Ubuntu still looks ugly. Vista or Mac OSX need not worry.

Actually its not fair to say Ubuntu. It should be "Gnome" and "KDE" look ugly (but more Gnome is just fuglier). I am talking about the default out of the box configurations and not something customized to the extreme with Beryl and Emerald. Whenever I try out a new Linux one of the first things I try to get working is Beryl just so I can get the non-GPLed themes and use "Visa smoked glass" which is the best looking that is legible Vista like theme. Then tweak all the shortcuts to make it make sense for me. Using Beryl gives me that choice, but Beryl is not instantly setup with any Linux I have tried as of yet. Maybe in a year or so the top Linux distros would have caught up to something that would match what Vista comes out of the box. Although I would've preferred LunaQQ with the vista like close buttons. But in the end I got this However, I think it would be a while before we get some form of consistency with the applications because of this stupid KDE/QT vs Gnome/GTK choice we have to deal with. In KDE's defense, I don't think they are far off from good user interface design. Their defaults may suck as much as Gnome, but the first thing they ask is what you would prefer (which I choose Windows since that is what I am used to). Gnome doesn't give you that option or at least not that easily. I'd rather drop Gnome and use KDE for my apps, unfortunately Eclipse and Firefox (with StumbleUpon) are Gnome based. This is the same stupidity I find with SWT vs Swing. I wish that SWT just get merged with the JDK already and make Swing just use the SWT widgets at the same time getting rid of the theming thing. I'm all for Java, but seeing OpenOffice have their fonts anti-aliased using the old way rather than the sub-pixel smoothing method really irks me. I like consistency in my interface. I didn't like the Borland widgets when they came out with it and MS Office with their different fangled menus and Eclipse and FireFox themes (fortunately their default pulls a lot from the desktop environment theme already). Anyway back to Linux or more specifically X. Some all knowing wise guy up there decided that X should define mechanism and not policy. Nice goal, but now we have toolkits coming out left right and center. Maybe if Xt was more usable and portable. I mean how many different kinds of buttons/scroll bars would we need to see? Plus "Sans" is still one of the worst fonts ever for people with lower resolutions or who want to have as much stuff on the screen as possible. Its too bloody wide and you don't get the full CJK fonts. On Windows Tahoma is better, but Segoe UI of Vista is so much better and on XP you get CJK things rendering correctly for your file names and not boxes with hex values. I can't remember if it was GTK or QT that had this problem, but drop down boxes are not available to keyboard users (meaning you cannot tab to it). Lots of the applications I used in Linux have no sense of tab order sometimes. I think it was Evolution that had one of the more demented tab ordering for their contacts. Also aside from Mandriva, none of Mint, Ubuntu, PCBSD and FreeBSD set my monitor which is 1680x1050 correctly in xorg.conf. Yah I can do it manually, but that comes with experience of using Linux and X since Slackware was the only distribution out there. The package system on any distribution I have used all have potential flaws when you want to deviate from the norm. Especially since not everyone makes .deb or .rpm for every distro out there. (Choice presents this problem), the only choice you may have is to compile things yourself. And if you do something as large as KDE on Mandriva, you may break too many things (like I did) and just start over from scratch again (like I did, but at least I got to try Mint because of it). At least with Windows and Mac its not much of a moving target for device makers as well. Windows may need to deal with installation of drivers while mac doesn't as much, but at least the drivers and support software are more likely to be available and tested well than it would be for Linux. Case in point, my Nokia 6230i cell phone. After a lot of googling I finally got it to be recognized over bluetooth and gnokii can get some data off the cell phone. But there is no sync facility yet that works correctly at least in the released versions. In Windows, all I have to do is install the code bloat of a software known as PC Suite. In a Mac I just make my phone discoverable and let the Mac find it and Calendar and Addressbook just syncs up correctly. And then you get these Linux fanboys that just say get a new cell phone. "No thank you very much, I'll just stick and recommend that people use the OS that comes with their system which is usually Windows or MacOS". They already paid for it anyway. Using Linux has a cost, its not money (unless you buy Mandriva PowerPack), but time. Setting up Windows may take a whole 30 minutes plus another 30 for Office and another hour to download the updates, but Linux takes 30 minutes to install everything and an hour to get Beryl or some nice window manager working, and about 3 hours configuring things to get things just right. Macs are just happy out of the box, but they do cost a lot (so I don't have one for myself, my wife does have one), and I can fix things in Windows if I have to, Linux as well, but with more time. read more | digg story

Back to Windows XP for the nth time: Mandriva sucks

Well recently I tried Mandriva 2007 on my desktop PC hoping to find a replacement for Windows as a desktop OS. Unfortunately I switched back to Windows again. Guess I am stuck with Windows XP for a while longer (unless I choose to get a new computer that is). I think the clincher was that rdesktop (a free MS Terminal Services Client) does not repaint correctly when I scroll up through code in Eclipse or a list of emails in Notes (it is only when I go up, down scrolling works fine). The problem also manifests when I collapse a branch in a tree widget in Eclipse. I use rdesktop a lot so if this does not work correctly, then its a hard abort (just like the lack of network scanner, network printer, network fax and Bluetooth cellphone sync). Too bad though, I've tweaked KDE to work almost the way I wanted (I even got rid of that trash can). Which is basically like Ubuntu's Gnome default, but with a little tweak here and there. Some things that I didn't like with the KDE UI are:

• The menu buttons in the panel can only be icons. I wanted it to be text in certain situations since I use "tiny" size on my panel it takes a bit of dexterity to click on the small icon. Gnome is okay with this one.
• Xgl does not support multiple desktops with KDE. Gnome is okay with this one.
• Right clicking on the Trash panel icon does not bring up the context menu so I can empty it.
• Alt-F2 for the run menu instead of "Window-R"
• "Window-R" brings up the K-menu instead of the run dialog
• "Window-F" brings up the K-menu instead of the find dialog
• Basically the Window key + anything brings up the K-menu rather than treating it like a modifier. I think this is a limitation on the X server itself rather than KDE or Gnome.
• I can't seem to get the desktop widgets to popup. But then I haven't googled much on this one.

With all the complaints about KDE, why do I even bother? Well some key things that pushed me towards KDE:

• Bluetooth worked. I can see and transfer files to my Nokia 6230i. Although I still couldn't get it to sync. In Gnome, it sees my cell phone, but does not make any associations with it.
• I like Kopete because it gives me some hope that my webcam may work. Although it doesn't.
• I like the notion of KWallet which stores all the passwords in one convenient location. Although Firefox does not use it.
• I like the Crystal window decoration (its like cheap Vista). Though I am pretty sure if I try hard enough, I would be able to pull that in Gnome anyway.
• KDE has an automatic wallpaper switcher built in.
• KDE's file browser acts like a browser rather than the way Windows 95 used to work. Although there was a setting to change that in Gnome hidden in gconf so I was able to get around that limitation.

I've gotten a bit further with the network printer on Mandriva than I did with Ubuntu or PC-BSD. I see the printer in the CUPS server, but I still cannot print. Nor can I scan or fax. Although Mandriva pulls in the Microsoft TrueType fonts such as Tahoma and Trebuchet MS. It still was not able to pull in my new favourite UI font: Segoe UI. So my UI still does not look a clean cut as my patched XP using Luna QQ. Mandriva also uses Firefox 1.5 and since it is just an RPM based system, you have to go grab 2.0 yourself and to the installation yourself rather than relying on an RPM installer. The excuse being that 2.0 is buggy. There is no BitTorrent client that is in Mandriva's packages either. I had to download and install KTorrent manually through downloaded RPMs. Unfortunately, I couldn't even get any downloads started with the thing. It does not "just work" like uTorrent does for Windows. The software update function of Mandriva has no "select all" in their package update UI. This means that I have to individually select the updates and click on apply. It is too bad that Mandriva was not enough to get me to switch yet. I liked how a lot of things just worked out of the box unlike Ubuntu. However, there are still some major glitches with it in terms of a full user experience. So it will just be remaining in its partition almost never to be used again.

Retrying Linux for the nth time: Mandriva Linux

I've lost count on how many times I have tried to use Linux as a desktop OS. However, I may have found the one good one out of the sea of annoyances. Mandriva Linux 2007. I burned the DVD ISO image and plopped it onto my DVD ROM drive. I didn't really expect it to work though, I didn't know if I can boot DVD ISO images. I guess I could. One thing I didn't like with the installation package was that it installs first then does post install configuration. That should be turned around and only give us configuration then install. However, the rest were easy enough for an impatient techie like me to understand. It also asked for a root password. I think because of Ubuntu and the Mac OSX, I expect the usage of a root account should be a thing of the past now. But I guess Mandriva is still stuck in that time zone. The system then procedes to ask me about creating new users. I think this procedure should be moved to after the system has been installed already and it was the first boot up. Like Windows (and if I recall like the Mac as well). Another minor nit is the avatar selection, there is no way of moving back in the selection, granted the selections looked pretty mediocre. Well aside from that the hardware detection was much better! It detected I have an NVidia card and asked if I wanted to use the proprietary drivers (which I said yes). I was also happy to see that my monitor resolution was detected properly (unlike Ubuntu 6.06 and PC-BSD which only registered 1280x1024 rather than 1680x1050). It couldn't find my printer though. It seemed to have lost the network connection in the middle of install (I assume it worked before since it didn't complain about the NTP selection). I will try it in a bit to see if it would print to my network printer. It defaults to LILO as the boot loader, which I changed to Grub, maybe I should've just kept it as Lilo, their Grub graphical boot loader screen looks fugly. It also defaults to KDE, but I wanted to see Gnome with the Xgl stuff running. Which I didn't see yet mind you. Maybe I should've left more of the defaults on. Also one other thing that made me happy was the installation actually worked with just my first run through. The Ubuntus after 6.06 (6.10 and Fiesty Fawn) were giving weird errors on my system (like kernel: not found or just not starting up at all. Anyway, this is my first boot up and post on Mandriva. Which may become the OS I replace Windows with. Of course it has to pass the following tests still:

• Nokia 6230i Bluetooth cell phone sync
• Print on the Brother MFC-240CN on network mode
• Scan on the Brother MFC-240CN on network mode
• Fax on the Brother MFC-240CN on network mode, and
• Allow me to chat with a Logitech webcam on Yahoo! and MSN networks.

Ubuntu sucks

Just had to vent it out. I tried to use Ubuntu on my T40 laptop after I accidentally irrecoverably corrupted my data partition because of Partition Magic merge partition operation. The blog title will most likely stir up some flames, very little though since I am not that popular.

Ubuntu Desktop was my first foray into Linux after a long period of time, just going on the hope that Linux would've improved on the desktop. I've been using FreeBSD as a server for a long period, but never really took the plunge to switching away from Windows as a Desktop. I didn't bother with FreeBSD because of VMWare's and other virtual machine implementation's lack of support for it as a host OS.

The out of the box experience was quite good (excellent even), and went relatively flawlessly, provided I hook up the laptop to the wired LAN, as wireless didn't seem to work out of the box for me. I liked the time zone selection where it zooms in on a map, makes it easier to select Toronto.

After everything was installed, came the problems that I had hoped would've cleared itself up by now.  Especially since it was time to install some of the apps I would like to use such as VMWare which the RPM I downloaded didn't install by just double-clicking on it, instead I had to google some long instructions on how to set the thing up.

As I was surfing, I found that the "scroll" feature of my TrackPoint was not working. Fortunately I googled some instructions on how to do this. So my scrolling is a bit happier now that I don't have to go all the way to the right.

After Windows was installed on my VMWare, I switched to a slightly higher resolution... 800x600. And something appeared that I didn't expect... "scrollbars" and this was with autosize. It seems that the default theme of Ubuntu takes up so much screen space with the dual panel bars and all. So for now I just lived with it.

The next thing I decided to lookup was some FAQ for an old game I was currently playing. The bloody thing didn't layout properly. It finally dawned on me that this wide font called "Sans" which is used everywhere in Ubuntu is quite wide. Please note, this is not just Ubuntu that I have seen this on, I have also seen it in other Linuxes and I hated that font on every system I have been on. Note to the UI guys, not everyone has a wide screen (even if I have one at home, my laptop is just 1024x768). The fonts themselves are quite fuzzy, unlike the default fonts from Windows up to XP that switch to bitmap so they look quite sharp. Even when the ClearType is turned on, the fonts do not take up that much more space as this Sans font. However, the Chinese fonts were one of the best I have seen. It looks like it was done using a Mo-pit (Chinese handwriting brush).

Network setup with the applet that Ubuntu provides by default is such a Fugly tool. I switched it with the NetworkManager applet which does a better job. Next thing I hit was a the speed test site I use, out of a lark. The site uses Java. So I tried to click on it and as expected it required a manual install. So I went to www.java.com to download the RPM and as expected, the thing didn't work.  Oh well, google found me something else though that helped me install it.

Skimming through more of it, I found out about EasyUbuntu which made life a whole lot easier I guess for the other plugins. I think that should've been a part of the original install as an option (because of licensing issues) rather than me trying to find out about it myself. And after setting up the components with EasyUbuntu, Firefox looked a lot saner now, when it came to fonts and such. I also wish SimpleKDE was used too. Oh well, I guess simplicity is not one of Linux's strong points anyway

I also noted some artifacts appearing in the buttons I had when I told Ubuntu to update the driver database -- which I expected to download new driver data rather than expect me to say what I found. Apparently, I am not the only one with the artifact problem. But by doing the fix, watching videos would be rendered choppy, so I reverted back. I tried using the fglrx driver, no luck, can't find my video device. I then tried to connect to my work using the AT&T network client. This took a bit to get installed because it was missing a library and the Add/Remove tool that comes with Ubuntu didn't show a list of libraries that I can download. Fortunately, google helped out with this page. So I was able to get the program installed.

Unfortunately its such an old version compared to Windows I can't use it. This was basically the clincher. I would've expected things to improve in terms of package management, at least I was hoping for something as good as the xBSD ports collection. But Linux seems to be polluted with .deb, .rpm and .tar.gz distributions with no standardized way of installing things (or at least with double-click simplicity and security risks like Windows).

The BSDs do have the same sort of problem as well, especially with the PBI that PCBSD made up, I am not sure about the differences with the PKGs and Ports, but ports work very well for me. So I decided maybe I'll just shrink this thing down and work with it later and use Windows instead. At least everything I need works. So I tried to installed qtparted and gparted. No luck, the programs just refuse to install. I just remembered that I it might just be available in the LiveCD and it was, so I am running the resize to see how it will go. Unfortunately, no luck. The partition does not want to resize itself. I guess it will have to be wiped out.

At least I kept track of what I have been doing sort of on this blog entry in case I want to run through the thing again, probably when Ubuntu 7 comes out and RPM + DEB merge into a common format that is acceptable to all linux distibutions. (update: I have tried going through this ordeal on my main PC just now).