Happy Belated Anniversary, LinuxMigrante!

Oh, no, I missed the fifth anniversary of Megatotoro's blog, La Esquina de Un Migrante a Linux!

This blog was created on May 21, 2010.  Because of the author's commitment to sharing his knowledge about Linux, I have learned many useful tricks.

Thanks to this blog, among other things, my daughter enjoys a computer with PicarOS, my wife played games like Passage, and I learned how to configure GRUB for multiboot.


Megatotoro writes about fun and crazy stuff, as having a Buddhist cow in your computer, or about bold experiments with Linux in stressing situations.  One thing is sure: the writer in the corner of migration to Linux has never been afraid to toe the line when trying the new resources that FLOSS offers.

May you continue posting for many years to come, Megatotoro! 

Happy Anniversary, LinuxMigrante!

Tomorrow Megatotoro's blog, La Esquina de un Migrante a Linux, will celebrate its 3rd Anniversary.

Although Megatotoro migrated to Linux a bit later than I did, he took his migration seriously and learned a lot of Linux tricks before I did, all thanks to Mepis, Pardus, and AntiX, his distros of choice.

I have learned quite a bit reading his entries.

Thank you and happy anniversary!  Keep up the good work!

Happy Birthday, Esquina de un Migrante!

Megatototoro's blog, La Esquina de un migrante a Linux is celebrating its first anniversary tomorrow.

This blog has brought unforgettable stories, such as "Planning to migrate to Linux? Beware!!!", or curious images, such as the GNU/Linux & BSD Zoo.

I, for one, have profited from the accounts and experiences recorded there. I learned Linux tweaks and about viruses from Megatotoro's blog. And I have had a lot of fun reading his humorous stories, too.

Congratulations and keep up the good work! May this Linux Corner remain among us for a long time!

And I thought I was daring!

Those who saw the 1989 movie entitled "Dead Poets Society" might remember Mr. Keating's romantic words concerning "living life to the fullest". As the English teacher, he would use the powerful poetry of Walt Whitman and Robert Frost, among others, to urge his students to break out from the shell and be daring.

Yesterday, I posted an entry on how I decided to use Linux and Open Office in my yearly report presentation for the University Professor Assembly, and I really thought I was being daring then.

However, I realized that there are others who are far more daring than I was or could have been. How about risking your chances of finishing your studies in a graduate program to prove that open source software and Linux can be used in a demanding professional context? Read about this experience here.

That is being daring!

On Variety and Linux

Ernest Hemingway once said that one cat just leads to another. Somehow, the same happens with Linux: rarely is it that penguin lovers only try one distribution. Of course, the enormous variety of distributions can be frightening to beginners but, once they get over this initial reaction of confusion or fear, if they decide to learn, they benefit from the vast assortment that Linux provides. Yes, one Linux leads to another. Once you try several Linux distributions, you pick your favorite one and, in the process, you learn to navigate several other OSs. Today, that is TRULY A GOOD THING.

Of course, it has been argued that it is this same variety that scares potential migrants away from the free operating system. This idea is true up to a certain extent. First, Windows hegemony has been grounded on a myth that is beginning to fall: people once believed that the learning curve of a different-than-Windows OS was high. We know that Linux can be as friendly as any other OS. I have seen cases of computer users who made no progress in Windows, but once they got Linux, they felt more at ease when using their computers. On the other hand, Windows XP users have refused to adopt Vista 7 because they are also afraid of the learning curve. So, this idea that Linux is difficult to use is slowly fading away.

The other situation that is contributing to overthrow fear of options is fueled by Microsoft itself. Users who like to customize their systems have become frustrated with the rigidity of Windows 7 Starter or certain well-known problems that the latest MS OS displays, such as the auto-arrange Windows feature. In other words, the less-is-best policy that MS enforces does not seem to satisfy users anymore. Therefore, as users grow more experienced, they abandon this sense of fear of destroying the system if they tweak here and there. Hence, they demand OPTIONS. Options are the threshold of FREEDOM, one of the ideas that the Penguin OS champions.

Of course, recalcitrance is high. Some blame Ubuntu's flops for migrants that go back to Windows. However, even so, there are people who resist going back because of what Microsoft is doing (check the case of the restaurant manager here).

The stagnant adoption of Windows 7 and the possibility of Ballmer paying for it with his job prove that MS's hegemony is cracking up. The world is changing and Linux users are presently more prepared to face the advent of a new paradigm. Why? Well, in a post-globalized world, plurality is perceived as an opportunity, not as a disadvantage. Linux users can handle MORE than one operating system. One day, to get a job, having that ability will be as important as speaking a foreign language is.

In the OS World Championship, I'm rooting for Mandriva (FRANCE). Yet, I am typing this post from Linux Mint (Ireland)...And I love using Mepis (USA) and feel very comfortable with Pardus (Turkey). Yes, diversity ensures survival.

What does it all mean?

This is a string of facts that led me to several questions for which I lack a proper answer. However, since I do not fear the curse of philosophers, here they go:

A. THE FIRST PUBLIC LINUX COMPUTER

Although I personally dislike Canonical, I must confess that, to say the least, it was heartwarming to see a public computer displaying Ubuntu's aubergine desktop for the first time. I ran into it by coincidence as I was having lunch in a very small cafeteria near my house. It is the first non-Windows computer I have run into in my city and, of course, I felt happy because I found ONE LINUX system in the open at last.

When I mentioned the fact to the manager, a man over sixty, his reply made me think about something that is boiling in developing countries, a side-effect of Microsoft's licenses policy that is doing a disservice to Ballmer's cause: lawsuits on piracy. The manager of this small business said to me that he had installed Linux on the cafeteria's public computer "because it was important to protect himself against piracy". Honestly, I would have expected a reply that went more on the line of "I need to protect my computer against viruses", but his answer revealed his business wisdom to me. As a costumer, I was concerned for computer security. Yet, as the manager, he was concerned about staying on business. This man had it clear that a virus that can destroy a $2000 computer would inflict a minor harm to his investment but, if had he installed Windows 7 illegally, the possibilities for his blooming business to go through the drain would have been extremely high. How can he survive one of the choking lawsuits that Microsoft wages? Therefore, he decided that, if his costumers need to browse the web or to quick-type a document, Linux provides him a win-win solution. And it makes sense because this man's reasoning grants him an indirect advantage: his computer will spend less time in service.

Can this become a new trend, something that Microsoft itself spawned and was not expecting?

Update: Because of certain glitches, the manager says that he feels inclined to switch to... Linux MINT!

B. DELL AND UBUNTU

Dell certainly knows about the security facts described above, as does any Linux user. However, the ambivalent policy that Dell keeps undermines its Linux partner, Canonical. I mean, Dell did advertise that Ubuntu was SAFER than Windows but, maybe because of hidden pressure from Redmond, the statement on the Dell site was modified to read "UBUNTU IS SAFE" (read about it here).

This is interesting because Dell mostly sells computers running Windows. They were saying "Ubuntu is safer than Windows...don't you want to buy a Windows computer from us? No? Well, there's always Ubuntu." Very motivating...

Dell's INVISIBLE LINUX discourse is not helping anyone. I thought they had figured it out by now.

Who are they trying to please...Canonical, Microsoft, or costumers?


C. POPULARITY AND MANDRIVA

Along with this thread of INVISIBLE LINUX, I noticed that, a little after the Spring release, Mandriva stayed at the top of visit count on Distrowatch for three days. I am currently using this distro and I cannot hide the fact that I love it. Nevertheless, knowing that the company that develops it was on the verge of extinction, one cannot help but ask two questions:

Is Mandriva SA actually devising a strategy to effectively advertise their great distribution?

What will happen to Mandriva (the distribution) in the future?


D. FREE INTERNET ACCESS FOR EVERYONE!

I heard on the news that a congress person proposed this project to grant free internet access to all Costa Ricans as a way to help in the development of the country. This is an ambitious measure that is backed up by studies that show that education and opportunities have a positive impact on societies. Well, that sounds great but the government is actually fighting the main universities because of budget issues. So, we have contradictory policies here: the government wants people to have access to tools, but it is reducing the opportunities for the institutions that can contribute to the education of people and, therefore, to the development of the country. But is this realistic? After all, if all Costa Ricans eventually get free access to Internet, the measure will be useless unless citizens can get an affordable computer with an OS and, obviously, a browser!

I blame the government for their ignorance. However, they are politicians, so what can you expect? But I also blame national universities for their ambivalence. Take the University of Costa Rica, for instance. They spend a lot of money on licenses for Microsoft to have the gigantic administrative apparatus working (letters, memos, emails, etc). The actual President of the Republic, Ms. Laura Chinchilla, once proposed the reduction of state costs by introducing a project favoring OPEN SOURCE in government institutions. The University of Costa Rica could do the same. This is a good time to promote Linux here in Costa Rica, right, Mandriva?

Why doesn't the University of Costa Rica promote Linux and Open Source if the institution is facing budget cuts?

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I think that, whether or not these questions remain unanswered, time will tell. What I know is that these are changing times and we need to break away from old paradigms to be able to face the future. You read about changes everywhere: the slow decline of traditional industries (music & software, for instance), the foreseen death of the PC and the advent of the tablet, the flux from the desktop to mobile devices and back, the cloud... In other words, the world is changing and people must change with it.

What does it all mean? Making stereotypes aside, these are times in which a sixty-something restaurant manager decides to install an alternative OS and knows that there are other Linux choices out there to experiment with. So, do you still believe that the younger generations will be like us, who grew up under the spell of Microsoft and knew Windows and nothing else?

I believe that, in the 21st Century, thanks to the post-global reality of developing countries, people will need to speak more than two languages to land a job...and they will have to know how to operate a computer using MORE than a single operating system as well. I remember the days in which including "Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet" in a CV would give the candidate an edge. Today, that impresses no one, but try "Experience with GNU/Linux operating systems" and let's see how that goes.

Smoke Screens and Linux

In my net surfings, I have encountered that smoke screens about Linux security are becoming popular. The way in which certain threat alerts were made public amused me. I believe that there was a malicious intention to discredit the Penguin OS using slanted information behind the sensationalist hype.

I found one smoke screen in Yahoo. The feature was a post titled: "Linux Trojan Raises Malware Concerns". I guess the point was to make Linux beginners question their choice. After all, if we migrate to Linux to feel safer and this OS is as vulnerable as Windows, why the bother? However, the strategy did not work so well because even Linux newbies could see beyond the alarming news. (You can read a Linux beginner's nice response about this story here). The original news read "a vast collection of Linux systems may, in fact, be pwned". Let's see:
1. According to statistics, Linux has the 1% of the desktop market.
2. The threat was neither found in the official repositories of "major" Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, Mandriva, etc) nor in "minor" ones (Mepis, Zenwalk, Pardus).
3. Users had to download and install the infected file themselves from a site (This means we are not talking about MOST beginners, who are becoming familiar with the repositories of their distros).
4. The file is a tarball. For computer beginners, installing one of those is like changing the computer processor.
5. The infected file is for chatting using a specific platform.
6. The threat was not likely to have compromised enterprise Linux servers (where more Linux systems are found).

Then, what does "a vast collection of systems" mean here?
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Why aren't people buying these things so easily anymore? I have the theory that, while the success of Windows was the ignorance of the user, Linux communities teach their users and this knowledge empowers people. After all, in the 21st Century, more computer users are awakening. Little by little, we are breaking this shell of fear and gullibility and we are beginning to see through the smoke generated to make us stumble. We read. We check. We double-check. We participate in forums and get informed.
Above all, beginner Linux users are abandoning herd mentality.

Linux: Beyond an OS

I was considering writing about something that characterizes Linux and that makes it particularly different from Windows and Mac OSX...However, it won't be necessary as this post in "La Esquina de un Migrante a Linux" summarizes what I have seen.

Read it here in English and here in Spanish.