A Man and his Penguin

No greeting card templates

"OOo needs GREETING CARD TEMPLATES!!! Until Linux has a decent greeting card support from OOo or anything, it will be a consumer also-ran. "

Regardless of the fact that I don't think anyone uses an OFFICE suite to create greeting cards, I somehow don't think that the huddling Windows-using hoardes will all switch to Linux as soon as there's a program or template specifically for creating greeting cards.

Otherwise, they'd already be using KreetingKards on KDE! http://blog.gobanquet.com/index.php/openoffice-3-has-pdf-import-native-aqua-ui-tara-reid/

"Linux doesn't support wireless"

The integrated wireless card on my motherboard works perfectly out-of-the-box. Right now I'm surfing wirelessly - quite pointless at the moment as the router is 1 meter away from me, but I'll be able to move the new computer into the house whenever I want to.

Both WEP and WPA are working. No module compiling, no Ndiswrapper - just pure and simple out-of-the-box operation on a brand new card.

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Network Manager shows two other wireless networks in the area. The first, Nettleton Home, is secured with WPA. The other, Family Network, uses WEP. I thought "Whoo hoo, I'll just apt-get Airsnort and leech off their Internet connection!", but when I actually went to the Airsnort documentation, I discovered that you need to intercept millions of packets in order to discover their password. And this family only sent 150 packets in ten minutes!

Oh, I'm sure that if I kept it running for a couple of days, they would use their connection more and I'd eventually get enough packets, but it would be a lot of effort and I wouldn't actually leech off their connection (I'd just retrieve one or two web pages to prove my superiority :-).

The other big news is that Unreal Tournament runs fine in Wine, and UT2004 almost does :-(  I have the Unreal Anthology which doesn't come with the Linux installers, so I was thrilled to see a HOWTO online about installing UT2004 from the online patch and the Anthology DVD! I just had a game then - it works well, except the sound is a little crackly, and occasionally it un-fullscreens for a few seconds.

EDIT: Just now I had some trouble with my sound through my headphones - it sounded like it was outputting only the rear channels through the headphones, as it was very quiet and sounded like a karaoke filter had been put through it. I was fiddling around with everything I could think of until I realised that the headphones were busted. Damn! I can't really afford to get a new pair right now, as I've just spend shedloads of money on this new computer. Well, I can afford them, but I'd prefer not to spend any money for a while now.

Reason #4: The Gimp was slower at opening 250 images than Photoshop!

I kid you not. From the Ubuntu Forums (I'll paraphrase):

I tried opening 250 digital photos in The Gimp on the latest Ubuntu, and it was slower to open them than Photoshop on a 6-year-old version of Windows! And then, rather than resize them in my actual image editing program, I tried using one program on Kubuntu to resize and upload to Flickr, and it doesn't resize! If Linux on the desktop is going to succeed, then basic functionality like this needs to be sorted.

Basic functionality? Mr Average Joe is waiting eagerly to switch to Linux, as soon as he can open 250 photos in The Gimp just to look at them. Yeah. Mr Joe already has a $1000 copy of Adobe Photoshop, apparently, to compare against, yet he's not knowledgeable enough to think of looking for another program, one which will do the Flickr resizing for him.

Reason #3: It can't securely delete files

From the Ubuntu Forums:

I decided to look for a file shredder that could be used in Ubuntu/ Kubuntu, I could find no such program. My question to people in the Linux community is this: if Linux is so "secure" then why is there not a Linux file shredder? (after all, when you "delete" a file it is not erased like file shredders do,the file is simply "Ignored" and remains on the hardrive for all to see when you get rid of your computer.) I would switch to Linux Ubuntu in a heartbeat if there was a file shredder for it, hands down. Unfortunately I had to switch back to Windows XP since it has file shredders written for it.
I would also like to add that if Linux is to ever Trump Windows completly, it needs to have a file shredder to prove once and for all that Linux is the most secure operating system.

How simple: To conquer the desktop, all Linux needs is a program to completely delete files. Why didn't I think of that? The hordes of Average Joes are queuing up to use Linux as soon as you can overwrite files with zeros.

The first reply on that thread:

Try the command 'shred'.

I love it when n00bs are put in their place. Incidentally, I find it hilarious that he's so overly concerned about people finding his discarded data, yet he's not using Bitlocker (which would encrypt all his past and present data in his home directory).

Reason #2: It has a command-line

I've heard this "ordinary users will use Windows simply because it doesn't need a command line" argument so many times. And some |\|00|b trotted it out again today, so I've added it to my "Worst Reasons why Linux isn't desktop-ready" list.

Think back to the 1980s and early 1990s. There were three operating systems in use on desktops: Mac OS Classic, DOS and Windows 3.1/95.

Of these, Mac OS Classic was the only completely-GUI operating system, without a command-line. The other two were totally command-line, or were GUI but required users to learn commands in order to setup the system and programs.

Of these, Mac OS Classic had the smallest install base. Yes, more people ran DOS on desktops than ran Mac.

So don't give us that twaddle about "People will always choose Windows because it doesn't have a command line". It's a good idea to reduce the dependence on the CLI, as it's not an intuitive interface, but quit with the FUD already.

Besides, as many of you will already know (I've mentioned it a few times on this blog already), the first day I had a Windows machine I wanted to batch-encode 5 albums of MP3s to WMA. I downloaded Windows Media Encoder, but it only transcoded one song at a time - what, should I have quit my job? I found out that WME had a command-line utility, so I ended off using the MS-DOS Prompt to tell it to encode all the file in the directory. Quick and easy.

So I actually had to use the Windows command-line on my very first day with a PC.

#1 - Floppy Drives

Welcome to the newest section of the blog!

This is why I personaly think Linux doesn't stand a chance in taking over windows...

Can someone point out to me what I'm doing wrong. I'm running Ubuntu Edgy and trying to mount the floppy drive #sudo mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy and getting the following error.

mount: dev/fd0 is not a valid block device

I feel bad laughing at n00bs, but he was really asking for it. Having an isolated problem mounting floppy disks (floppy disks!) is why Linux won't take over more desktop marketshare. I'm sure there are millions of Windows users who are looking longingly at Linux, wishing it would support all sorts of ancient technology (not in a Stargate SG-1 sense) so they can finally switch over.

I personally am disgusted at Compaq for not designing my computer with an inbuilt punchcard reader. It's a basic essential!

EDIT: I found another post on Ubuntu Forums worthy of writing about. The person is asking if his computer is powerful enough to run Ubuntu, and he describes his computer as being "Pentium 2 with 192k of RAM". This guy isn't dumb though - just got confused, like the man my father worked with back when we changed to the metric system, who got confused between centimeters and kilometers.