UbuntuCat

No one has hard numbers, of course, but based on how much it’s talked about on the web, Ubuntu appears to be the most popular Linux distribution for home use (as opposed to for servers). Every tech news article about Linux mentions Ubuntu and will often recommend Ubuntu to new users. Many YouTube videos about how to do something on Linux will feature Ubuntu. Ubuntu is the top distro on DistroWatch (again, just meaning there’s a lot of interest in it—not necessarily that the largest number of Linux users are choosing it over other distros).

How did this come to pass? Seriously. I was there… not from the very start but from very close to the beginning. The very first release was Ubuntu 4.10, nicknamed Warty Warthog. I started with the next release, Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog). My first experience with Ubuntu was not the best. The CD froze up part way through the installation, which led me to use Mepis for a month instead. But I came back to Ubuntu. Why?

On the surface, to a new user, Ubuntu would seem like a bad choice.

• It doesn’t come with popular proprietary software.
• It doesn’t have additional CDs (meaning, for software installation, you probably need a broadband connection).
• Its documentation Wiki (especially at the time I started using it, less so now) is a mess.

I figured in 2005 that distros like Mepis and Linspire would thrive and be at the forefront of bringing Linux to ex-Windows power users, if not “the masses.” After all, in Ubuntu, I couldn’t (in Hoary) edit the applications menu, get numlock to stick, install Nvidia drivers, or add software repositories without resorting to the command-line, which was a very daunting thing for me to use when I first started on Linux. The word terminal was a scary word to see. In retrospect, I don’t know why I was so scared of it, but I was. And, yet, only a month after using Mepis, I moved to Ubuntu and stuck with it for three years. No, it didn’t come with Flash, Java, Nvidia drivers, Skype, Adobe Reader, or MP3 playback. It just had something.

The amazing thing is that even back when Ubuntu was barely functional (no easy-codec-installation or restricted-drivers-manager or Ubiquity installer) it was getting buzz. What got it off the ground? As far as I can tell, these are what Ubuntu had going for it:

• Unlike giants Red Hat and Novell, Canonical was targeting home users first with its catchy (if slightly misleading) “Linux for Human Beings” slogan. Servers were secondary.
• Unlike homebrews Mepis and PCLinuxOS, though, Ubuntu had the backing of some serious money (Mark Shuttleworth’s).
• The free CDs worldwide (including shipping) is a nice gimmick that set Ubuntu apart, even if a lot of those CDs were given away to people who later threw them in the trash.
• The Ubuntu Forums is a good compromise in that it has knowledgeable users but is generally free of the elitism and noob-disdain of other, more difficult distros’ forums. As a matter of fact, this was one of the major deciding factors for me. Much as I liked Mepis and much as their forums were friendly, they just didn’t have enough knowledgeable users to support me in all my questions. The Gentoo forums were far too intimidating for me.
• I think this goes along with the forums being less intimidating, but associating the Ubuntu “Humanity Towards Others” philosophy with the distro seemed to give it a purpose and a flavor beyond mere technology.
• The lack of confusing options really helps new users. You don’t have to know what KDE and Gnome are or choose what applications to install or which of five text editors to use. Ubuntu picks one application per task as default. If you want to switch to different applications later, that’s up to you when you’re more familiar with Linux programs.
• Even though the Wiki isn’t the strongest representative of this, the Ubuntu documentation is pretty easy to follow. When I started with Hoary, the Ubuntu Guide was the best around, and since then a series of screenshot-heavy and video tutorials have sprung up to help new users who feel lost.

I’m a little conflicted on the single CD nature of Ubuntu. Even though I think not having additional CDs hurts the idea of Linux for Human Beings (since it really assumes users have a broadband connection or never want to install new software), I also found the multiple-CD distros confusing when I was a new user. I didn’t think of Mandriva as the first CD for installing the operating system and the second and third for only additional software. I thought I needed all three to install Mandriva. So I steered clear of Debian, definitely, which I think had fourteen CDs at the time.

I am quite proud of the Ubuntu developers’ work. Even though I have minor complaints, I like what I’m seeing: more point-and-click options, less need for the terminal, prettier artwork, easy codec installation. Yes, there are bugs. There will always be bugs. But Ubuntu is a solid distro with a large userbase to support and welcome you if you want to come. It was a dark horse rising up and now appears to be the de facto distro for new users.

If you’re too lazy to install the proprietary codecs yourself, though, you can use a Ubuntu variant like Linux Mint, which includes them by default.

Moving from Windows to Linux can be a harrowing experience. One who does this may experience culture shock and then frustration at not being able to do things the way she was used to doing them. Every now and then (through Ubuntu Brainstorm, a blog post, or a Ubuntu Forums thread) I’ll read a Ubuntu user propose that we have a little balloon or pop-up tutorial on first boot to educate new users about how to use Ubuntu.

I have to say I don’t see what this would accomplish. In my experience, both advanced and average users tend to view pop-ups of any kind as an annoyance to be quickly closed. The only difference I’ve seen is that advanced users tend to read the pop-up message before closing it, and average users tend to not read the message at all.

Some definitions first. The kind of advanced user I’m talking about is the person who is not necessarily a programmer or technology professional but is definitely the person friends and family go to for help with computer problems. The kind of average user I’m talking about can’t find how to start a program if you remove or move its launcher icon.

Let me give you some examples of the behaviors of average users I’ve seen (usually at work, in various jobs).

Someone I know wanted to do some image editing, so I had her install GIMP. Now, whenever she starts GIMP, though, there’s a tip of the day that pops up, and she just gets an annoyed look on her face and closes the tip of the day. This happens every time. She doesn’t ask how to make the tip of the day not appear or read the pop-up, which tells you you can uncheck the box to make the tip not appear when you launch GIMP. She just gets annoyed and closes the tip of the day pop-up.

I, on the other hand, also get annoyed when the tip of the day appears, but I uncheck the box and make sure it never appears again.

Then, of course, there’s the Firefox We blocked a pop-up for you pop-up (or drop-down, or whatever you want to call it). I haven’t met a Firefox user yet who enjoys seeing this appear on her screen.

Just as with the GIMP tip of the day, most Firefox users I know look immediately for the red X to click and then click it to make it go away. Unfortunately, they don’t bother to click on Options to see if there’s an option to make the drop-down not appear again the next time a pop-up is blocked.

If they had, they would have seen that there’s the option Don’t show this message when pop-ups are blocked. And just as with the tip of the day, I, being a relatively advanced user do look for the option to disable the pop-up, but I, too, am annoyed that the pop-up appeared in the first place.

Lastly, all the annoying little messages that appear in the system tray or notification area. You have unused icons. Updates are available to install. Do you know how many Windows users I’ve seen just ignore the notification about updates being available for installation? Do you know how many people do not take the Welcome to Windows Tour of XP?

Pop-up balloons and messages just get in the way of people. Although there may be rare exceptions, generally users fall into one of two categories when it comes to pop-up messages: people who don’t care to read what you have to say, and people who care about the message but would rather get it another way (on their own, without it being shoved in their faces).

So my guess is that if we had this pop-up tutorial or balloon for a tutorial in Ubuntu, then veteran Ubuntu users would be annoyed by something popping up and then not read it because they know it all ready, and new Ubuntu users would be annoyed by something popping up and then not read it because they’re annoyed.

Generally speaking, I’d say if people want to learn something new, they’ll find information about it on their own. If we do want to insert a beginner tutorial into the Ubuntu process, though, what better place to put it than in the installation process? That’s why I’ve proposed this on Ubuntu Brainstorm: Add a tutorial slideshow to the installation process.

Veteran users can click Install, answer a few questions, and walk away. New users can click Install, answer a few questions, and then stay and learn something, because they have to wait for Ubuntu to install anyway.

Geek Warning: If you don’t use Linux or Ubuntu, a lot of this will sound like gobbledygook.

As much as possible, I wanted to give the Asus Eee PC’s default operating system (a tweaked Xandros Linux) a chance. If I were another user (my mom, for example), it would be sufficient—good even. And that’s how Asus wanted it. The simple interface is meant to be like a kiosk or appliance.

So I gave the simple interface a God’s honest try for a little less than a week and already started tweaking it. I took away simple mode. I changed the IceWM theme, replaced Konqueror with Thunar, added in various keyboard shortcuts. I used Xandros for almost a month and then got fed up with it. The fact of the matter is that it works well for what it is, an internet appliance. I want more than that, though. I got frustrated with the fact that FAT32 was read-only in Konqueror but read/write in the terminal (I tried just about everything—believe me), and I didn’t like how you can’t get sudo to require a password (no, editing the /etc/sudoers file doesn’t help).

Despite reported problems with Ubuntu on the Eee, I decided to take the plunge yesterday. Bottom line: Ubuntu itself is smooth, but the documentation for it is rocky. First of all, for Ubuntu 8.04 specifically on the Eee (as opposed to Ubuntu 7.10), the documentation is scant. But even some of that is out of date. Here are the three main pages I was able to find on Ubuntu for the Eee:
The EeeUser Wiki
The Ubuntu WIki
The Ubuntu Eee Website.

If you’re planning to install Ubuntu 8.04 on your Eee, I would say take those pages with a whole shaker of salt. If you believe those pages, on a default installation, the screen resolution will be off, your computer won’t shut down, you have to do something special to get rid of the battery warning, you have to unplug the battery to get ethernet working, volume hotkeys work, madwifi is the best way to get wireless working, and certain config file tweaks will get boot time faster.

None of that is true. Here’s what really happened.

First of all, lacking an external CD-ROM drive and not really wanting to buy one, I sucked it up and followed these instructions for installing Ubuntu to a USB stick. My choices for “USB stick” were a bit limiting. First, I tried to do it with a partition on my external hard drive, and that didn’t work, for some reason. Next, I tried to do it on an actual USB stick, but then I realized it was only 512 MB (not enough to fit Ubuntu on). So finally, I tried my 2 GB Sansa Clip—which worked out perfectly. Under ordinary circumstances, the invincible/invisible Sandisk firmware would be annoying, but its invincibility in this case is great. Once I copied Ubuntu’s Desktop CD to my Sansa Clip, I was still able to listen to music and all my settings and favorite radio stations were preserved—so now I have Ubuntu live “CD” that also doubles as a portable music player. So I used my Sansa Clip to boot into a live Ubuntu session on the Eee and backed up my Xandros Eee to an external hard drive using the dd command (sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/media/disk/eeexandros.img), and I installed Ubuntu.

First of all, I was amazed at how much stuff worked right away. I didn’t have to install the 915resolution package to get the screen resolution correct. The little up-and-down scroll on the trackpad worked. Desktop Effects were on and working without having to do anything (I promptly turned them off—I prefer metacity). Sound worked. The brightness hotkeys worked. I did notice that (considering I have 1 GB of RAM on my Eee) the live session took a really long time to load up… even though it was snappy once loaded up. That first part with the little dots after vmlinuz took at least two minutes.

So I erased all four Xandros partitions and made one 4-GB ext2 partition with no swap. Then I installed Ubuntu on it and rebooted. The reboot took a really long time. With Xandros, I was used to getting to a working desktop within 30 seconds of pressing the power button. Ubuntu took about a minute and a half. That was to be expected, though.

What wasn’t to be expected was how difficult wireless was to set up. First of all, pretty much all guides for Ubuntu on the Eee tell you to install build-essential and compile madwifi drivers to get wireless. They tell you all you need to do is reboot and wireless should be working. Not so on my Eee. The only thing I could do to get wireless working was to use ndiswrapper.

Also, there are various tweaks to get the boot time faster. I’ve tried all of them, and I swear the boot time is slower now. One of the tweaks can’t even be done—it refers to files that don’t exist (the one where you move some files in /etc/rc.2 somewhere).

I can’t get the sound hotkeys to work, and aumix has no effect on the volume, but with a quick test I did against my wife’s Macbook Pro, Skype Beta seems to work just fine (again, the Wikis are wrong—they say the microphone doesn’t work without some config file tweak).

I may reinstall just to get a fresh start and not bother with any of those boot-time tweaks. Is it worth all this trouble? I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll go back to Xandros eventually, but as someone who’s used Ubuntu for the past three years, I have to at least give Ubuntu on the Eee an honest shot. My guess is that by Ubuntu 8.10, the Ubuntu developers will have made Ubuntu a bit more polished for the Eee.

If you have followed tech news closely at all within the last ten years, you’ve probably heard the phrase year of the Linux desktop before. This is the year that Linux makes a breakthrough with home users, and suddenly Microsoft’s dominant market share comes toppling down. I believe people have been proclaiming various years as the year of the Linux desktop since as early as 1998 (possibly even earlier).

Sometimes the writers will say the current year will be the year of the Linux desktop. Sometimes they’ll be a little more conservative and say some year a few years from now will be the year of the Linux desktop. For example, if I were one of these writers, I would either write 2008 will be the year of the Linux desktop! or with the progress we’re saying right now in 2008, it’s likely that by 2011, we’ll see the year of the Linux desktop.

Did we see the year of the Linux desktop? Nope. That, at least, I think most of us Linux aficionados can agree on. But some naysayers go a step further. Through a leap in logic, they decide that the fact that none of these previous predictions have come true precludes the possibility of a future prediction coming true. In other words, the extrapolation goes something like this: Oh, come on. For years, people have been saying such-and-such year is the year of the Linux desktop, and it’s never come. It’s never going to come. Microsoft will always be on top. Just deal with it.

I would contend that we have no way of knowing whether that year will ever come or not. Just think of the fable “The boy who cried wolf.” In it, the boy tells the village that a wolf is coming. The village gets all up in a panic and then realizes the boy was lying. He cries wolf a second time, and a second time the village is in a panic and realizes the boy was lying again. The third time he cries wolf, there really is a wolf, but no one in the village believes him any more. That’s what’s happening with this whole YOTLD business. These writers who keep proclaiming that some year is the YOTLD are losing their credibility every time the year doesn’t come. But it also means that it’s possible the year might come, and no one will believe the writer who really does get it right.

So I guess it boils down to two things: 1. If you’re a writer who wants to proclaim that such-and-such year is the YOTLD, don’t even bother. Even if you’re right, no one will believe you anyway, as people have been saying that for years. 2. If you one of those people who thinks the YOTLD will never come, you have to come up with other reasons than “They’ve been saying that for years.” After all, I could say every year that I’m going to die that year, and I may be wrong most of the time, but one year I am going to be right. Whether I say it’s going to happen or not has no bearing on the actual outcome or occurrence.

I’m just beginning now to read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, which talks about the moment when there’s a huge sociological change (crime rates dropping, fashion trends being adopted, new technology going mainstream), and it’s made me change my mind on Linux adoption. I used to think the growth of consumer Linux would be gradual and stay gradual indefinitely, but there is a tipping point, and if we get to that point (maybe about 15%), there will be a huge flood of new users. I’m not going to speculate on what year that might be, but it clearly happened for cell phones (as Gladwell points out) in 1998, and it also happened for iPods in 2003, and Firefox in 2005. It won’t necessarily mean the end of Windows’ dominance on the home user’s computer, but it could mean a lot more third-party support for Linux—the kind that Macs currently enjoy.

Which year will be the YOTLD? No one knows. There very well still could be one, and it would probably be a year and not a decade.

Most people who know me in person (what some people refer to as “in real life”) don’t know that I have an online alter ego. Participating in a social networking site like Facebook does not mean you have an online alter ego (unless the people you are “friends” with are people you’ve never met in person). Your online alter ego is the person you are to people you have “met” online and even befriended online and had arguments with online but have never met in person.

I try, believe it or not, to make my online alter ego as much like the in-person me as possible, but somehow people who “meet” alter ego me don’t always react to me the same way in-person people do. A number of factors contribute to the difference in reactions:

• Whether we admit it or not, when we meet people in person, we judge them by how they look—and not just their facial features: we judge them by physical stature, mannerisms, gestures, tonal inflections, eye movements, and other social cues.
• Online venues tend to cut down on a lot of the small talk that happens in in-person social situations. People online have shared with me their sleeping habits, political opinions, sexual orientations, pet peeves, angers, and joys without asking me where I went to school or how long I’ve lived in the Bay Area.
• Online venues offer anonymity, which leads to more honesty… and sometimes unwarranted abuse.
• Written language allows you to put more thought into what you say. You can edit, you can proofread, and you can mull over before anyone even has an idea that you are even considering offering an opinion.

You’d think that with all those factors involved, people would think more highly of my online alter ego than they do of me. Such is not the case most of the time. I’m a friendly guy. People in person tend to like me (or at least do an awfully good job of pretending they do). Online, though, I’ve had people accuse me of being sexist, racist, homophobic, too politically correct, pedantic, lacking in a sense of humor, and enforcing draconian policies (I’m a moderator of an online forum). Oddly enough, I’ve had people accuse me of opposite things. Some people have said I’m anti-Linux. Others have said I’m a Linux fanboy. Some have said I’m too pro-Gnome. Others have said I’m biased in favor of KDE. Some have lorded over my newbieness with their “leetness” (re: elitism), and others have considered me to be very knowledgeable in the geek realm.

All of this makes me wonder if some of the people online whom I’ve grown to like and respect would actually get along with me in person. I suspect probably not. Many of the people I connect with in the Ubuntu world or even through this blog are anti-gay gun-toting right-wingers, or at least present themselves that way. Some of them drink too much beer.

Well, such is life… and online life. I’ll close with a message from my online alter ego: If you don’t read me laughing, it’s not because I lack a sense of humor; it’s because your joke wasn’t funny.

I’m an open source advocate who has been using Ubuntu for the past three years and just bought my first Linux-preinstalled computer (with Xandros instead of Ubuntu, but that’s okay), but I hate it when people hype up Linux to Windows users. I’m not talking about Linux for embedded devices or Linux for web servers. I’m talking about Linux for home users—what some call “Desktop Linux” (although the demographic seems to include laptop users as well).

Hyping up Linux is counterproductive. I’m an active member of the Ubuntu Forums and have seen too many “I’m going back to Windows” threads started by disgruntled potential migrants from Windows who were oversold on Linux by these “let’s hype up Linux” articles and blogs. Shame on the bloggers/writers. If you want to migrate people over to Linux successfully, you should be honest about the pros and cons, appreciate the good points Windows has to offer, and concede the difficulties people may face during migration.

The most important point to hammer home to potential new users is that Linux is not a drop-in replacement for Windows. Sadly, it is usually only after potential migrants get disgruntled that the Linux users say, “Yeah, Linux isn’t Windows!” Well, if you’d said that in the first place, people wouldn’t have had their unrealistic expectations shattered. They would have just stuck with Windows as they should have.

I’ve collected below a list of links to articles and blogs that overhype Linux (shame on them). The one (ironically enough) entitled “Why Linux is Better” happens to be one of few that admit Linux may not be a good choice for a number of situations, but it throws that in as a P.S. below a lot of hype at the top.

Our Linux Top 10 Reasons
Why Linux is Better
10 Reasons Why Linux Ubuntu is Better than Windows
Ubuntu - an amazing alternative to Windows
Switching From Windows To Linux
Everything About Linux
Ubuntu! An alternative to Windows and Mac
Linux Friday: Reasons To Switch To Ubuntu (Or Any Linux Distribution)
Why Use Linux?
With Vista’s View Getting Dimmer, Should You Give Linux A Chance?

You won’t have to read through all those links to get the impression that Linux (and Ubuntu in particular) is the best thing since sliced bread or vanilla ice cream. Linux for home users is a choice many people don’t know they have, and they should be made aware of that choice, but they shouldn’t have that choice shoved down their throats or made out to be the unambiguously “best” choice.

I humbly offer my own write-up to potential migrants. It was written a long time ago, but I think it still holds kernels of truth, even as Ubuntu has become more polished over the years: Is Ubuntu for You?

Don’t believe the hype. Explore your options cautiously, be skeptical of any article or blog that appears one-sided, and come to Linux with an open mind. If you follow that advice, whether you stay with Windows or end up moving to Linux, you won’t regret anything. (I’ve left out mention of Mac users here, because most of these overhype-Linux write-ups target Windows users.)

There are a lot of stereotypes about Linux users as socially awkward too-long-bearded 30-somethings living in their parents’ basements hacking illegally into government servers and indulging in “free” software that’s really pirated software. After all, isn’t that why Linux users use filesharing programs like Frostwire or visit sites like PirateBay?

The truth is that many open source advocates are against software piracy because piracy of proprietary software hurts open source adoption, and if you use open source software, there’s no reason to pirate. I know people who are dependent on Adobe Photoshop, and so when they can’t afford Adobe Photoshop, they pirate it. Same deal with Microsoft Office. Well, there’s never a time I can’t afford GIMP or OpenOffice. They offer freedom and they are cost-free.

Bill Gates may not always be ethical (or pretty to look at—sorry, but it’s true!), but he is a savvy businessperson if nothing else, and here are some of his insights into piracy:

From Gates, Buffett a bit bearish (2 July, 1998):

Gates shed some light on his own hard-nosed business philosophy. “Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don’t pay for the software,” he said. “Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

and from How Microsoft conquered China (17 July, 2007):

Today Gates openly concedes that tolerating piracy turned out to be Microsoft’s best long-term strategy. That’s why Windows is used on an estimated 90% of China’s 120 million PCs. “It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not,” Gates says.

There you have it from the man himself. Who should be (and probably are) against piracy more than anybody? The Linux and open source people.

My Cowon iAudio 7 crapped out on me after three months. I’m extremely disappointed, since both “official” (CNET and the like) and user reviews for it appear to all be positive. Well, I’m sorry to say that my experience is not. So either I happened to have the fluke lemon unit, or other people are lying.

Yes, there are things I still like about it, even now. The battery life is unmatched by anything else on the market. Officially, it’s supposed to be 60 hours. I’ve never timed it, but I use my player extensively during my commute, and one charge on the iAudio 7 easily lasts a month. It’s a cute size and shape. It can play many formats, although that’s become less of a concern for me since I’ve given up on Ogg and gone back to MP3.

Nevertheless, I can’t say I’ve had an overall positive experience with it over the last three months. The controls were very difficult to figure out and get used to—they are also too sensitive to the touch, especially when I’m trying to skip songs instead of fast-forward. Initially, skipping songs even took two or three seconds to complete, until I did a firmware upgrade.

This last straw is the screen suddenly crapping out on me. I didn’t drop, crush, or abuse the player in any way, but there appears to be a diagonal crack on the inside (not the outside) of the screen that corrupts the display to the point of being unusable.

I contacted Cowon’s support, and they said they can’t determine if it’s covered by warranty or not until they examine the device. Now they want me to mail it in (at my own expense!). I’m not sure yet whether I think it’s worth the trouble to do so or not. I’ve already bought a new MP3 player (a Sandisk Sansa Clip), and it appears to be much better (simple controls that aren’t too sensitive) for a much cheaper price. And I’ve used Sandisk before; my old Sandisk player lasted me years before breaking. If I did get it fixed, it would be just to see if they’d admit they had shoddy workmanship and cover it under the warranty or blame me even though I didn’t do anything to break it; and then I could just give it away to someone who didn’t mind sensitive controls. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m back to Sandisk and still confused as to why Cowon gets such rave reviews.

Update: I did mail it in, and they said it wasn’t covered under warranty, and I would have to pay US$57 to replace the LCD screen. No thanks. That money was better spent on my Sansa Clip.

Further Reading
Cowon iAudio 7 Review (Ubuntu perspective)
Cowon iAudio 7 Review Addendum

Who would have ever thought I’d be comparing Trader Joe’s to Ubuntu?

Well, in recent years, a lot of the grocery stores in our neighborhood have been closing down, so Trader Joe’s is one of the few still around. When my wife and I started shopping there originally, we made a regular habit of shopping at both Trader Joe’s (which touts itself as a unique grocery store) and regular grocery stores. As time went on, we found ourselves shopping more and more at Trader Joe’s and less and less at regular grocery stores. I found myself giving up Breyer’s ice cream for mochi ice cream. I found myself giving up Yoplait for Trader Joe’s yogurt. I found myself giving up Fresh Step for Space cat litter. Now, practically our entire grocery list can be found at Trader Joe’s. I still rely on a regular grocery store for Cheerios, tortillas, and Thomas’ English Muffins; the Joe’s O’s, Joe’s tortillas, and Joe’s English muffins just don’t cut it in my book… right now, but maybe that’ll change.

The same happened when I moved from Windows to Ubuntu. Initially, I dual-booted with WIndows for iTunes. Eventually, I weaned myself off iTunes and on to Rhythmbox. I gave up my iPod for an iAudio. I gave up the iTunes music store for actual CDs. My wife, who migrated from Windows to Mac found herself using more and more Mac applications. Initially, she was using Firefox and Thunderbird, but they both kept crashing, and she gradually moved from open source applications to Apple proprietary applications. Now she uses Safari and Mail. She’s even moved from Cyberduck to Transmit.

Whether it’s a grocery store or an operating system, the place you visit most or the system you boot into can often move you in a certain direction. It’s easy to get assimilated and hard to “serve two masters.”

Quite frequently on the Ubuntu Forums, someone will make a suggestion that Ubuntu (and/or Linux distros in general) adopt a feature or approach that Windows has to handling a task. Inevitably, someone else will counter that Linux is not Windows and then link to the appropriately titled article “Linux is not Windows.”

The problem is that logically (and I believe the author of the article in question would agree) it doesn’t make sense to say that just because Linux is not Windows that Linux should never under any circumstance adopt features or approaches that Windows has to user interfaces. After all, desktop Linux already does share some features in common with Windows:

• Alt-Tabbing to switch between windows, bringing minimized windows to the front.
• Allowing maximizing of windows.
• Generally closing applications once the last window of the application is closed.
• Having Alt-F4 be the shortcut to closing a window.
• Having a menu like the Start menu that allows you to access programs and documents.

The list could go on and on, but these are all features and approaches to user interfaces that Windows and Linux distros have in common that Mac OS X does not. It’s not a question of originality. I don’t really care if Windows copied *nix systems or vice versa. The point is that the two sets of operating systems can and do have some things in common.

To be sensible human beings (and not fanatics), we have to avoid two extremes. I’ll be the first to tell people that Ubuntu (and/or Linux at large) should not be a Windows clone. But we should not make Linux in every respect the antithesis of Windows either, nor can we. The best approach to creating a usable operating system is the adoption of the best of several approaches. If Windows does something right, then Ubuntu should have no problem adopting that approach. If Windows does something wrong, then Ubuntu should avoid adopting that approach. Ubuntu fanatics, please understand, though, that I love Ubuntu a lot, too. Yet, somehow, I’m able to recognize that Windows does some things that Ubuntu should also do. Package management in Ubuntu is a great way to install software—perhaps something Windows could learn from Ubuntu. Previewing photos before you upload them in a web browser is a basic expectation that many desktop users have‐perhaps something Ubuntu could learn from Windows.

Linux is not Windows. We get it. We get it already. But Linux can learn from Windows occasionally, and that would not be a “free software sin.”