Ardent Meridian

Well, it’s been two and a half months since I started setting up my Linux environment for this project and in that time I needed to focus on actual productive work, rather than evaluating operating systems.  So in a few days I will return to that task.

The Linux setup sits on its dedicated drive in the same state I left it in.  Since starting on that I have not even had time to put Windows 7 on a disc and take that for a proper test drive on my primary hardware.  That will likely get added to the list of systems I evaluate, though based on using it on some secondary machines, while it really is what Vista should have been, it’s a useful if unnecessarily expensive upgrade.

More on this project in the near future.

This evening I began my installation of Linux for my operating system evaluation experiment.  For my non-desktop needs I typically use RedHat, though it is not something I would find especially desirable  as a desktop environment.

For this experiment I decided to give Ubuntu 9.04 a try.  I have used a variety of other Linux distributions over the years, and all have had their ups and downs.  Ubuntu seems to get the bulk of the desktop-centric press lately, and it is Debian-based (or at least derived) – something I have built from source in the past, so it seems a good candidate for my experiment.

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I have been writing code, in one form or another, for over 30 years.  I’ve built games at a hobby level, business and entertainment software at a commercial/shrink-wrapped level, and had my hand in projects that have, individually, touched almost half a billion people.

In short, I know my craft.

During that time, across the many and varied projects I have been involved in, I have worked with a wide variety of extremely smart and talented developers, some incredibly talented graphic artists and animators, and several musicians whose creations can literally move the soul.

These people have talent, dedication, skill and creativity – not to mention more ideas for things they want to try or tackle than they will ever have time for in their life-times.

During my time in the software world, there is another class of person I have come across repeatedly.  Some of them consider themselves “designers”, others just say they are “ideas people”.  But one thing they have all had in common is a near total absence of any actual skill or ability at all.

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I wrote last year about the battery life of the iPhone 3G, following on from lots of forum chat about perceived issues with it.  At the time I maintained those issues were down to people playing with their phones more as they were new and/or that those people were new to Smart Phones and simply had unrealistic expectations.

Well, the new iPhone 3GS is available, along with claims of improved battery life compared to the 3G and, of course, the ‘net is full of people complaining about battery life – when the numbers they are posting are very much in line with Apple’s claims.

So I thought it my be interesting to repeat the same kind of thing I did with my 3G and compare it with the new 3GS.

The image to the left here shows the results of me charging the phone to full and then using it as I normally would in the course of a day.

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I have completed the setup of the first two systems, specifically my primary Vista x64 instance and the OS X build.  Rather than taking my existing configurations for these systems, I started from scratch with bare drives.

This was partly out of a desire to keep things pure, and also because my primary Vista installation was something I did nearly 18 months ago and much of what was involved there has been forgotten and/or has changed.

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As a professional software engineer/architect I make frequent use of all three of today’s primary PC operating systems – Windows, OS X and Linux on a regular basis.

To this point, each of them has fulfilled a specific role, or been required for a particular purpose.  And, while I do categorize and view them differently, I have no religious preference for any of them.

They are facilitators, environments, for running other software and tools which I use in both my personal and professional life.

For a good while now I have been wondering just how well each might fulfill the role of my primary desktop operating system.

I do not, necessarily, believe there is one single environment that can meet all of the needs I currently have of my primary desktop, but I am interested in finding out which might be the most generally applicable and, perhaps, most pleasurable to work with.

I spend a great deal of time working at my computer, so if there are things I can do that make the experience either more productive, or more enjoyable, then they are worth evaluating in a frank and honest manner.

That is the purpose of this experiment; to spend a week each with Windows, OS X and Linux as my primary desktop operating system and see how well each works and what is good and bad about my experiences with each.

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Technologists and, I expect, most geeks in general, cannot have escaped the recent rumblings in the European Union’s anti-trust proceedings around Microsoft and the “bundling” of Internet Explorer with Windows.

There has been plenty of discussion about forcing Microsoft to remove Internet Explorer from Windows entirely for Windows 7.

How this is good for consumers, the protection of which is the point of anti-trust law, is only indirectly derivative from the effects of the corporate protectionism that the EU actually seems to be biased towards.

Browsers today are free.

Prior to Internet Explorer being part of Windows, using a browser either required some relatively arcane knowledge and tinkering to acquire and get working (definitely beyond the abilities of the typical user) or it came in $40 boxes with the “Netscape Navigator” logo on them.

As a consumer, how is $40 better than free?  Lack of choice?  Certainly not!  There are more choices in truly capable web-browsing software today than ever before.

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