Mike Stone

The sad announcement was made today (Saturday, April 09 2011). PJ is calling it done over at Groklaw. While I'm sad to hear that she's calling it a day, I would like to thank her for all her hard work in the name of Linux. Go over to http://www.groklaw.net to read her explanation as to why.

Thanks PJ! We'll miss you!

In an article by Bloomberg today, it was revealed that Microsoft is forking over more than $1,000,000,000 to Nokia to have them make Windows 7 phones. That's 9 zeros there folks. Despite the fact that Microsoft has handed over (or is in the process of handing over) an extremely large sum of money, it doesn't seem to be reversing their fortunes any.

Steve Ballmer must be very afraid of Google and the Android platform. VERY.

The Pwn2Own 2011 contest is right around the corner. It's going to be March 9th, 10th, and 11th. It looks like Linux will be not participating again this year with the exception of Android. Maybe that's because it's a foregone conclusion that it won't be Pwned. Who knows.

Android is in the mix this year in the mobile category. Here's the contenders:

• Dell Venue Pro running Windows 7
• iPhone 4 running iOS
• Blackberry Torch 9800 running Blackberry 6 OS
• Nexus S running Android

My predictions are they will fall in this order:

1. iPhone 4.
2. Dell Venue Pro
3. Blackberry.
4. Android.

I really was torn about 3 and 4 (but 1 and 2 were easy). Blackberry has been shown to be fairly security aware. I guess time will tell.

What are your predictions?

I've been reading a lot recently about 21 applications in the Android Market that contained malware, a potential timer, and other miscellaneous bad things. While I'll agree that this is a very bad thing, I think it's more of a failing of the Android Market than the device itself.

As phones are becoming more and more like full blown computers, it stands to reason that if the user of the phone installs an application (app)  and gives it the permissions it asks for, it's going to be able to do what ever it wants. This is a given. The fact that this kind of thing is possible to me is a t estimate of the power of the platform. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I'd argue the inverse. The same thing is possible in any computer Operating System.

Where the real failing is here is the fact that these applications were available for download from the Android Market. I don't advocate Google installing rules like Apple where developers survive at Apple's whim, but I do think that some checks should be put into place to verify the quality and authenticity of the apps being distributed by the Market. Google is putting it's name and the Android name on this market, and applications that come from the Market should be at the very minimum authenticated.

It should be noted that installing more stringent checks on the Market won't prevent this type of thing entirely, as Android isn't the iOS, and applications don't have to go through Google to be installed (this is a GOOD thing). Because of that, it will always be important to verify that the apps you're installing on your phone are trustworthy, but at least make the apps that are being distributed by the Market trustworthy.

In this day and age, pretty much anything in Linux can be done from the GUI. That being said, the command line holds such tremendous power that it really shouldn't be ignored. If you're not familiar with the Linux command line, and you have a Linux box that you can use, I'd highly recommend familiarizing yourself with it. Here's some basic commands that I use almost every day. Keep in mind, some of the syntax may vary depending on distribution.

ls: ls is one of the most basic and important commands. It can give you a list of files in a specified directory, or the current one if you don't specify. More or less information can be requested using flags. For example, I use “ls -alrt” almost constantly. This command and flags will show you all the files in a directory (even the hidden ones) in long listing format. Not only that, but it puts them in reverse order by modification time. In short, it puts the most recently modified files at the bottom. Very handy.

cd: cd is another of the most basic commands you'll run at the Linux command line. It will change the current working directory to a specified directory, or if no directory is specified, take you to your home folder. Adding a dash to the end (cd –) will take you to your previous location, which can come in very handy if you're moving around a lot, or if the path to that location is extremely long. It can also be used in conjunction with another command, which can be endlessly useful. For example, “cd /home/mike && runcommand.t”, which will take you to the directory /home/mike and execute the “runcommand.t” file, and then return you to the previous location.

cat: cat is useful in and of itself, but it doesn't start to really shine until you add it to other commands. cat dumps the contents of a specified file out to standard out (your terminal) for your viewing. If the file is to large, then things can be a little overwhelming, but that's really where other commands can come into play. grep and awk (which we're getting to) are two of the more useful, but others that you'd never expect can be valuable. For example, using the command “time cat”, will start a stopwatch that will stop when ctrl-d is pressed.

find: This command does pretty much what you'd expect it to do. If you're looking for a file, type of file, or basically anything in the file system, find can find it for you. This command is one that I've seen vary a lot over time and distribution, but it's usefulness is hard to question. The one problem that I have with this command is that it searches the entire file tree you specify, so if you give it /, it will search any and every path you have permissions to, which can take a great deal of time. That is where locate really shines, so it may be a better choice if you're not sure at least on a general location. I'm not going to go into examples for find, just because it's such a powerful command, I couldn't do it justice in a single paragraph.

locate: Searches a database of files on your computer to make finding files quicker. locate can be very handy, but it's not always installed on a system, so it's not as universal as the actual “find” command. A command (updatedb) has to be run to update the file location database, so files that are new to the system won't be found until if you run the locate command without the updatedb command.

grep: If you're looking for a pattern of some kind in a file, grep is the tool for the job. It can be used on it's own to find a pattern in a single or multiple files, or it can be an amazingly handy tool to pipe output from other commands to. Using the grep command by itself, you can get things like “grep -n mike *”, which would go through all the files in the current directory and find the name mike in all of them. It will print out on the page every time it finds a match, and the file name, and the line number. Very handy. Also, the command can be used like “ls -alrt|grep mike”, which will give you a list of all the files in the current directory that have “mike” anywhere in their information (which could be in more places than just the file name).

awk: awk is kind of an interesting command, and one that's hard to really get to know. It, like grep, is an excellent pattern matching command, but I've never used awk straight from the command line like I do with grep. awk can be used to find multiple different patterns in a single command. One example would be “awk '/string1/ || /string2/' filename”. This would find any lines that contained either string1, or string2 in the file filename. Very cool if you spend a lot of time parsing information from text files.

wget: wget is a command that I use endlessly. I'm not sure it should be included here as a “command” in Linux since it's really a stand-alone application, but it's usefulness is so great that I feel like I have to include it. wget can be used to grab files from the Internet or Intranet in almost any way you want to do it. If there's not a book on all the ways that wget can be used, there should be. My usual use is updating Wordpress themes or plugins since I've never set it up to do automatic updates, but it can be used for downloading pretty much any kind of file as long as you've got the path to that file.

There really is so many more useful commands that I haven't even touched on, I feel like I'm not giving the command line it's due. I know that I could literally type for hours here going over the multitude of possibilities and uses for all these command line tools, so I'm not feeling super super guilty. Some I didn't even touch on also so much functionality, it's really kind of embarrassing to not mention them. sed, sort, touch, etc. This doesn't even mention other applications, like ssh or ftp, which can be used to further extend the functionality of the command line.

If you've always been afraid of the command line, or you've never even tried to use it, now's your chance. Fire it up and give it a shot. You'll be glad you did.

Looking back on 2010, I think that it was a good year for Linux. Now that 2010 is over, what does 2011 have in store for Linux?

Android:

Android really took off in 2010, and it's going to continue it's meteoric rise in 2011. It's going to be hard to read technology news that's not going to mention Android. We're going to be seeing Android running on anything and everything, including possibly the kitchen sink.

Tablets:

Tablet's are really going to come into their own. Apple started the ball rolling, but it was an anemic first try. Little better than a glorified phone with a big screen. They're going to probably try to correct their mistakes with an iPad 2, but by the time they do, the market will be saturated with Android devices that are cheaper and more capable. Don't expect it to change Apple's marketing any though. They'll still try to take credit for everything up to and including the air we breathe.

Wayland:

Look forward to seeing Wayland starting to appear on your Linux desktop. Ubuntu and Fedora are already officially heading that direction, so it's looking like we'll probably see other distributions head that way as well. I'm expecting Mint and SuSE are probably going that direction, though that's not been announced by either.

Unity:

2011 will probably be the year for Unity. Right now, Unity exists in almost a pre-release form, but 2011 will be the year that it comes into it's own. Now well it's received will be something to see, but after using it for a while on my NetBook, I've grown pretty used to it, and am actually starting to really enjoy using it. There is still quite a lot of work to do on it, but given a year I think it will really be an interface to contend with.

Cloud:

The Cloud will continue to grow and flourish, and it's well being can only be a good with for Linux. The more applications that move to the cloud, the less that are application specific, further weakening Microsoft's hold on the market, and freeing people to move to a better OS. I've already written a full post on this, so I'm not going to spend more time on it here.

Looking back, 2010 really was a good year for Linux, but based on the things that I see coming at us in 2011, I'm expecting 2011 to be even more so.

So, with that in mind, let's begin.

I was recently reading an article that I won't justify with a link. In this article, the author was putting in a great deal of effort trying to say that all Google has done with Android is copy Apple, and that Apple is actually the true innovator. I've read this position time and time again. I've even seen it in Apple's own marketing. I think what makes this so annoying is it's complete lack of truth. Let's look over some of Apple's products, shall we?

Macintosh:

Let's start with the original Macintosh. What's innovative about the Macintosh? Well, it's an all in one personal computer with the first commercial GUI. All in one computers were nothing new when Apple made the first Macintosh. Commodore was making them in the 70s. The GUI? Well, that wasn't an Apple innovation either. They copied the work from Xerox Parc. So, one of the greatest Apple innovations ever is just a combination of two things that other companies had already done? Yay for Apple. From there on, Apple has done nothing but build on this idea.

iMac:

It almost turns my stomach to even include this category. The iMac is innovative? No, it's really not. Again, Apple pulled out the all in one computer. The original Macintosh was an all in one computer, why is this innovative? Because it's blue? Not exactly new. So what the heck is innovative and original about the iMac? Someone please educate me. Please?

iPod:

The iPod is a music player. It's a glorified Walkman. The only real difference is the fact that it plays digital music instead of from a CD or tape. It wasn't even the first device to do that. I owned an MP3 player before Apple even hinted at the iPod. All Apple did is take an idea that had already been implemented by someone else, and made their own version of it.

iPhone:

Ah, the illustrious iPhone. True innovation at it's best? Hardly. The iPhone interface is a blatant ripoff of the interface used by the Palm Pilot. Apple prettied it up a bit, but essentially the iPhone's interface in 2007 is the same as the Palm Pilot's interface in 1997.

iPad:

Another one that nauseates me. This one for several reasons. The biggest? It's just a giant iPhone/iPod. That's what Apple did. They took the phone interface that they'd already copied from Palm, gave it a bigger screen, and called it something new. On top of that, this is not the first Tablet computer either. They'd been made by other companies for years. So, again, Apple took an idea that someone else had, added another idea that someone else had. That's it!

Conclusion:

Apple has been hailed as an innovative company for literally decades, while it seems like anybody and everybody that competes with Apple is only stealing their ideas. At least that is what I've seen the Apple faithful claim over and over again. They've done it with Microsoft. They've done it with Linux. They've done it with Google. Seriously, the Apple faithful can't even come up with a new and innovative argument! Apple is not the end all be all innovator. Most of their ideas didn't even originate at Apple! Please, can we lose this tired old argument?

Of course, you're more than welcome to correct me. Please. I'd love to hear something new and original.

Today it became known that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed a time table to implement Open Source software all over the Russian government. This includes Linux. This begs the question, why aren't we? There are many inherent advantages offered by Open Source and specifically Linux.

1. Let's talk about security.  First of all, I'm not even going to address the people that blather on and on about how Windows 7 and IE 8 are really, really secure. When it comes down to national security, everything should be checked. Linux and Open Source software are really the only environment that you can literally check every single line of code in an Operating System. The United States Government can hire their own developers to line by line check each bit of code before it's even compiled and used to verify that there are no hidden back doors or other security violations. That just isn't possible with an Operating System that's not Open Source. That's not even considering the multitude of viruses and the host of malware applications that threaten Windows and even the Macintosh everyday. Do those threats exist for Linux? No. More than that, the way that Linux handles it's permissions and security makes it virtually impossible for them to exist at all. The people out there that claim that Linux would be just as vulnerable if only it had the market share to motivate an attack don't take into consideration some of the very basic things that are present in the Linux Operating System that prevent that from happening.

2. Ease of Use. Linux is often thought to be the hobbyist's Operating System. Too difficult to use for the lay person. This just flat out isn't the case. If the United States Government were to implement Linux, most people wouldn't even need to be retrained to use the new Operating System. Quite literally, the skills that they already have would be more than sufficient to use Linux. LibreOffice (Open Office) is close enough in it's setup that anybody that's used Microsoft Office could jump right in. Web browsers that exist for Windows already exist for Linux. Further, any applications that are used on a Linux system that are also Open Source share the security advantages mentioned in section one. Do you honestly think that Microsoft would allow anyone, even the United States Government, to go line by line through Microsoft Office and verify that their code is secure? Even if they did, can you imagine what it would take to get any fixes implemented that would be required to actually make that code secure?

3.  Cost.  OK, let's imagine a world where Microsoft just gives away Windows and Office and never asks you to pay one thin dime for the privilege of using it. After you've all calmed down from your hysterical laughing fit, we'll assume for the moment that this is actually the case.  Even if Windows and Office were free of charge, Linux would still be cheaper based on it's higher stability and better security. Of course, we all know that Microsoft is going to take it's pound of flesh. As each dollar goes from the tax paying American's pocket into Microsoft's, it should become more and more obvious that Linux and Open Source is the better answer.

There are a lot of reasons that the United States Government should seriously consider following in Russia's footsteps and adopt both Linux and other Open Source software as their standard. Cost, ease of use, and plain old national security. These reasons should be enough to tip us in that direction. That really begs the question, why haven't we already done it? For that question, I don't have an answer.

After my last post regarding the constant talk about the “death” of Linux, a friend of mine said something to me that I thought was worthy of a follow-up post.

“Linux is almost 20 years old. If it hasn't even made a dent in the desktop market by now, it's never going to overtake it.”

While I've known my friend for almost fifteen years now, it's sometimes hard to find things that we actually agree with each other on.

Even though Linux is on the verge of it's twentieth birthday, there are a lot of exciting things coming our way that could have a huge impact on Linux in the market. The one that I want to talk about right now is “The Cloud”.

There's been a large number of commercials on TV lately about “The Cloud”, showing off Microsoft's products and showing you what they can do for you. Microsoft is putting a huge effort into associating “The Cloud” with Internet Explorer and Windows. The reason for this is pretty simple. “The Cloud” is the best opportunity for the computing world to finally escape Microsoft.

More and more applications are moving to the cloud these days, and web based services  are doing everything from helping you type out your documents to playing video games. Few of these cloud based apps rely on Windows. They run the same on Linux as they do on the Mac, as they do on Windows. So, in a world where applications are finally cross platform, why stick with Windows? Any “good” reasons that can be put forth start to be whittled away. Linux is cheaper (a lot), just as easy to use, and more secure. Without the application lockout that Microsoft has enjoyed for the last thirty years, Windows is in real trouble from it's competition.

Of course, there is always risk. As I said before, Microsoft is putting an enormous amount of effort and money to make the cloud into just another extension of Windows. They want to tie it to Internet Explorer as closely as they can. This is one of the reasons I watch the browser market so closely. The browser is the next platform war to watch. Applications that are moving out into the cloud, or are already in the cloud may be tempted to focus more on Internet Explorer than on Firefox or Chrome. This year did see a steady if small decline in Internet Explorer usage, but it still maintains over fifty percent of the market.

Should Microsoft be successful in it's efforts the computing market will be stuck under Microsoft's rule for the foreseeable future, but if it's not, this could lead to the opportunity Linux needs to make a significant dent in the desktop market. Of course, it's not hard to guess who I'm rooting for.