Dear Microsoft,

First of all, I’d really like to thank you. MS Office is, in my opinion, the best office suite on the market. Windows has made many contributions to home computing–first and foremost instilling the concept that computers are for everyone–not just socially deprived nerds. Though Windows remains a fairly effective way of getting things done, I decided to switch to GNU/Linux this summer for reasons of my own. I really like the view from there. That said, I’d like to ask after some basic features implemented in Windows that are standard (as free, open-source software no less) in GNU/Linux.

*Updating. Updating Windows is a painful process–the OS itself tends to pop up unexpectedly, chew up needed bandwidth, and restart at inopportune moments. What’s more, individual pieces of software must all be updated individually. This is, quite frankly, a pain in the neck. It can’t be difficult to integrate ONE, all-inclusive, non-intrusive updating utility. Yes, it might be an extra step for application developers. No, I do not sympathize with them. Please do this.

*Workspaces. Workspaces aren’t a very big deal…but they’re darn handy. Yes, I know I can download them for Windows from your “PowerToys” section, but there is no good reason they’re not included on a vanilla install. And I can’t really think of a reason it doesn’t include transition effects when you move between them.

*Themes. I believe there are 3 legal themes for Microsoft Windows XP. This has got to stop. Yes, I like blue. No, I don’t like it that much.

*Sensible administration privileges. I really like the concept GNU/Linux has which is that programs run on the lowest permission level they can. This is instrumental in stopping spyware. I feel unsafe when I’m logged in as a Windows administrator. Is that the attitude you want?

*Filesystem. Ext* (especially Ext3) is better than NTFS. No defragmenting, more reliable, please switch. There is no shame in this.

*Open document formats. Both releasing all of your own document formats, and adapting MS Office to include Open Document files. Natively.

*System resources: Why is it that my Ubuntu installation runs faster than a friend’s Vista installation…with 8 times the RAM, and ~double the processor? And functionality is debatably the same, to boot.

*Internet rendering: I know you can convince IE to pass the Acid3. It’s OK to shamelessly copy & paste Firefox/Chrome’s source code, that’s what it’s there for.

Please take these suggestions (and I’m sure there are more that I have yet to think of) into consideration. For the good of your product. For the good of your company. For the good of your millions of users. Please.

With warm regards,

Timmy Macdonald

I was reading ESR’s (that’s Eric S. Raymond to you) excellent article “How to Become a Hacker” (if that alarms you, please Google “hacking vs. cracking”.)

Programming insights aside, how’s this for a line?

During the first ten years of this HOWTO’s life, I reported that from a new user’s point of view, all Linux distributions are almost equivalent. But in 2006-2007, an actual best choice emerged: Ubuntu. While other distros have their own areas of strength, Ubuntu is far and away the most accessible to Linux newbies.

Yeah, Ubuntu!

Background:

It’s easy to agree that things take longer with a mouse. Sure, it’s easier/more intuitive, but that comes at the sacrifice of speed. Which is why powerful text editors like Vi and Emacs are so lightweight. And CLI systems are so fast. Etcetera.

It’s also easy to agree that the more icons GNOME/KDE/etc. has to load when it’s booted up, the longer it’s going to take.

The meat:

To quickly and efficiently launch a program–without the need for icons or even a mouse–press Alt-F2. A dialog box will come up. Just type the program name into it, and press enter.

First of all, I’m sorry I haven’t posted for a while–school went ‘banoonoos’ (as Joss Whedon would say), and any remaining time went to FSM.

Second of all, I’m contemplating starting a new ‘syle’ of post–handy tips. They’re meant to be concise bits of usefulness. Yes, yes, yes, this one isn’t very concise, but I consider it an extenuating circumstance They should have two parts–the [Background:], for…um…background information, and then another part which is the real tip.

That was way too long-winded. Sorry.

At any rate, here’s the real post:

[Background:]

A lot of people use the command line to install packages. Add/Remove is incomplete, Synaptic is slow, and the command-line is awesome.

I find myself using Apitude a lot more than apt-get, for the plain and simple reason that it’s a lot easier to make up commands. sudo aptitude install thunderbird works, sudo apt-get thunderbird doesn’t.

I always kind of got frustrated by the fact that after thinking for a while, I would need to type in ‘Y’ to confirm that I wanted to use disk space. (I suppose I can see the rationale for that feature, but it is annoying)

[Meat:]

To make Aptitude not ask you if you’re OK with the disk space it’s going to use, and the dependencies that have to be installed, use the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install yourprogramname

Where yourprogramname is the name of the program you want to install.

As you know, I run Ubuntu.

As you also (probably) know, I’m a student, and a Christian.

So you might think that it would make sense for me to be running edubuntu (Ubuntu for students) or Ubuntu Christian Edition (Ubuntu for Christians.)

But I don’t.

No, it’s not because I have something against it. And I think I’ll get the same support from the forums no matter which edition I’m running. And quite frankly I think it’d look awesome to have a fish in my circle of friends (the colored circle logo thing.) It’s because quite frankly I think it’s worthless to get a new 700MB iso and install a new operating system (with all the headaches of transferring files) just for a couple of packages I could just as easily get from Synaptic, and which I probably don’t need anyway. Edubuntu has all these great ‘learning tools’ (And Ubuntu Christian Edition has all these great Christian tools), but when it comes down to it–Am I really going to spend time playing some contrived game which reinforces my equation-solving skills? Do I really need a virtual rosary? (Heck, I’m not even Catholic). I think it’d be very worthwile to have ‘Bible Study Software’ on my computer, but I can just tack it onto my existing Ubuntu installation, on an as-needed basis. Computers get bloated enough–why bloat them more?

As for my fishy circle of friends? I’m sure there’s a simple theme change available.