Linux

(Written 7/7/2011)

I have just seen the following posted by my brother on Facebook: "Just got Miro working on my new Ubuntu system, but seeing that I've got Charlotte Gainsbourg's Af607105 in my music collection makes me think everything might not have transferred as well as it could have."

Now, I have mentioned Ian here often enough. He's a vegetarian, technical librarian Green Party member who is one of a group converting an old light industrial site into co-housing, carbon-neutral homes, and to his credit, he's not smug at all. If you see him at Cropredy, it won't be at his modern sewn-in groundsheet tent, because he brings his home-made yurt, constructed from stout branches, tarpaulin and much rope. He's also a trained blacksmith, so if wood, tarpaulin and rope isn't an effective enough means of construction, he can knock something together with metal, too. I love him as a brother - indeed, I'm damned lucky to have him as a relative - and I respect his commitment to his principles.

Why, though, does he have to deliberately make his life complicated? As you know, folks, I never generalise, but Linux-based products are only used by people who look forward to solving big PC problems. And then lots of smaller problems. Now, I don't claim that Windows is entirely problem-free, but there's a reason why it's the industry standard, and why 95% of all companies use the Windows platform to distribute their IT applications. And that reason is that everything works on Windows for pretty much all of the time.

There's a strong theoretical argument for Linux operating systems - they're developed by hundreds of thousands of people, some of them being exceptionally clever, and anyone can have a bit of a tinker around because the code behind them is freely available. Most of the Linux OS's are supplied for no charge, whereas Windows 7 for a home PC costs £85.

In the real world, though, that's like buying a car that has been developed by several really good engineers and anyone else who fancied having a go at doing some engineering in their spare time. A car that has endless, tiny, upgrades for every single part, all free, but all of them user-installed and not all of them strictly roadworthy - although it is hoped that the car/tree interface will be addressed in a future upgrade. The car is available in several models, from the basic "Don't touch this and it will get you from A to B very safely but let's not expect too much, eh?" version, right up to the Clarkson Group "Berzerker!", which provides blistering performance with superior bells and whistles but tends to go badly wrong quite often, requiring extensive maintenance. (A Lotus, in other words.)

I can't write about Linux from experience, because I only have two computers. My PC runs rock-solid old versions of applications on an XP platform, and that's what I do most of my work on. My laptop has the latest versions of the apps, and it runs on Vista. As soon as Windows 7 becomes an industry standard, I'll upgrade it. If I had a third, I might be tempted to try Linux, but it would only be for the experience, because knowledge of Linux has virtually no value in the commercial world.

It is, theoretically, a worthwhile project, with many good-hearted people working on it, and many evangelic supporters. Linux, though, is the Esperanto of the computing world - easy to get hold of, its aim to bring communities together on a level playing field and enabling the free sharing of knowledge and skills. The only drawback being that most people don't speak it.

As for Ian and his mp3-playing difficulties, I recommended he download iTunes. Apparently, "There isn't a Linux version of iTunes". Or, to put it a different way, not one single Linux developer, analyst or programmer has bothered to find a way of running a free application on their many free operating systems. Although, to be fair, some of them have spent quite a lot of time developing an alternative "open source" mp3 player that can take on the tyranny imposed by the freely downloadable iTunes.

Honestly, it's like spending thousands of hours trying to develop an alternative version of the square. For people who think that "alternative" means "better".