, and here I am needing to make a bunch of political choices.

Now, I don't have to make a bunch of choices. I could go with the most popular distro (Ubuntu) and be done with it. Which is more or less what I did last year, as detailed in the post "Switching to Linux, but which one?" Then I flip-flopped between GNOME and Xfce for desktop environment.

But then the politics started creeping up:

• GNOME's insistence on incorporating Mono-based apps, with accompanying Microsoft cooties.
• The Planet GNOME/GNU Project controversy (aka Richard Stallman vs. Miguel de Icaza).

Most recently is the discussion of replacing the OpenOffice suite with Google Docs in the Netbook version of Ubuntu (apparently not a done deal as "reported" by /.). As this comment by Qubit on that story says,

So they took a Free Software application out and replace it with a non-Free application from Google. What a great idea!

Although an office suite isn't necessary for one to run Ubuntu, being able to create and consume office documents is admittedly a very common task. Making UNR able to interoperate "right out of the box" seems like a very high priority.

Qubit points to this essay by Bradley M. Kuhn from last month, "Back Home, with Debian!", in which the author urges folks to switch to Debian to keep at bay Ubuntu's apparent glee in incorporating non-free and proprietary software. His six specific reasons for moving away from Ubuntu and Canonical after several years are both damning and mirror my concerns. He sums it up:

When considering all this and taking a step back and look at the status of major distributions, my honest assessment is this: among the two primary corporate-controlled-but-dabbling-in-community-orientation distributions (aka Fedora and Ubuntu), Fedora is clearly much more software-freedom-friendly. Nevertheless, since I've twice gone corporate and ultimately regretted it, I decided it was time to go back home — back to Debian.

So, during the last week of 2009, I took nearly two full days off to reinstall and configure my laptop from scratch with lenny. I've thus been back on Debian since 2010-01-01. Twelve days in, I am very impressed. Really, all the things I liked about Ubuntu are now available upstream as well. This isn't the distribution I left in 2004; it's much better, all while being truly community-oriented and software-freedom-respecting. It's good to be home. Thank you, Debian developers.

So, to recap my dilemma-filled experience thus far:

1. I am sympathetic with the open source/free software cause. I do not like the idea that monolithic corporations and proprietary software vendors can hold my computing experience hostage.
2. Thus, I am considering switching to Linux, especially due to the continuing over-commercialization of the Mac operating system and its integration of more and more hooks into various stores, locked-up user experiences, and other folderol.
3. However, I am also uncomfortable about Ubuntu for many of the same reasons, with its increasing intermingling with non-free software.
4. Likewise, GNOME's flirting with Microsoft technology gives me the creeps.

What does that leave me with? Debian running Xfce maybe?

Of course, there's always the option of going straight old-school CLI. ;D

In VirtualBox at the moment, I have three virtual machines:

• Ubuntu 9.04
• Ubuntu 9.10, and
• Xubuntu (also 9.04).

The last of those is my most recent, after I started doing a bit of reading on Xfce, which in turn was prompted by the combination of Gnome getting more and more embedded with Mono apps/libs (and therefore infected with Microsoft cooties) and also the UI direction Gnome is headed for in version 3.

Both of these things can be “undone” on a case-by-case basis by uninstalling Mono folderol or enabling old UI bits, but I’m reluctant to put that much work into making a desktop usable and then having to monitor it all to make sure it doesn’t keep happening. Also, this recent brouhaha creeped me out about Gnome.

In trying to decide what exactly I’m switching to next year (or next month possibly), I’ve been experimenting with a few options. In addition to the above, I’ve tried out Kubuntu, a Debian install, a Mint install, and a GUI-less build this year.

KDE’s interface just felt entirely too clunky -- like what I imagine a Windows user would want if they didn’t want to use Windows anymore but still wanted to feel comfortable. [Shudder!] There are a lot of great apps available, but naturally those are available on other desktop environments if I don’t mind the library overhead.

Debian was fine, but there were enough moments where things didn’t just work (or just didn’t work) where they did in Ubuntu that I decided to leave Debian aside for now. In switching operating systems, I will have enough to adjust to without worrying about fundamental OS pieces not working. However, I will revisit it in the future.

Mint, while pretty to look at, didn't really add much value for me to consider it an improvement over Ubuntu or, indeed, Debian.

The GUI-less server install I will be using quite a bit as I switch servers from Mac to Linux, but I’m not going to go completely CLI with my initial desktop/laptop changeover. See Debian above. Maybe some day. ;)

So...more on this later, but at the moment I suppose I am actually trying to decide between Ubuntu 9.04 and Xubuntu 9.04.

LinuxDevCenter: Meet The Newest Member of the Ubuntu Family: Introducing Xubuntu

On 1 June Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) was released. New versions of Kubuntu (Ubuntu with a KDE desktop) and Edubuntu (a version for young people) were also unveiled. Perhaps the most interesting release was the newest member of the Ubuntu family, Xubuntu, a derivative distro based on the forthcoming XFCE 4.4 desktop. In this review I am going to focus heavily on the desktop since that is really the only thing that sets Xubuntu apart from Ubuntu....

See also Xubuntu homepage