The Linux Extremist

This week’s issue of the Economist reminds us that an important anniversary is happening this month. It’s 25 years since the first IBM PC was released onto the market. 25 years may not sound like much on the surface, but if you think about how different the world was then, the distance in time seems enormous. 25 years ago, Ronald Reagan was President. 25 years ago, Van Halen’s lead singer was David Lee Roth. 25 years ago, we were at the dawn of the Yuppies. Strolling down memory lane back to that era seems more like an exercise in archaeology; amongst the ruins of that past are Rubik’s Cubes, hair gel and Thompson Twins albums.

I was a fairly early adopter of the PC; I had wanted a home computer since I started learning programming with a Commodore PET machine at my school. To tide me over, my father got a Texas Instruments home computer which plugged into the television; I remember that it was considered a great advance because with an additional module, one could actually get the computer to speak. There was a Star Trek game that came with it which involved the computer barking that the Klingons were attacking; this was cool to me at the time. But somehow it didn’t satisfy; I wanted to do more.

After the PC was introduced, my first real machine arrived at my house; my father got an IBM PC AT. This was considered a great advance at the time, a very powerful machine; for starters it came with a colour monitor and had a hard disk drive. It was an impressive hunk of metal - even the keyboard was made of it. It seemed to speak of a bygone era before plastic in some senses; computers then were steel, almost crafted like vintage cars. The AT was the first computer I performed upgrades on; I also learned more programming skills by using BASIC which was part of PC DOS 3.0.

That AT was also the first computer I ever used to dial up anyone. I first had a Hayes modem, then I installed an internal modem which fit into the PCI card slot. With that, I was able to access the precursors of the internet, online bulletin boards. The text interface was daunting, as were some of the phone bills, but it showed the potential of networking.

I moved on to the first “portable” computer in my collection, a Compaq. It had an LCD screen and ran off of some batteries, but it was extremely heavy. Its screen was considered a marvel for its time; the colours were entirely washed out, but the images were discernable. To avoid getting a headache, I plugged it into a VGA monitor, which made it look glorious. The new Windows interface was an improvement on DOS. Bulletin boards were replaced with using a service called PC Link, which was a precursor to AOL.

Since then I’ve owned a broad variety of machines including the Fujitsu ICL PCTV, a late, unlamented product which incorporated a television and a PC in the same unit. I’ve owned several Macintoshes. I had a custom built PC made for me; which I then rebuilt. I’ve now reached the point where I have 4 PCs in my home, all of which seem to have reached the apex of progress by running Linux, connecting to the internet at speeds which were unimaginable only a few years ago. How far the PC would go was totally unforeseen by its creators; it’s now a part of most people’s lives. How far being interested in programming and computing would take me personally was only a glimmer in my perception back in 1981; my only hint came from the fact that my father was a highly successful technologist. Since then, I’ve been proud to follow in his footsteps.

The Economist opined that the days of the PC’s dominance are drawing to a close; they’re too energy hungry and bulky for many, particularly those in developing nations. Rather, they suggest that computing will focus on portable appliances like the mobile telephone; this is not an outrageous statement, Larry Ellison of Oracle made a similar prediction several years ago. This has yet to pass. According to the UK Office of Statistics, the volume of Desktop PCs sold in the United Kingdom has risen from 2,194,278 in 2001 to 2,653,867 in 2004. This is not indicative of a dying market. It is likely that we will see the rise of intelligent appliances, such as high definition television that doubles as a PC, and yes, increased access to the internet through mobile phones and other pocket devices like the Blackberry. However, the shape of this digital future is still coming together; and it is fair to say that it never would have happened without the PC.

Prediction in this case is purely idle speculation; 25 years ago seems almost a time of innocence in comparison to now, back then, we simply didn’t know what would happen. It will be interesting to see how much we will have evolved in our use of technology 25 years from now, and when we root around the ruins of our present time perhaps we’ll feel that this era is just as primitive as we feel the first IBM PC is today.

No one does kooks quite like America. The assortment of lunatics, weirdos, freaks and eccentrics there, from the Manson Family, to the Unabomber, to Michael Jackson is unsurpassed. Maybe it’s to do with the “pursuit of happiness” part in the Declaration of Independence; some people have taken that endeavour to unimagined lengths, from lining the inside of their hats with tin foil to proclaiming that space aliens run the government.

There is one particular breed of wacko that appears to be on the rise, however. This variant of fruit loop thinks Linux is a foreign plot, created by Communists in an attempt to destroy America’s software industry. They point to the fact that Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, is apparently leftist in his politics, and that Linus Torvalds’ father was a Communist, as if one’s politics was transmitted through one’s genes. These “Anti-Linux Patriots” cling to Windows rather like their forebears in lunacy clung to American cars, even if the Toyota next door was more reliable, had better gas mileage and didn’t blow up like a Ford Pinto.

Winston Churchill once defined a fanatic as someone “who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”; these mental midgets fit into that category. What they fail to recognise is that if Linux is at all Marxist, it’s of the Groucho rather than the Karl variety.

Karl Marx and Linux are an extremely poor fit. Marx believed that men’s behaviour was determined by economics, or to use the traditional Marxist phrase, “conditions create consciousness”. In other words, we do things on the basis of what we get paid to do. This situation would only be remedied by the Proletarian Revolution, in Marx’s view; even then, people would be allocated resources “from each according to their ability to each according to their need”. The idea of man acting solely on economic impulses falls to pieces as soon as it meets the Open Source philosophy; capitalism is far from dead, yet here we have groups of individuals who are acting out of motives which do not have a clear economic rationale. Nor can this behaviour be said to be creating the “Proletarian Revolution” that Karl Marx described; the products of Open Source assist rather than hinder commerce by reducing the cost of new entrants into the marketplace. Capitalism is propagated, not blocked or overthrown.

Indeed, Karl Marx would be very surprised we had gotten into a situation that people would be able to do this at all under the capitalist system; when he wrote in the 19th century, he foresaw a world in which the proletariat would be progressively impoverished by capitalism, and the increasing pain and drudgery of life would inspire them to unite, en masse, and overthrow the existing order. This has clearly not occured; indeed it was obvious by the early 20th century that this was not going to happen. Marxist philosophers have been having difficulty breathing life into this theoretical corpse ever since.

On the other hand, Open Source programmers should be proud to repeat the French quip, “Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho.” (I am a Marxist of the Groucho variety). This is not just a reference to the community’s sense of humour; if one looks at the underlying structure of a Marx Brothers film, there are some commonalities with how Open Source development occurs. Their films provide a structure for moments of individual inspiration: Groucho with his wise cracking quips, Harpo with his silent gags, and Chico with his exaggerated Italian pronunciation. There are also moments of collaboration; a well-known example comes from the film “Duck Soup”, in which Harpo and Chico dress as Groucho in order to create hilarity out of confusion. It seems anarchic, but these moments of individual and collaboartive genius work well together. Similarly the individual and collaborative efforts which comprise Open Source projects also combine to produce excellent results. Yes, a sense of direction and a framework are required: the Marx Brothers had that as well. However, Open Source is much more liberated than deterministic, and much more Groucho than it ever will be Karl.

So what of the lunatics in the States who refuse to believe this? I am a particular believer in shock therapy; for example, if I ever had a daughter that wanted a pony, I would take her to a restaurant specialising in horse meat, and then tell her afterwards what she had consumed. It would likely guarantee she would never want to look at another horse again. Similarly, we should likely make the Anti-Linux Patriots aware of how much they owe to Open Source, how much of the fruits of Open Source they consume, how much of the products of their ire are already integrated into their lives. Either they will get used to it, or better still, they may end up hiding under their beds.

It’s not everyone who can say that they used to work for a character straight out of Monty Python, but I can. Specifically, I worked for a real-life variant of the Dirty Vicar. For those who are not familiar with that sketch, the Dirty Vicar was a character (played by Terry Jones) who simply could not stop himself from groping well endowed women while letting fly with a raucous shout of “I like (insert rude word for breasts here)!”

Apart from admiring the breasts of female staff, the real-life Dirty Vicar had one other major obsession and that was sales. Presumably it was his repeating the word “sales” often and loudly that got him the job as Managing Director; one hopes it was not his use of the “f” word in every sentence. He used to destroy many of my carefully laid out plans because he could not understand the relationship between doing things the right way and getting sales; rather, he thought that having something semi-working now was better than something that worked perfectly tomorrow. He was so desperate for immediate uplift that he would sacrifice the company’s prospects over a medium or long term to achieve it.

Furthermore, he was constantly trying to squeeze customers for every penny in the wrong sort of way. For example, I had to argue very strongly against his proposal to automatically include an extra in our online shopping basket; the tickbox to remove it was subtle and could easily be overlooked. It had been tried before; many customers were overcharged and said they would never purchase from us again. Within months, the results of his “all out strategy”, if it can be called that, were predictably horrible, and I am pleased to say that eventually he was relieved of the burdens of his position.

That’s an admittedly extreme example of how the drive for sales and the ambitions of salesmen and their marketing bretheren can wreck a company’s online prospects. However, as an Open Source advocate, I have to wonder how much of Linux’s advantages stem from having much less of this kind of pressure. How much of Microsoft’s problems, in contrast, stem from these influences? What is the evil that salesmen do?

In my experience, salesmen want a simple life. The good ones will acknowledge this is not possible and learn to live with it; however, they’re in a minority. The bad ones will promise the customer or their superiors everything in the world and for it to be delivered yesterday, without any reference to those who actually have to build the solution in question. This is yet another extreme example, but in my first management role, I was obliged to pick up the pieces after a technically ignorant sales person told an equally technically ignorant customer that our website would have a “telepathic” interface. It took some explanation of what internet technologies can and cannot do for the customer to realise that I wasn’t going to be able to build a solution to read her thoughts.

One gets a hint of the “telepathic” salesman upon examining the site for Windows Vista. Some of the claims made for it are laughable; for example, the site states “..with Windows Vista, the operating system adapts to you, rather than the other way around.” Considering how Microsoft makes so many decisions for the user as to what software should be on their desktop, there is a very large distance between rhetoric and reality. It is not outrageous to suppose that this gap is maintained in so far as what the sales and marketing people are promising to the public and what the development staff can actually deliver. What is worse is that there is a hint of salesman-driven rationale in how Microsoft develops its products: they are always bigger, always have more features, they’re always more glossy. It is sales logic which would automatically assume that this is somehow “better”.

The difference with Linux could not be more stark; in the absence of this pressure, an operating system has emerged that was developed with the sole goal of getting it right. This is not some idle vanity among technologists; the results of the Open Source approach have proven very useful to business. There is a reason that Apache powers 68% of all webservers, for example. That said, there is a lot of mileage in simply approaching technology with the proper respect for the boundaries of rational planning.

While I was suffering in my labours for the Dirty Vicar, a parallel project was in motion in the same company; in that case, the lead developer was well known for his dislike of sales and marketing. He was often heard to tell them, “No, I’m not going to do it, it’s a hare-brained scheme and it won’t make us any money.” He was tolerated due to his obvious skill and intelligence; he was outstanding at mod_perl development. The result of his project was an e-commerce solution that won an award; the project was also immensely profitable. I’m not suggesting that all developers should have his moxie, nor do I consider it realistic to believe that the sales folk at Microsoft and elsewhere will leave their technology staff alone, even if superior results were more likely. However, the companies that do learn to restrain the ambitions of their sales staff may prove to be the most successful; many are already happily relying on technologies which required little or no salesmen to develop, this should prove to their satisfaction that developers don’t need pestering folk goosing them every 5 minutes like a Dirty Vicar to produce elegant solutions. That voodoo which salesmen do may be a necessary evil, but the dosage should be kept to the barest minimum.

I have a book which contains cartoons from American presidential campaigns; among the most memorable is one from the 1884 contest which was between Grover Cleveland, a Democrat and James G. Blaine, a Republican. The cartoon shows Cleveland and Blaine with their running mates sitting in a pub and drinking beer. The legend above this scene reads, “We may differ in politics…but we agree on that.”

“That” at the time was Prohibition, a movement which was just gaining strength. Both Blaine and Cleveland were against it. This display of agreement was rather extraordinary, given the context. In 1884, one was either a Republican or a Democrat, and people would refuse to do business with each other on the basis of their party affiliation. It was less than 20 years after the American Civil War had ended, and to Republicans, the word “Democrat” was synonymous with “traitor” and to Southern Democrats, the word “Republican” was equivalent to “carpetbagger”. The 1884 campaign was particularly bloody; scurrilous allegations were made about Cleveland fathering an illegitimate child, similar smears were made about Blaine being corrupt. Politics in the United States has never been quite so polarised before or since; yet all bitterness aside, the leaders of both parties said “no” to going dry. It was a rare and shining moment of mental clarity during a particularly fetid political season.

It’s sometimes difficult to discern these moments of mental clarity nowadays. Watching the news from the Middle East is depressing because there is apparently so little of it to go around; war, chaos and violence have been a way of life there for as long as recorded history. And yet, weirdly enough, there is one relatively new way in which both sides in the Middle East agree; Linux usage in both Israel and the Islamic world is on the rise.

It’s a minor, cold comfort to be sure. It’s unlikely that there will be protestors on the streets of Damascus and Jerusalem carrying banners saying, “Make code, not war”. However, though they differ in politics, both sides agree on that.

A quick investigation of how the open source movement is proliferating on the web is an eye opener. I typed “Israel Linux” into Google, and found a very large, active Linux community, the Israeli Group of Linux Users (IGLU). Typing “Arab Linux” yields results which are just as revealing - the Arab Eyes project is working to make Linux more compatible with their language, and there is an active community site entitled Linux Arabia. Similarly, the Iranians are working on variants of Linux that work well with Farsi.

This is not to say that all these programmers intend to use Linux for the same reasons; they may agree on Open Source, but they differ in politics. There is no doubt that terrorists communicate through the use of Open Source technologies. The Iranian government may have some anti-Western motive in developing their own variant of Linux. However, in a strange sort of way, this is progress.

The Roman / Jewish historian Josephus’ writings indicate that in ancient times, the peoples of the Middle East could only agree with the point of a Roman sword in their backs. It used to be that the only basis for accord between these bitter enemies was recognition of the Red Cross and even then, the Red Cross had to be relabelled the Red Crescent in the Islamic world. Still, it’s easy to concur that one would like a medic when the bombs start falling. The desire for better computing appears to be the second area of mutual understanding. They differ in politics but agree that Windows isn’t the way to go. Two points of agreement in this troubled region in less than 200 years is utterly amazing.

This minor development should not blind us to the blood that is being spilled in the Middle East; generally speaking, it’s as bad as it ever was. Based on present conditions, it will likely be another century before a 3rd point of agreement is reached. But perhaps this is indicative of a small ray of enlightenment penetrating the gloom. As insane as the wars of the Middle East may be, at least the people there are not mad enough to continue to embrace Microsoft.

Government is generally the home of bad ideas, but occasionally there is an exception. The much-touted One Laptop Per Child project falls into that category.

The idea is simple: in order to help developing nations to leap over the obvious economic and infrastructure barriers which prevent them joining the digital age, a project was initiated to build the cheapest laptop possible; the target price is $100 per PC. I recall reading an article at the start of this enterprise, written by its director Nicholas Negroponte; he said directly that in order to achieve the balance of cost and performance, they were going to have to use Linux.

Promising indeed. The result is apparently a perfectly serviceable little machine running Fedora Core with a specialised interface called Sugar. Already, the governments of China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand have expressed an interest. However, there are some hidden dangers within this project, and it’s unclear if the foundation’s management is working to address them: some of these countries have so many problems with corruption that it’s difficult to see how the project will benefit those it intends.

Nigeria is the easiest and most accessible example; they have placed the first order for 1 million of these laptops. However, it’s difficult to see what mechanisms are in place so that the laptops will reach their intended recipients. Nigeria has some of the worst ratings for perceptions of corruption according to Transparency International; they are ranked 152, along with Equatorial Guinea and the Ivory Coast. Furthermore, there is an existing digital culture in Nigeria which has a large, active criminal element. It’s rare to find someone who has not received an e-mail that involved what is known as “Advanced Fee Fraud”; namely, the scams that offer riches plundered from a dead West African official. A large part of this activity is run out of Nigeria; indeed, the leading anti-fraud website, Scamorama, refers to these criminals as “The Lads from Lagos”. In aid of this criminal endeavour, Nigerian hackers have left their markers all over the ‘Net; typing in “Mugu Guyman” (Nigerian slang for “idiot”) into Google yields loads of sites which these online fraudsters have used to harvest e-mail addresses.

Thus we should be concerned that the laptops are being sent not into the hands of children who deserve it, but those who will misuse this valuable tool. I emphasise the word “tool”; tools are value-neutral and can be used for good or malign purposes. A hammer can be used to build a house or to beat someone to death; similarly, a PC can educate and enlighten, or it can give the “Mugu Guymans” a cheap means (complete with wireless internet) by which they can perpetuate criminality.

The website for the One Laptop Per Child foundation has little information about how this issue is to be addressed; I suggest they should anticipate and ameliorate this risk before any of the laptops are shipped. Generally speaking, it is a brilliant initiative and an excellent means by which Linux usage is going to be extended. It would be a pity if this stellar idea was diminished by the mendacity of those in recipient countries who care more about themselves than the good of their nation’s children.

There is something deep in the British psyche that helps us to get accustomed to waiting. We wait in queues at the Post Office. We wait in line at Tesco. We stand and wait in the rain for buses. Perhaps the most elegant expression of this aptitude for patience is how we’re able to simply let restiveness wash over us, more or less, when waiting for a train. When I had to take the train to get to work, I was used to the idea that there would be a delay or cancellation; so were my bosses - if I was in late, all I’d have to say was “train”. They’d say “oh”, and that was the end of the matter.

I’ve noticed that this is not an American attribute. Whenever I go to New York I’m still astonished at how the “Time waits for no man” philosophy prevails, even if it does mean that one is risking death in one of their taxi cabs when it blasts through an intersection at Warp Factor 11.

Given the latest delay to Vista, I can only assume that Microsoft wants their users to become more British. It’s as if they’re telling us that the Vista train will be arriving soon, after delays due to signal failures near Southampton (the Bermuda Triangle of signal failures) and leaves on the line. Given the 2% drop in their share value yesterday, it appears that the New Yorkers on the Stock Exchange are still telling them to hurry up. It will be interesting to see what the result of this tension will be.

The investors should not be surprised that Microsoft is late. I was a beta tester on what was known as Windows NT 5; when I received my copy, I was warned by a colleague that it was a “bit of a dog”. Typical understatement: if it was any more of a dog, it would have carried fleas, kept me awake with howling at midnight and left copious excretal presents on the carpet. It thoroughly destroyed the test machine I used. I didn’t bother filing bug reports as it was difficult at times to tell where the errors ended and functionality began. In the end, NT 5 was so late that Microsoft’s marketing department could only put a happy face on matters by calling it “Windows 2000″.

That said, perhaps investors should be grateful that Microsoft has being delaying Vista’s launch; a hastily released product might be like Windows ME, in other words, it might become laughably infamous for being buggy and unstable.

All of this is good for Linux users. We can laugh at Microsoft’s timescales, because the delays to the last release of Ubuntu Linux were measured in weeks rather than Microsoft months, and Debian 4 is going to hit its target of being released by Christmas. We can laugh at Windows Vista’s claims of greater security, because these been blown to pieces by Symantec’s suggestion that it is going to be even more unstable than XP. We can laugh at the idea that Vista’s performance will be better than its predecessor as it’s clear that it is going to require even more powerful hardware to run.

We can also chortle at the fact that while Vista is caught in the mire, Steve Ballmer is making ridiculous statements such as “I want Microsoft to be in all of the good important big growth businesses in the world”. It’s about as preposterous a nation as the rail companies in Britain wanting to build cars when they cannot even get the trains to run on time.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the latest delay is that it only precipitated a 2% drop in Microsoft’s share value; given the proliferation of alternatives to Windows, you would think that investors would be less British, more New Yorker about Microsoft’s prospects. For the moment, though, they seem to be more or less shuffling about on the platform, reading their newspaper, cursing the delays. However unlike when a train arrives at a British station, all may not be forgiven with a sign of progress; when Vista turns up, patience may have finally run its course.

My parents are coming to West Sussex for a visit in October; I got yet another reminder of their impending visit in the past few days. Technology is on the list of things I have to prepare for them; they are both avid users of the internet, and can’t live without e-mail, even though they require my guidance to set up Thunderbird correctly.

As they’re both Mac people, I decided to try a little experiment and see how “Mac-esque” I could get Ubuntu Linux to be. Call it laziness, but I really don’t feel like explaining a whole new operating system to either of them; I love them dearly, but playing technical support does wear on one after a while.

Fortunately, there is a wealth of information about how easy it is to make one’s Ubuntu desktop into a virtual Mac clone. By far the best guide is at www.taimila.com; after following the relatively easy steps the blog describes, I sat back, astonished. For all intents and purposes, I was looking at a Mac interface…put onto the cheap desktop PC that I had assembled last week. Yes, its beige, ugly case was nothing to look at - but many of the main attractions of owning a Mac, its excellent user interface and reliability were in my grasp for a fraction of the cost.

To be absolutely fair to Apple, there are some niches in which it excels, particularly in publishing, design and video editing. However Apple is not satisfied with this rather small market, and is now trying to expand its offering to encompass those who are merely looking for an alternative to Windows. For those people, Apple is more Bling Bling than the Real Thing.

It’s difficult to be too angry at Apple; after all, the machines they build are very good looking and they also have had the good sense to base their OS on BSD. However the bling of Apple’s styling and OS come at a premium. A Mac mini with an Intel Core Solo, 512 MB of RAM, a 60 GB hard drive and Intel Integrated Graphics (which is absolutely the worst in terms of graphics rendering) costs £399. Word processing, Office and graphics software are extra. The desktop that I built with an AMD Sempron processor, a 120 GB hard drive, 1 GB of RAM and PCI-E graphics costs nearly £100 less, and includes Ubuntu’s full range of Office and Graphics software.

The extra price also does not ensure extra performance. It has been proven that Linux is faster than OS X using the G5 processor; it is also clear that it is generally more efficient on the new Intel based Macs as well. In fairness, the latter may have something to do with porting some Power PC processor based applications to the new Intel architecture.

Strip away the advantages of the user interface and performance, all that Apple has is a machine that looks very nice on one’s desk; in other words, all that’s left is the bling. One can say one spent an outrageous amount of money on one’s Apple and invite others to “ooh” and “aahh” at the slick casing of, for example, a MacBook Pro. It’s the equivalent of rap artists who used to drink Cristal champagne rather than beer just to show how upmarket they were; they obviously didn’t care about the quality of the alcohol, it’s just the status symbol and the money spent that counts.

Those of us who care about genuine value and quality have better things to do than buy pretty toys; Linux still continues to offer better value and performance than anything produced by Microsoft or Apple and still looks good while doing it. Those that produce hardware and software bling should be worried; one day the public is going to catch on; there are signs this is already occuring. Once that happens, easy to use, reliable and yes, stylish computing will no longer be the province of merely those who can afford it.

AMD has long been one of my favourite companies. As soon as their processors became available, I was one of their early adopters; I was sick of Intel, which in my mind was equivalent to Microsoft in their presumption of a monopoly. AMD seemed to go against the grain; they were sticking it to Intel and producing processors that were on a par or better than Intel for less cost.

When I was recently building a new desktop machine, there was no question in my mind about how a balance of speed, adaptablity and cost was going to be achieved, I was going to have to use an AMD processor. With an AMD Sempron 3100+ and Ubuntu Linux, I was able to build a very fast, cheap machine that is going to give me at least a few years of computing joy.

On the other hand, ATI is definitely in the enemy camp. Their Linux support in my experience, though reportedly improving, is very poor. I’ve had no end of trouble with their proprietary fglrx driver, particularly using it with the ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 chipset on my HP Compaq nx7000. Every time I’ve utilised fglrx, it’s been say a prayer and sing a hymn time; I was lucky on my Savrow Katana K90 - fortunately the ATI card on that machine is modern enough for fglrx’s liking, for now, anyway.

The idea that companies which such divergent approaches to Linux are merging, therefore, does not fill me with hope. My first reaction upon hearing of the ATI / AMD merger was “Why?” Why indeed? Who needs it more, ATI or AMD?

Whenever a merger of this type happens, we usually hear the same management twaddle about “leveraging synergies across the range of brands”. I suggest in this case, it’s ATI that needs it more; the fact that AMD is buying them, not the other way around hints at this. We have not yet seen a really good answer from ATI to Nvidia’s range of high-end graphics cards, such as the 7600. Speaking as a system builder, I have had far better results out of using Nvidia cards than ATI; speaking specifically as a Linux system builder, I can attest to the fact the Nvidia’s support for Linux is far, far better than ATI’s. Things have gotten so bad with ATI that any system I buy or build in the future will be devoid of their cards so far as I can help it.

Can AMD turn this around? They have a good base from which to start: as for Linux, AMD’s support is rock solid. Obviously they need to find whoever is writing Linux drivers for ATI and tell them to stop writing code that makes people want to fling their laptops away like a discus. They also need to ensure the people at ATI are not adhering to a cynical philosophy which fglrx’s lack of legacy support implies; namely, that people should be forced to upgrade their hardware to utilise the latest and greatest drivers. AMD is also going to have to bring their spirit of innovation and value to ATI’s rather stodgy range. In short, AMD’s culture is going to have to prevail over ATI’s.

Creating a unified culture for two merged companies is invariably tricky; at first, there is always some difficulty in getting two different corporate personalities to play nicely together. Daimler Chrysler found it took years to get the balance right; in the end, assertion of Daimler’s personality was the best way. Hopefully AMD won’t take as long to realise they are going to have to assert themselves once they’ve stormed the corridors of ATI.

If AMD is able to do this, then all may yet be well. The fglrx driver may no longer be nightmare, and AMD’s values of reliability and value may become ATI’s driving principles too. For the moment, rather like when one installs fglrx, it’s a matter of hoping, praying and waiting for the reboot.

It’s very common among Linux enthusiasts to refer to Bill Gates as the “anti-Christ” or “Darth Vader”. I tried an experiment this morning by typing “Darth” and “Bill Gates” into Google. I got 432,000 results pairing the two together.

This seems unfair. First and foremost, Darth Vader is a genuinely entertaining personality and a master of the deadpan remark (e.g., “I find your lack of faith disturbing”), while Bill Gates is about as fun to listen to as an accountant on codeine reciting a poem on the virtues of watching paint dry. What is more is the Sith and Empire have much more in common with the Linux community than the Jedi and Republic.

I can already hear the howls of outrage from science fiction and Linux geeks from one end of the globe to another. “How dare you say such a thing?” they will say - “Microsoft is the evil empire, you’ve said it yourself, Groznii!” However, as a devotee of both Linux and the Dark Side, I can’t draw that conclusion.

Let’s look at the world of Star Wars prior to Episode IV, A New Hope. In Episodes I-III, the galaxy is ruled by the Old Republic, which is shown to be bloated, inefficient, and dysfunctional. Palpatine, while a Senator, says in Episode I, “The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good.” Anakin Skywalker states in Episode II that the system “doesn’t work”. No one disagrees that there is a problem. A large, bloated organisation corrupted by greed and uninterested in the common good sounds rather like Microsoft. This impression is only enhanced by the attempt of the Confederacy of Independent Systems to try to break away; Palpatine, in his role as Chancellor, reaffirms the values of the Republic by being unwilling to allow the Republic to split in two. Padme Amidala may wish to resolve the dispute through negotiations, however she too also does not express any willingness to see the Republic divide. This indicates a rather “closed source” system of governance; rather than allow systems to strike out on their own, the Republic’s politicians are determined to see that member planets adhere to a singularity, the sole question is how much force should be used to preserve it.

In trying to maintain this order, the Jedi are rather like Microsoft’s adherents; they too cannot see an alternative to the Republic. They also cannot conceive of anything outside their rigid ideological framework that might challenge their teachings; they cannot understand the potential of innovation or inspiration to catch them out. For example, Anakin Skywalker was inspired by love for Padme and married her; the Jedi had difficulty imagining that he would disobey their key tenets so blatantly, and it cost them in the end.

In contrast, Palpatine is a figure that could have come out of Bill Gates’ nightmares. He was one man, working largely alone, who had a new idea which was going to sweep everything else aside. Rather like Linux, the Sith idea developed underground. Rather like Linux, having the right apprentices (e.g., other open source projects like Gnome and Firefox) was key. Rather like the Republic’s problems paved the way for the Sith, Microsoft’s weaknesses created the opportunities which Linux has exploited. With a full OS war underway, it appears that Microsoft is losing, particularly in serving up web applications.

The comparisons run deeper. Once Palpatine won, he continued to show an Open Source sense of solving some problems. Rather than maintain control of the Galaxy through the Senate’s single bureaucracy, in Episode IV, Palpatine abolishes it, and gives regional governors direct control, thus freeing them to govern in any way they see fit. Yes, they have to adhere to an overall framework of Empire (which can possibly be construed as Open Standards), but there is no overall single blueprint for how each of these territories is to develop.

Palpatine’s farming out of clone troops to Open Source projects was less successful. Star Wars literature informs us that after the Clone Wars, Stormtroopers were drawn from a mixture of sources, clones of a number of people and non-clone individuals, as well as clones of Jango Fett. Unfortunately as Episode IV shows, new clones which couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with 50 blaster shots were made en masse; obviously bug checking wasn’t strong enough on Version 2.0 of the Clone Trooper project.

The Sith and Empire’s fate also contain a warning for the Open Source community; they were at their best when innovating to bring down a bloated rival. Once the rival had been destroyed, some level of complacency crept in. While Palpatine’s plans were masterful, he was unable to foresee how the tiniest of elements, namely teddy bears armed with sticks, could cause them to come undone. Open Source needs to maintain momentum and a certain level of comparison to other models lest it fall as well.

Overall, however, the comparison between the Dark Side and those working on Linux appears to contain more commonalities than differences. Perhaps in future people will start claiming that Bill Gates’ thinking is about as backwards as Yoda’s speech patterns, and Linus Torvalds will step up to claim his Sith name; after all, Darth Linux seems a worthy title.

In recent days, I’ve discovered that many Linux users are operating under two false assumptions. The first false assumption is common among newbies; they think that by switching from Windows to Linux, they’re merely trading one operating system for another, and apart from improved speed, reliability and security, the two are roughly comparable. The second assumption is more typical of Linux experts; it’s the notion that Linux belongs to us hip, cool swinging experts, so noobs, shut up.

Both of these assumptions are missing a critical point about Linux. The first assumption is wrong because no, Linux is not like any other operating system; it has an educational approach at its heart and kids, you’re going back to school. The second assumption is just as wrong because the Linux Ethos demands a co-operative, collaborative approach to computing which obliges participation in the educational process, not acting like the “cool” high school seniors who smoke cigarettes in the parking lot.

It’s a truism that’s often stated, but when people first start learning about Linux, they begin to change their relationship with their computer. It changes from being a dull box from Dell to being a bunch of components, which need to be optimised in order for the sum to be greater than the whole. A greater ability to customise and control one’s machine, grants power and responsibility; it’s not like Windows where everything is done for the user and the user only has Microsoft to blame when it blows up. If you screw up, and believe me I’ve done so, it’s going to be up to you to sort it, kid. The end result is, yes, more tinkering, but also a system which is more suited to what the user wants to do.

It’s an educational process; in my case, I have been in technology for 23 years (my father brought home my first computer when I was 10); however I regard the experiences I’ve had with Linux as being the most interesting and informative lessons in computing I’ve ever had. Other users have reported the same.

As education is part of using Linux, and given the absence of formal technical support (unless you want to pay through the nose), then it becomes the obligation of the existing Linux community to maintain a helpful attitude, and to document their experiences in order to help those who are still learning. It’s a small price to pay for getting all of one’s software for free. Those smoking cool kids who insist that Linux should belong to experts and no one else are impeding growth and progress.

It is also the obligation of the community to assist the educational process in other ways; for example, if you find a bug, report it. This is not like Microsoft where a bug will blithely be dismissed as a design feature. Reading, testing, sharing, reporting - these are all actions which the Linux Ethos demands.

It is fair to say that this Ethos was established when Linus Torvalds first released his operating system. Those who are unfamiliar about the “Post that Got Linux Rolling”, here is what he said -

From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

Hello everybody out there using minix -
I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them

Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS. Yes - it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi threaded fs.

It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.

Note how Linus was soliciting feedback and assistance so early in the project; by doing so, he was embedding the operating system with this unique set of principles. This has developed organically, and of course, not everyone believes in it. However, collaborative, experimental, educational computing with a supportive process of change is continuing to win victories in the marketplace and with users. Not explaining the Linux Ethos to new users will damage their experience with the OS; forgetting the Ethos will mean obstacles to continued progress.

Hopefully now that Windows is falling to pieces and projects like Ubuntu Linux are recruiting vast numbers of new users, the Ethos will not fall by the wayside. It would be a shame if it did; nothing would be a more sure recipe for Linux to lose its way.