Maudlin ruminations of a mind bit by wanderlust.

How many times have you seen a program or game or something that you like on the net, downloaded it for your OS (assuming it's free, otherwise bought), installed it, and it just worked? You just followed the instructions, and you were able to use it just like that?

If you're on linux, your answer would be "most of the time", while if you're on windows, the response would probably be "What? There are programs that just work?".

I recently got myself a couple of newish games, which sadly require windows to run. Not too surprised, because that's normal for most games. Because it's been a long time since I actually played something with 3D graphics (except scorched), I decided to install windows on the other hard drive and see things happen.

INSTALL 1 :
I knew that Vista had some tdr issues with nvidia 8 series cards, and it probably wouldn't let me game for more than 3 minutes or so. I was wrong. It didn't let me game past 1 minute, with blank screens every 10 seconds, capped off by a magnificent Blue screen to finish. Scrapped.

INSTALL 2 :
I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to use XP, which is something I really didn't want to do, because I wanted Vista's security. Using XP meant I wouldn't be able to use the Internet, which wasn't so bad, because I wasn't really planning network gaming anyway. I popped in the XP CD, only to find that I couldn't install without removing Vista, as it was considered a downgrade. Switched back to linux, and used gparted to wipe my second hard drive. Then went back. The rest of the installation went smoothly, but it took ages. Finally, I had an XP system which hopefully hadn't screwed with GRUB enough to let me use Linux as well. It hadn't, so far so good. I install my graphics drivers, sound drivers, bluetooth drivers for my keyboard/mouse, you know the deal. Install the game. Play the game. Crash the game in 15 min, with blackouts every 5. Better, but not quite.

INSTALL 3 :
At this point I realized that there was a page on nvidia's website that had a list of hotfixes and other goodies which ought to be installed if you want to do something on Vista. I also realized that I hadn't realized that before. Go back to linux. Use gparted to get rid of XP. Put Vista DVD in and install. GRUB is still alive. Good. Connect to the internet (I can, in Vista). Go to nvidia, and download all the drivers. Go to microsoft.com and get all the hotfixes. Pass WGA, which for some reason takes ages on my connection. Install everything, one by one. Go back to Windows Update, and get what I've missed. Restart. Blue Screen. Poweroff.

INSTALL 4 :
I see now that my XP was not serviced by any of the packs, so I download SP2 in Linux, and have it ready. Wipe the hard drive with gparted again, and reinstall XP. Install SP2. Install Drivers. All of them. Install the game and play. I now get a worst case playtime of < 1min, best case time of 17mins and an average case play time of about 3-4mins. And this is not to mention that the first minute or so is spent on getting into the main menu, and loading a save game (which, half the time I am unable to save because the game crashed previously).

Epilogue :
Rebooted into linux, and decided to stay there some time longer. Keyboard didn't work because My bluetooth was screwed up in one of those installs. Fixed it by reinstalling the drivers 3 or 4 times, and doing some crazy acrobatics with the dongle and the power switches.

Told fedora to yum install wesnoth. It just works.

It's just over a week after I started using linux on a daily basis. After all this experience, there's is one thought that jumps to mind rather clearly : "The manuals suck!". I hate the linux documentation, generally. There are exceptions, but in most cases, the manual assumes you already know what's going on, and that drives me nuts. What's more, if you go on IRC channels (The most proliferated communication medium over the net) and ask for help, the first response is "RTFM!!" (Read the ******* Manual) and you get no further help. To be fair, some channels are nice, and don't flame you. But most do. That's one thing I like about windows. The documentation treats you like an idiot. Unfortunately, windows is too easy to use to require documentation. On the other hand, Fedora does require documentation, and it isn't good enough. Ah well.

Then there's the IRC client. I am unfortunate enough to live behind a very restrictive HTTP proxy. Thus, I cannot do IRC or Torrenting natively, because my proxy just stops all those requests. Thankfully, one of my friends devised an ingenuous way to tunnel to his computer from mine through the proxy, and then do IRC and torrent from there, using his internet connection. Basically, I chat with him using the client on his computer, while he does the same thing on the same computer. The facility makes up for the slight lag and many other inconveniences. I use the irssi client, a very sleek text mode client which is fast, and has no frills and no mouse. It has very subtle notifications though, so don't be surprised if your friends hang up on you because you haven't realized they're talking to you. I also use the bitlbee extension for IRC. Basically, it sets up an IRC channel on your own computer, which allows you to access your IM protocols - Jabber, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc - within the same IRC client. It's very handy, as all your chats can be organize within one window.

After the IRC, there's the window manager. The most commmonly used are Gnome, and KDE. These are not technically 'window managers' but the name suffices. Of these, KDE is more advanced and all, but it's still a windows-like interface. At some recommendations, I went in for a try of Ratpoison, a completely rodent (mouse) free window manager. It has no mouse dependency, and opening, closing and resizing of windows is done through a number of intuitive keyboard shortcuts. The defaults are horrible though, I've had to take several breaks while working in ratpoison because my fingers had been stretched out too much. Like most else in linux, the keybindings in ratpoison are customizable, but I haven't figured that out yet. Ratpoison has no frills -- No titlebar, minimize/maximize/close buttons, etc. No window decorations, only windows. In my opinion, it's good to work in ratpoison if you're doing only a couple of dedicated things, like programming and chatting. If you try to do too many things all at once, you'll go mad with the windows. Of course, there are people who use ratpoison on a regular basis, as their default WM. for them, repetitive stress injury is a very real threat, much more so than for the average user.

I still work mostly from the terminal, even when I'm in KDE. It's moderately faster than clicking on the menus, and I cannot for the life of me find out where things are in the kmenu. Installing software is also much simpler, even if it is not much easier. Oxymoronic? The amount of pain you feel to install a new program is minimal, if you already know which program you want.. On the other hand, if you don't know what program you want, but rather only an idea of what you want it to do, god help you, cause I certainly can't. It takes ages to decipher the output from the searches. It's easier to go on goolge, search for a program and then get it internally.

That said, I'm moderately happy with Fedora. I haven't used it long enough to find out why it sucks, but that will come in time. The main reason I like it is because, predominantly, things just work. There's near to no heartache because of programs not working, because the just work.

Then again, I don't need all too many programs to begin with.

Refer:

• Ratpoison : http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/
  
• KDE : http://www.kde.org/
  
• Gnome : http://www.gnome.org/
  
• Irssi : http://www.irssi.org/
  
• Bitlbee : http://www.bitlbee.org/
  
• Fedora Core 5 : http://www.fedora.redhat.com/
  

Adobe completed its aquisition of Macromedia last week.

A prominent April Fool this year was :
"Microsoft recently bought OpenOffice.org"

What would it be called if it were? ClosedOffice.com? It seems that those companies which are capable of producing quality goods are being bought out by companies which have a larger bankroll. I don't mean to say that Adobe is useless. Microsoft on the other hand is an entirely different matter.

I'm going through a very involved anti-microsoft week this week. I had to reinstall Windows twice (The first after an unkown virus didn't let it stay on for more than 5 minutes and the second because a LEGITIMATE windows patch erased some fairly important files. Read : kernel.dll). This anti-microsoft sentiment has been amplified all the more with the release of Fedora Core 5, which I have had the great pleasure of playing with for the past week.

Someone also asked in the forums, "Why isn't Opera Open Source?". Till now, the concepts of "Freeware" and "Open Source" were scarcely different. It's probably because I used the latest version of Windows and all my programs were properly compiled so I didn't have to do it myself. Open Source helps if the users (ie us) want to fix the bugs in the program ourselves. Opera has a good enough team assembled that the difference is hardly noticeable.

It may be that Opera might have to give in to the growing Open Source Movement at some later point in time, but then It would just become another Firefox -- Respected more because of the fact that it is open source and less for the fact that it is a good browser.

After waiting over 8 months for Fedora Core 5, it's finally here!
I got unbelieveable downloads speeds and clocked up what could possibly be the first HTTP download. I still can't believe I downloaded over 6GB in under 5hrs...
All that's left is to try the thing out.