While it's great to see that IE7 has tabs and addresses a whole host of CSS and layout deficiencies and bugs, it boggles the mind when you think how far behind IE actually is. For instance, IE7 will be the first IE to natively support tabs, years after almost every other browser on the planet did. This kind of complacency was allowed because they had such a large market share. I don't think it's a coincidence that we are finally seeing these features now, with Firefox taking the web by storm. Better late than never I guess, but this is why monopoly is bad. The good news here is that IE7 is being developed with an amount of transparency (and I'm not talking about the fact they transparent PNG's are finally supported) that is unheard of in IE land - and that is a very good thing. Kudos to the IE team for that much. As Asa says though, it's too bad for all the windows 98, windows 2000, and windows XP pre-SP2 users out there that they won't get this upgrade.
–jeremy
Firefox, IE
Archive for July, 2005
Just wanted to thank everyone who contacted me about Firefox tabs after listening to the latest LQ Radio interview with Asa. It seems that the behavior I was talking about, where you only get the tabs context if you have a tab open, can be easily changed by going to “Preferences->Advanced->Tabbed Browsing” and unchecking the “Hide the tab bar when only one web site is open” box. While many people contacted me, the first one was
–jeremy
Mozilla, Firefox
I just posted an interview I did with Asa over at LQ Radio. We covered a lot of ground in 1:21, although I wanted to get into the Linux on the desktop topic much more than we ended up having time for. He was already about 15 minutes late for a meeting as it was. I look forward to chatting with him about the subject at OSCON next week. Thanks for taking the time to do the interview Asa.
–jeremy
Linux, Mozilla, Firefox
When I first saw the Levanta Intrepid M, I thought it was an extremely nice device. For those of you who remember LinuxCare, what remained of that company was renamed to Levanta about a year or so ago. The Intrepid M has an impressive list of features, including bare metal provisioning, the ability to capture state, the ability to snapshot and then put that snapshot on any device, the ability to help with migrations, the ability to deploy patches and packages and even the ability to track any change on any machine. It supports Red Hat, Suse/Novell and Fedora. It seems to do everything Red Hat's RHN Satellite does and more, with the added bonus of supporting multiple distributions and coming as a preconfigured hardware device. All this for the low price of $7,495.00. The bad news? That only includes 10 client licenses. Surely if you need a device like this you have 100 or 1000 machines though. Extra licenses are $250/each and there is no mention of volume pricing (although I'd guess some kind of discount would materialize at a certain level). That means 1000 machines would set you back a quarter million. That seems a bit excessive. For comparison, Satellite is $13,500 which includes the first 50 client licenses and then $3,500 per 50 pack after that (which comes out to about $70/each). Net price for 1000 machines would be $80,000. Don't forget that this is all on top of the cost of the OS - $349 for RHEL ES, $0 for Fedora or $349 for SLES. Needless to say, it looks like a great package, but the combo price of $600 per box for RHEL/SLES and an Intrepid M aims it very squarely at a specific market. Price aside, it looks like a absolutely fantastic product and I wish Levanta the best.
–jeremy
This article gave me a thought (why the article made /. today when it was published two weeks ago, I have no idea). I don't think Apple will (or should for that matter) just release OSX for generic x86. They have a lot of benefits as it is now to controlling both the hardware and the OS. The can optimize to their exact setup and they don't have to worry about buggy third party drivers (which is one of Windows biggest stability problems) or supporting a billion random devices. Also important to Apple is that they can control the design of all OS X products. Apple surely doesn't want to be in the OS business and releasing OS X for any x86 would put them in that business. BUT, what if say 12 months or so after they work the bugs out of the Intel switch, they let a very select OEM or two produce a pre-approved and vetted non-Apple Mac. It would have to be a high end company that understands quality and design. Names like Dell don't strike me as plausible, as they'd lose their sweet Windows licensing deal. Maybe someone like AlienWare would be ideal though. I've not heard any specific rumors on this front, but wouldn't it be interesting? Apple would get to chip away at the Windows market share, make some additional money on OS X and broaden their reach while still getting to maintain a good amount of control on the quality and aesthetics of the hardware the OS X runs on.
–jeremy
Apple, Intel
A little late (my procrastination once again astounds), but I am indeed OSCON bound. LinuxQuestions.org is once again a proud OSCON sponsor. If you'll be attending and would like to meet for whatever reason, drop me a line. See you in Portland.
–jeremy
According to this article, Windows users are idiots. I have to disagree, for a couple of reasons. First, I'd have to say that lacking knowledge about a computer in no way makes you an idiot. I'm sure there are plenty of geniuses that are completely computer illiterate. But it goes beyond that. People are lazy - it's a fact of life. Most people don't want to have to understand computers. I don't blame them really. The problem is that 1) Windows comes insecure by default, 2) Windows comes preinstalled on almost every desktop machines sold and 3) Windows makes it too easy to not have to learn anything to change those defaults. There is no user education. The outcome is an army of spam spewing zombies. I think it's our responsibility, as the 10% of people who want to and do understand computers really well, to lead the other 90% in the right direction. Don't just tell someone “Oh yeah, Windows sucks” - that makes you look like an idiot IMHO. Explain to them why installing Linux or buying a Mac is in their best interest. Make them understand. They don't need to be able to compile a kernel or write a device driver. They need to be educated on why the alternatives are superior. Belittling them helps no one.
—jeremy
LQ is in the “pretty big, but not huge” category, as far as web sites go (ie. 10M views a month < LQ < 100M views a month). While many members are extremely new to Linux, the average visitor is certainly more technical than the average visitor at most sites. After all, they are taking the time to research Linux. I thought it would be interesting to give people an idea of who visits a site like LQ - what OS are they using, what browser? The following data is from the last month or so:
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As you can see, on LQ, Windows only has slightly above half of the OS share. That puts us way outside the normal for typical non-technical sites. But notice how much of a lead FF/Mozilla has. That goes to show that regardless of what platform people are using, their browser of choice is often FF/Mozilla. A good example of this is Mac. Mac comes with Safari but just under half of the Mac users seem to be using FF (The number of people who use Mac and don't use one of Safari or FF is very small). Note that unknown for the OS is either a spider or an occasional RSS reader that doesn't report it. A lot of interesting info can be gleaned from those two tables, but I'll leave some of the fun up to you 
–jeremy
Linux, Windows, Apple, Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, Opera, Konqueror
Looks like this blog post by Asa got Slashdotted. I talked to Asa in depth about this at Gnomedex a couple of weeks ago. I actually discussed that conversation a bit during the most recent episode of LQ Radio. As I said there, I have to agree with some of what Asa said. Of course, as you may have guessed, I don't agree with all of it. But I do think that when someone like Asa, who clearly not only gets Open Source but promotes it for a living, talks about something like this we should all listen. Application and driver support aside (note: I know these are both huge issues, but they are not technical ones per se and not on topic with the point I'd like to make. I don't want anyone to think I am minimizing them though), I'd say that Linux is almost as ready for the desktop as Windows is. The issue that many people have is that it is different, not better or worse. They don't want to take the time to learn is one problem I see, which is fine - but if they remember far enough back they had to learn Windows too. It's just that they know it now. They have an investemnt in time that makes them averse to change. Another complaint I see is that Linux is too hard to install. This one could not be more incorrect. Linux is easier to install than Windows. Most Windows users have never installed it though, since it came with their computer. For some reason I think they just assume it must be easy. If I sat my dad down with a computer and a Windows install disk, a working installation wouldn't come out of it (and he's a smart guy, just not necessarily computer savvy). Another issue I see talked about is that to get anything done you have to edit all these text files. First, I don't think this is true any longer, although it certainly once was. While I prefer to do things command line, almost all of it can be done through a GUI tool. The thing that gets me though, is that most things that you would have to drop down to a CLI to do, would require a registry edit in Windows. Which one of those is easier?? At least with Linux you have a choice.
Now, don't take this as I don't think Linux has a long way to go - it does. Asa and others bring up some very solid points and I could definitely add to the list. Some Linux advocates seem to have blinder on in this regard, and that's bad for everyone. In the end though, I think some people give Windows way more credit for being easy than it deserves. Windows seems to have created a legion of “Power Users” that know how to do a couple things in the GUI or make a couple of registry edits, without really knowing what they are doing and why they are doing it. Linux does require you to learn a little more, but the reward is a more solid, more stable system that is logical in design and efficient in operations. Once you understand the underlying paradigm, everything just makes sense. Even after a long time of Windows use, a ton of things make no sense to me. I mutter, “you can't do what?” to the Windows admins more than they'd like to admit. I'd like to think of the initial learning curve in Linux sort of like having a permit. Without that step, having a drivers license would be much more dangerous. That's probably why such a high percentage of Windows machine get compromised.
–jeremy
Gnomedex, Linux, Windows, Mozilla, desktop
This topic continues to get an amazing amount of press. I've seen a couple reports that this surely spells doom for the PowerPC platform. I don't think so. First IBM uses the POWER (which at this point actually uses the PowerPC instruction set - nice and confusing) in way too many places - and expensive places at that. Additionally, all three major console manufacturers have gone with IBM chips. This probably means something along the lines of 150 Million or so units shipped (warning: that is a guesstimate). Exact numbers aside, it's more than the number of Mac's that would have been sold. But I think the coup de grace for the death of PowerPC may just be China. China is a huge market in which almost no one has a computer. The largest PC manufacturer that is partially funded by the Chinese government and just happened to be the former IBM PC division. Since compatibility issues are much lower than in a mature market such as the USA (a small number of current PC's mean a small number to be compatible with), there is a somewhat level playing field as far as what the architecture of choice will be. If Lenovo can make a solid PowerPC machine running Red Flag, then I think it may just have a chance. We'll see.
–jeremy
Apple, IBM, Intel
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