Ubuntu

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

An alternative to the Midnight Commander file manager utility. It’s available in the Ubuntu repositories (sudo apt-get install vifm) and via MacPorts (sudo port install vifm).

Vifm is a ncurses based file manager with vi like keybindings. If you use vi, vifm gives you complete keyboard control over your files without having to learn a new set of commands.

http://vifm.sourceforge.net/

While you’re getting in touch with your inner geek, don’t forget vimwiki, the personal wiki also based on vim:

http://code.google.com/p/vimwiki/

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.

Read these articles before starting. If you have links to other resources or your own suggestions, please post them in the comments below.

Ubuntu Documentation: “MactelSupportTeam/AppleIntelInstallation”

Suggests keeping at least a minimum Mac OS X partition for installing future firmware updates. Seems sensible to me, not to mention for other applications.

Ubuntu Documentation: “MacBookPro4.1 and Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty”

Info on various hardware features and whether they work or not. Most things listed as “works, with remarks”, with a couple of “works out-of-the-box.”

Ubuntu Documentation: “MactelSupportTeam/CommunityHelpPages”

Welcome to the entry-point for Ubuntu on Intel CPU-based Macintosh Computer (Mactel). This page covers all supported versions of Ubuntu, cross-referenced to all Mactel types and hardware revisions.

Ubuntu Forums Apple Users

Discussions for users who are using Apple Intel or PPC based systems with Ubuntu.

Mac|Life: “Install Linux on Your Mac”

And here’s how to go about setting up the partitions properly. Uses Mint, but it’s the same difference.