Tag Archives: linux

Why I returned my Mac

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I realize the title of this post is a bit provocative, but I could not think of any other way to put it.

Some weeks back, I got a new Mac Book Pro at work. This was my first exposure to Apple’s computer products, and after the initial few moments of aah-ooh’s wore off, I started using it for what I was supposed to do – work. It so happens that after about a week of use, I returned the MBP and went back to the other standard (and much less expensive) HP notebook used in the company. There was a brief interval during this time, when I installed Ubuntu Linux on the MBP and got some amount of relief.

My decision to install Ubuntu on the Mac and even returning the Mac for an regular HP laptop was much criticized in various lists. Most people sort of jumped to the conclusion that it was just because I did not want to adapt my usage to the mac-way of doing it. There might be an element of truth in that, but it was not the major reason. The major reason was that I felt it was just as much a proprietary den as Windows was.

If you look past the shiny(and somewhat minimal) hardware of an MBP and ignore the frustating touchpad and the missing keys (as compared to a PC keyboard), it is not much different from a standard Windows machine. Ok, the quality of bundled software is probably better and the OS is rock stable, but at the end of the day it is still a closed source box!

When I mentioned to mailing lists about how Mac lacked too many native Open source applications, I was derided about trying to look out for free and not willing to pay for software.

Now how is this different from the Windows subsystem? Windows also has the same closed source OS. It has by far much more third party software which can be bought. It can be stable if one uses it the right way (I had an XP box at home for years which had never crashed).

And there is this concept of “native” applications in Mac. Even after being a BSD based box, X applications are isolated from the main display. A native application(made using Apple’s libraries) can only interact with the applications in the main display. So, for instance, you cannot use Gimp to take screenshots, because Gimp can’t “see” any of the application windows in the main Mac display. It is a very weird concept that you need to get used to while using the MBP.

Finally, it is about the concept of freedom which is what Opensource is about. A large part of the Mac hardware(even though it is Intel based nowadays) is proprietary. So if you use Linux on it for example, you need to jump through hoops to get basic hardware to run – the touchpad, the webcam, the wireless card, even power management is all dark science because Apple deliberately kept it like that to sell it’s OS. So while you would get about 5 hours of battery life using OS X, using Ubuntu would give you just over 2.5 hours.

And I have got tired of explaining this to the Mac fanboys (including some who claimed to be Opensource folks) – Opensource is not about the cost. I also use Free software because it gives me something which closed software can never give me – control over my data. I know that even if I lose the software or move machines, I can always find out how my data is stored/encoded by looking at the source. Or I can probably always find somebody who can.

I remember buying this photo management software Imatch for a Windows laptop that we have. This particular piece of software is very popular(and rightfully so, because it *is* wonderful) and is made by a single person – Mario Westphal. Perhaps uniquely(and laudably), this person has given an option to export all your metadata of photos to an XML file in case you ever want to move from Imatch(to prevent data lock in). Unfortunately, this misses a particular usage scenario. Suppose I have a backup of my photo data on a disk, and Windows on my laptop crashed. Suppose, in disgust, I decided to install Linux on the machine and import my photos into my favorite photo organizer – Digikam. Can I do it? I can’t. Because to even generate the export of data, I would need Imatch. And to even use Imatch, I would need to install Windows. And even if I take advantage of Imatch’s liberal usage policy(you can install it on as many machines as long as you are using only one at a time) it is too much of a bother to go find a Windows machine elsewhere and install Imatch on it and then export my data.

It would have been far simple if Imatch had published the format of its photo database, so that I (or somebody with more technical acumen) can write a import script for Digikam. It is this aspect of freedom which most users are unware of (and now I see many so called FOSS folks too).

In summary, apart from the hardware frustrations or my reluctance to get used to a completely different way of doing things, what convinced me to move back was my belief that, like Windows, the Mac ecosystem is just as much against what I believe a notebook(or computer) should be to its user – a Free resource which does what the user wants and not the other way around.

BTW, Mark Pligrim, a long time Mac user, has a much more fleshed out argument for his decision to move away from Macs.

Giving up on bcm43xx in Gutsy beta

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The only major issue that I have felt in my use of Ubuntu till date(and to be fair, this is not ubuntu specific) is the problems I keep having with wireless setup. I can live with any of it’s other flaws.

In earlier releases, the problem had been WPA support. The default install didn’t have wpa_supplicant, and to install wpa_supplicant, you needed to have network first, dammit! So I had to run around looking for a network cable, sit next to my AP, patiently download the package, figure out the unnecessarily verbose documentation and finally set up the stuff(in two terminals, one keeping an eye on the messages of wpa_cli).

In Feisty, at least NetworkManager managed to understand that there is in fact a protocol called WPA, but for some freaking reason had trouble connecting to my AP(a D-link 2640T) at home. So I always connected using ifup/ifdown everytime where I had some latitude regarding timeout.

And speaking of NetworkManager, under WEP configuration why does network manager have the option “WEP passphrase” by itself when it has two perfectly acceptable options of “ASCII” and “Hex” in the same dropdown? I spent days wondering why the hex passphrase I kept entering didn’t work under “WEP passphrase”, when it worked perfectly fine under the “hex” option(which I had forgotten in my haste)!

While setting up my laptop under Feisty for the first time, I read around how only ndiswrapper unleashed the full speed of my BCM4312 wireless card, and that the native bcm43xx would keep it stuck at “b” speeds. (For some unknown reason, I always found the concept of fwcutter a bit uncomfortable). So I setup ndiswrapper, and worked happily ever since.

When I upgraded to Gutsy though, I was told that native 43xx was now good enough for prime enough, and so I allowed the restricted drivers manager to use the fwcutter to install it for me. Since that time, for the past few days, I have had many random issues with network connection. Wireless connection kept stalling with the AP for weird reasons, till today, when I finally got fed up too much and blacklisted the bcm43xx module again and enabled ndiswrapper.

I don’t seem to be the only person with such issues on the web though. There have been quite a few reports of regression issues of bcm43xx on Gutsy. I will wait till these die down.

BSD or GPL in the ideal world?

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This Slashdot comment probably summarizes the difference of intent between and BSD and GPL as succinctly as one can. Every person who is unclear about the licence to use in his code, or has been a blind follower (“Should be the right one, because everyone seems to be using it”), should keep this at heart.

… when the only two ways to release software are BSD and GPL, the GPL will no longer be necessary, but we are not there.

Moved over to Gutsy

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Just upgraded my notebook to Gutsy a couple of days back. It is still in beta and would be released on 18th October.

I recently changed my desktop over to Gnome from KDE. I have been a Kubuntu/KDE user for years, but the look and feel of KDE has remained tacky for a while now while Gnome had a very clean efficient look about it. But this also meant that I had the complete Gnome and KDE stack on my notebook, so I had to download about 1.2 gigs of updates to move to Gutsy.

The upgrade went fairly well, apart from two or three upgrade failures when there were clashes of file lists between packages. One of them was my fault – I was using pidgin from a different repository because Feisty didn’t have it yet, and now Gutsy did. Two others – Gimp and Cups errors were Ubuntu’s issues, which were very quickly fixed. To solve these problems I had to remove the offending packages and let the upgrading continue. And when the fixes came in, I dist-upgraded again.

There is now a bit of a feeling of betrayal. One of the reasons I upgraded to Gutsy in beta because it was supposed to have xorg 7.3. I wanted xorg 7.3 which supposedly had multiple monitor hot plugging support. It seems that the package maintainer decided not to go in for xorg 7.3 now, even though he backported some of its features into 7.2.

The experimental intel xorg driver works, even though I have experienced the screen going blank once or twice which had to fixed by a hard reset. :(

Not much of new features in this new release. Compiz is now supposed to be enabled by default in new installs, but I always turn it off because of my bad experiences in the past and the fact that I don’t really really need it. Other stuff being new versions of all packages, that is all.

Since I still use various KDE packages in Gnome like Amarok, Digikam, etc., I am still figuring out what I can remove from my current install of the KDE setup without affecting these two apps.

I have started using Gnome Evolution just for its calendar (I dont particularly like Sunbird, and calendar on Evolution is n-i-c-e). I wish there was some integration between Thunderbird and Evolution regarding the calendar part, but I know it is too much to ask and is not going to happen. ;)

I discovered recordmydesktop the other day, and I quite impressed to say the least.

Anyway, till the release happens, hundreds of megs of updates are rolling in every day. So if you are stuck with a small pipe at home, it would probably be wiser to wait till the stable release – some of those updates are really needed!