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Answering Your Linux Questions
The Washington post Tuesday, July 6, 2004;
As I write this newsletter early Saturday afternoon, I know I only have a few hours until reader responses to my review of three Linux distributions start to fill my inbox. From earlier pieces that I've done about Linux, I can expect that at least one or two Linux-news sites will point to the story, resulting in a momentary boost to my readership and a lot of questions for me to answer. I'm also pretty confident that many of these questions will address the same set of topics. With all that in mind, I'm now going to take the unusual step of answering e-mail that I haven't actually received yet.
A: I had to start this column by picking from the dozens of different distributions available, since there are only so many hours in the day. Step one was to limit the review to distributions using the 2.6 release of the Linux kernel -- the basic foundation of this operating system, which not all distributions have gotten around to upgrading to yet. (That, for instance, was what kept Xandros's edition out.) Step two was to leave out distributions put together for experts. Step three was to decide which distributions readers might already be familiar with, either from seeing books about them in stores or from spotting copies of them in computer stores. No argument about Mac OS X's overall ease of use or security. But just try installing it on your old Dell desktop and tell me how it supports that hardware. This is one of my favorite questions to answer. I am always tempted to begin my response with some variant of, "Yeah, um, the '80s called and they want their DOS command-line back." Look, command-line interfaces have gone out of style in consumer operating systems for very sound reasons. They're not remotely "discoverable" -- unlike a row of menus or toolbar icons, a blank command-line prompt has no way of telling you what you can do. They're unforgiving -- one typo in the command and it won't work. And while I can imagine a command-line interface being designed in a way that worked around these defects (say, one that was programmed to accept plain-English input), I've yet to see any such thing in practice. I'm hard on them because: a) I'm not doing any such favors for the other operating systems I review, and b) because I've seen how good open-source software can get. On my desktop at work, my Web browser, e-mail client and instant-messaging program are all open-source products. (That's Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird and Gaim, if you're curious.) I use those programs not out of any kind of ideological loyalty, but because they just work better than the commercial alternatives. Those are my guesses for the four most common responses to Sunday's column. I'll let you know next week if I was right. I'll also get into some interesting responses I've gotten to last Sunday's review of digital AM and FM radio technology. The last week or two have brought some interesting software updates that I'd like to briefly touch on, two Windows-focused and three Mac-oriented: Mozilla Firefox 0.9.1, Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7.1: Both are minor bug-fixes, although the Firefox update also includes some redrawn toolbar icons. As with earlier releases, the developers recommend uninstalling the old version (which won't affect your preferences or saved data) before installing this new release.
Camino 0.8: For Safari fans interested in checking out Mozilla browsers but uninterested in losing such Mac features as integration with Address Book, this browser -- a Mozilla offshoot customized for Mac OS X -- might be worth a look.
eyeTV 500: Unlike the earlier eyeTV system that we reviewed (negatively) a few weeks back, this $299 product records high-definition broadcasts. If you're interested, don't wait too long to go shopping -- since the eyeTV 500s apparently does not support the "broadcast flag" copy-control provisions mandated by the Federal Communications Commission, it will be illegal to sell a year from now. (My earlier thoughts on this idiotic policy.)
Verizon BroadbandAccess Support 1.0: This Apple-developed driver lets iBook and PowerBook owners use Verizon's impressive wireless broadband service. It is not, however, the only option for non-Windows users; one Mac user is writing his own open-source driver for this card. Heads-up of the week: Those of you who use Windows computers that didn't come with backup system CD-ROMs, instead relying on a hidden system-restore partition, may want to read this report about how some viruses are now programmed to copy themselves to that partition -- which can leave the computer almost permanently infected. And finally, last week the Industrial Designers Society of America handed out its annual IDEA (Industrial Design Excellence Award) awards. Saturday's Style section had a short piece about the products that won in some of these categories. But if you're an industrial-design geek (as I am), browse through the whole list of winning products, which includes both things you might expect, such as the iPod Mini, a vertically-mounted HP scanner and the Toyota Prius, and those you might not, like a baseball-shaped Philips clock radio, a miniaturized umbrella and the LifePort kidney transporter (!).
-- Rob Pegoraro (rob@twp.com)
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