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diff --git a/amp.html b/amp.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d66b084 --- /dev/null +++ b/amp.html @@ -0,0 +1,82 @@ +<p>There's a story going around in these days that the web is too slow, especially over mobile networks. It's a pretty good story. It's a perpetual story. The web, while certainly improved from the days of 14.4k modems, has never been as fast as we want it to be, which is to say the web has never been instant.</p> +<p>Curiously though, rather than focusing on possible cures like increasing network speeds, finding ways to decrease network latency or even speed up web browsers, the latest version of the "web-is-too-slow" story turns the blame on the web itself. And perhaps more pointedly, the people who make it.</p> +<p>Certainly there is some truth to the slow web story. The average web page has been increasing in size at a fantastic rate. In January of 2012 the average page tracked by HTTPArchive <a href="http://httparchive.org/trends.php?s=All&minlabel=Oct+1+2012&maxlabel=Oct+1+2015#bytesTotal&reqTotal">transferred 1239kb and made 86 requests</a>. Fast forward to September 2015 and the numbers are 2162kb of data and 103 requests. Overall size doesn't directly correlate to page load time, but it is a pretty good indicator that the web <em>is</em> slow and things are actually getting worse, not better.</p> +<p>While the web is slow and getting slower, native mobile applications are getting faster. Mobile devices get more powerful with every release cycle and applications take advantage of that. Apps get faster, the web gets slower.</p> +<p>This, so the story goes, is why Facebook must invent Facebook Instant Articles, why Apple News must come to exist and why Google must now go and create Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Users have come to expect that everything should be as fast as native apps so Facebook, Apple and Google need to make sure the web feels the same way.</p> +<p>Google is late to the game, but its new Accelerated Mobile Pages project has the same goals as Facebook and Apple's efforts -- make the web feel like a native application on mobile devices. It's worth noting that all three companies seem utterly unconcerned with speeding up the web on the desktop.</p> +<p>All of these efforts -- Instant Articles, Apple News and AMP -- are to help speed up our experience of the web on mobile devices by stripping out all that junk that messy web developers and publishers have included in their websites. All those ads, all those images, all those interactive graphics, all those comment sections, all those extras that take too long to load.</p> +<p>Instead, Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News and now AMP will present stripped down pages that load quickly even over the paltry 3G speeds still found in much of the United States.</p> +<p>In the case of AMP there are apparently two things playing the role of villans in the "web is too slow" story: JavaScript and advertisements that use JavaScript.</p> +<p>It sounds like a pretty good story. It has good guys (Google) and bad guys (everyone not using Google Ads) and it's true to most of our experiences. Who isn't sick of intrusive ads and terrible JavaScript libraries begging for us to sign up for some terrible newsletter?</p> +<p>But this story has some fundamental problems. For example, Google owns the largest ad server network on the web, if ads are the problem, why doesn't Google get to work speeding up the ads? More on that in bit.</p> +<p>But first, AMP.</p> +<h2 id="what-is-amp">What is AMP?</h2> +<p>AMP bills itself as a subset of HTML. That is true, to a point. But as one has probably come to expect with a new project from a big company on the web, AMP also re-invents the wheel quite a few times. There's a name for this behavior: Not Invented Here or NIH.</p> +<p>For example, pretty much everything AMP does could be accomplished through RSS, which is an open standard that's been around for over a decade. It's even been declared dead, but it still persists in part because it's fantastically useful and works just about everywhere. Even if you don't like RSS, and Google, for whatever reasons, has never seemed to like RSS, there's JSON, RDF and several other means of finding and stripping out the core content on a page.</p> +<p>The problem with RSS, JSON and RDF is that that Google didn't invent them. And so AMP.</p> +<p>First though, what is AMP? AMP is a markup language that looks a lot like HTML without the bells and whistles. In fact, if you head over to the <a href="https://www.ampproject.org/how-it-works/">AMP project announcement</a> you'll see an AMP page rendered in your browser. It looks like any other page on the web.</p> +<p>AMP markup uses a basic set of tags from HTML. An extremely limited set of tags. Form tags? Nope. Audio or video tags? Nope. Embed? Certainly not. Script tags? Nope. There's a very short list of the HTML tags in allowed in AMP documents available over on the <a href="https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-html-format.md">project page</a>. There's also no JavaScript allowed. Those ads and tracking scripts will never be part of AMP documents (don't worry, Google will still be tracking you).</p> +<p>Amp defines several of its own tags, things like <code>'amp-youtube</code>, <code>amp-ad</code> or <code>amp-pixel</code>. The extra tags are part of what's known as <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/components-intro/">web components</a>, which is not now, but likely will eventually be a web standard (or possibly ActiveX part 2, only the future knows for sure).</p> +<p>So far AMP probably sounds like a pretty good idea to most readers. Faster pages, no tracking scripts, no JavaScript at all so no overlay ads about signing up for newsletters or downloading apps no one needs... Except, wait for it, actually there is some JavaScript -- Google's JavaScript. Also, Google's ads. Also Google's tracking pixels.</p> +<p>The more you look at AMP the less it looks like a good idea. Let's start with some of the poor technical decisions in the current incarnation of AMP. Or at least they're poor decisions if you like the open web and the current HTML standards.</p> +<p>AMP re-invents the wheel for images using a custom component <code>amp-img</code> instead of HTML's <code>img</code> tag (not only does Google ignore RSS, JSON and RDF, it ignores HTML). AMP doesn't stop there. It does the same things with <code>amp-audio</code> and <code>amp-video</code> rather than the HTML standard <code>audio</code> and <code>video</code>. AMP developers argue that this allows AMP to only serve images when required, which isn't possible with the HTML img tag. That, however, is a limitation of web browsers, not HTML itself. AMP also very clearly has treated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_accessibility">accessibility</a> as an after thought, or more likely, not a thought at all. You lose more than just HTML tags with AMP.</p> +<p>In other words AMP is technically half baked at best.</p> +<p>But the markup that is AMP is really only one part of the picture. After all, as pointed out above, if all they really wanted to do is strip out all the enhancements and just present content of a page there are quite a few already existing ways to do that, including RSS, JSON and RDF. In fact, Google used to have an RSS reader that did just this. So why AMP?</p> +<p>Speeding things up for users is a nice side benefit, but the point of AMP, like Facebook Articles, is to lock in users to a particular site/format/service. In this case the users aren't you and I reading, it's the publishers putting the content on the web.</p> +<h1 id="its-the-ads-stupid">It's the Ads Stupid</h1> +<p>The goal of Facebook Instant Articles is to keep you on Facebook. No need to explore the larger web when it's all right there in Facebook, especially when it loads so much faster in the Facebook app than it does in a browser on the web.</p> +<p>AMP exists because Google recognized what a threat Facebook Instant Articles is to Google's ability to serve ads.</p> +<p>This is why it's called Accelerated <em>Mobile</em> Pages. Sorry desktop users, Google already knows how to get ads to you.</p> +<p>If you watch the <a href="https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/introducing-accelerated-mobile-pages.html">AMP demo</a>, which shows how AMP might work when it's integrated into search results next year, you'll notice that the viewer effectively never leaves Google. The AMP pages are laid over the Google search page much the way outside webpages are loaded in native applications on most mobile platforms. The experience from the user's point of view is just like the experience of a mobile app.</p> +<p>Google needs the web to be on par with the speeds in mobile apps. Google has been trying for some time to speed up the web, but as the stats at the start of this piece indicate, it hasn't really worked.</p> +<p>To its credit the company has some of the smartest engineers around working on just this problem. Google has made one of the fastest web browsers around (if not the fastest) and in doing so has pushed other vendors to speed up their browsers as well. Since Chrome debuted web browsers have become faster and better at an astonishing rate. Score one for Google.</p> +<p>It's also been touting the benefits of mobile-friendly pages, first by labeling them as such in search results on mobile devices and then later by ranking mobile friendly pages above not-so-friendly ones when other factors are the same. It's also been quick to adopt speed improving new HTML standards like the responsive images effort, which was first supported by Chrome. Score another one or two for Google.</p> +<p>The company has also been championing speed through its various page speed tools and has even gone so far as to include speed as a factor in search engine rankings. And yet, look at those page size charts again. Pages keep getting bigger, networks speeds do not. So the web keeps slowing down. Score one for nobody.</p> +<p>In other words Google has tried just about everything within its considerable power as a search monopoly to get web developers and publishers large and small to speed up their pages.</p> +<p>It just isn't working.</p> +<h2 id="content-blockers-comin">Content Blockers 'comin'</h2> +<p>Google is hardly alone in wanting the web to be fast. You and I want that too. And when web pages slow down we go looking for a way to speed them up again.</p> +<p>One increasingly popular reaction to slow web pages are content blockers, typically in the form of browser add-ons that stop pages from loading anything but the primary content of the page. Content blockers have been around for over a decade now (No Script first appeared for Firefox in 2005), but their use has always been limited. That changed with Apple's iOS 9, which for the first time has put content blocking tools in the hands of millions.</p> +<p>It's worth noting that the existence of content blockers is not entirely the result of slow websites, much of the appeal also lies in blocking intrusive ads and stopping the intrusive tracking which often comes with those ads.</p> +<p>But it's those two things, advertisements and trackers -- which typically mean loading at least a few, and in the most egregious examples dozens, of third-party scripts -- that form no small part of why even some of the web's most popular sites are, frankly, dog slow.</p> +<p>And dog slow sites are a problem for Google. If a site takes too long to load users leave and never see those Google ads. But dog slow sites are even more of a problem if sites are only dog slow in the web browser -- where Google has free reign -- and not in native apps like Facebook and Apple News, where Google has limited, if any access at all. Given a choice between fast walled gardens and slow open web Google is worried that most of us will chose fast walled garden.</p> +<p>Combine all the eyeballs using iOS with content blockers, reading the web via Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News and you suddenly have a whole lot of eyeballs that will never see any Google ads. That's a problem for Google, one that AMP is designed to fix.</p> +<h2 id="amp-static-pages-that-require-googles-javascript">AMP: Static Pages that Require Google's JavaScript</h2> +<p>The most basic thing you can do on the web is create a flat HTML file that sits on a server and contains some basic tags. This type of page will always be lightning fast. It's also insanely simple. This is literally all you need to do to put information on the web. There's no need for JavaScript, no need even for CSS.</p> +<p>This is more or less what AMP wants you to create (AMP doesn't care if your pages are actually static or -- more likely -- generated from a database, the point is what's rendered is static).</p> +<p>But then AMP wants to turn around and require that that page include a third-party script in order to load. AMP deliberately sets the opacity of the entire page to 0 until the script loads and only then is the page revealed.</p> +<p>As developer Justin Avery <a href="https://responsivedesign.is/articles/whats-the-deal-with-accelerated-mobile-pages-amp">asks</a>, "surely the document itself is going to be faster than loading a library to try and make it load faster." Why yes they would.</p> +<p>Ironically, for something that is ostensibly trying to encourage better behavior from developers and publishers, this means that pages using progressive enhancement, with perhaps a couple of scripts that don't track you, but do add some functionality to the page -- in other words sites following best practices and trying to do things right -- will potentially be slower in AMP.</p> +<p>In the end, developers and publishers who have been following best practices for web development and don't rely on dozens of tracking networks and ads have little to gain from AMP.</p> +<p>Unfortunately, the publishers building their sites like that right now are few and far between. Most publishers have much to gain from generating AMP pages -- at least in terms of speed. Google says that AMP can improve page speed index scores by between 15-85%. That huge range is likely a direct result of how many third-party scripts are being loaded on some sites.</p> +<p>The dependency on JavaScript has another detrimental effect, AMP documents depend on JavaScript, which is to say that if their (albeit small) script fails to load for some reason -- you're going through a tunnel on a train, only have a flaky one bar connection at the beach or any other myriad familiar mobile web scenarios -- the AMP page is completely blank.</p> +<p>When an AMP page fails, it fails spectacularly. Google knows better than this. Even Gmail still offers a pure HTML-based fallback version of itself.</p> +<h2 id="amp-for-publishers">AMP for Publishers</h2> +<p>Why require a bit of JavaScript to load what amounts to one of the simplest possible pages on the web? Well, the developers would argue (correctly) that it's needed to parse, among other things, those <code>amp-img</code>, <code>amp-youtube</code> and other non-standard elements.</p> +<p>It also creates a kind of lock-in. Not nearly the sort of lock-in that publishers get into with Facebook Instant Articles, AMP is after all available for everyone, not just big name publishers who sign a deal with Google.</p> +<p>So why would publishers want to use AMP? Google, while its influence has dipped a tad across industries (as Facebook and Twitter continue to drive more traffic), is still a powerful driver of traffic. When Google promises more eyeballs on their stories, big media listens.</p> +<p>In this deal, all big media has to do is give up their ad networks. And their interactive maps. And their data visualizations. And their comment systems. And their community of readers.</p> +<p>That deal isn't just for big media though, your WordPress blog can get in on the stripped down action as well.</p> +<p>Given that WordPress powers roughly 24 percent of all sites on the web, having an easy way to generate AMP documents from WordPress means a huge boost in adoption for AMP. It's certainly possible to build fast websites using WordPress, but it's also easy to do the opposite. WordPress plugins often have dramatic and negative impact on load times. It isn't uncommon to see a WordPress site loading not just one, but often several external JavaScript libraries because the user installed 3 plugins that each used a different library.</p> +<p>AMP neatly solves that problem by stripping everything out.</p> +<p>Why would anyone want to do this? Well, most probably wouldn't want to do just this. That is, AMP isn't trying to get rid of the web as we know it, it just wants to create a parallel one.</p> +<p>Publishers would not stop generating regular pages, they will simply also generate AMP files, usually, judging by the early adopter examples, by appending <code>/amp</code> to the end of the URL.</p> +<p>The AMP page and canonical page would reference each other through standard HTML tags. User agents could then pick and choose between them, that is, Google's web crawler might grab the AMP page, but desktop Firefox might hit the AMP page and redirect to the canonical URL.</p> +<p>What this amounts to is that, after years of telling the web to stop making m. mobile-specific websites, Google is telling the web to make <code>/amp</code>-specific mobile pages. Potato, potato.</p> +<p>Still, hypocritical or not, this is a best case scenario for AMP.</p> +<p>There are worse possibilities. What happens if AMP is widely adopted in an initial rush of enthusiasm and then abandoned few years later? All those millions of links shared in the mean time will suddenly lead to nothing. Don't forget, without Google's JavaScript library no one can see content encoded in AMP HTML. If history is any guide publishers will get an email letting them know that Google is turning off AMP a few months before it shuts it down and then all those links will just disappear.</p> +<p>Another common defense of AMP is that AMP is an source project and it's all on GitHub for anyone to critique and improve. Google is fond of open source, which is better than closed in some ways, but not much different in others.</p> +<p>AMP is not Debian, Google is very much in control of the project, regardless of where it might be hosting the code. No one is going to fork AMP HTML and get the web to adopt your version (if you want to fork something try the satirical <a href="https://github.com/soulgalore/benice-ampproject">Be Nice AMP Project</a>).</p> +<p>Still, people are stepping in to call out some of the <a href="https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/517">most</a> <a href="https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/481">egregious</a> <a href="https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/545">decisions</a> in AMP's technical design. There are already open issues surrounding nearly every technical shortcoming mentioned in this article. At the time of writing all the issues remain open.</p> +<h2 id="amp-and-the-open-web">AMP and the Open Web</h2> +<p>While AMP clearly has problems, and just might be a big conspiracy to lock publishers into a Google-controlled format, it does, thus far, seem to be friendlier to the open web than Facebook Instant Articles.</p> +<p>In fact, if you want to be optimistic, you could look at AMP as the carrot that Google has been looking for in its effort to speed up the web.</p> +<p>As noted web developer (and AMP optimist) Jeremy Keith <a href="https://adactio.com/journal/9646">writes</a> in a piece on AMP, "my hope is that the current will flow in both directions. As well as publishers creating AMP versions of their pages in order to appease Google, perhaps they will start to ask 'Why can't our regular pages be this fast?' By showing that there is life beyond big bloated invasive web pages, perhaps the AMP project will work as a demo of what the whole web could be."</p> +<p>Not everyone is that optimistic about AMP though. Developer and Author Tim Kadlec <a href="http://timkadlec.com/2015/10/amp-and-incentives/">writes</a>, "[AMP] doesn't feel like something helping the open web so much as it feels like something bringing a little bit of the walled garden mentality of native development onto the web... Using a very specific tool to build a tailored version of my page in order to 'reach everyone' doesn't fit any definition of the 'open web' that I've ever heard."</p> +<p>Indeed AMP is very much Google's moderately walled garden response to Facebook's impenetrable fortress of a garden.</p> +<p>There's one other important aspect to AMP that helps speed up their pages -- Google will cache your pages on its CDN for free.</p> +<p>As developer and creator of RSS, Dave Winer <a href="http://scripting.com/2015/10/10/supportingStandardsWithoutAllThatNastyInterop.html">says in a post on AMP</a>, "AMP is caching... You can use their caching if you conform to certain rules. If you don't you can use your own caching. I can't imagine there's a lot of difference unless Google weighs search results based on whether you use their code."</p> +<p>And therein lies the biggest potential problem with AMP. If Google decides to abuse its position as the default search provider for the web and prioritize AMP pages above others then AMP becomes a threat to the open web.</p> +<p>So far Google has said that AMP pages will not get any priority over regular pages in search results. But that could change. It's hard to imagine why that wouldn't change. Why would Google have faster pages at its disposal and not prioritize them over slower pages? After all speed is already a factor in rankings and AMP does make pages faster.</p> +<p>Of course it's hard to tell what AMP will do in the long run. Google throws out new projects all the time, sometimes seemingly at random. Some, like GMail, redefine the world's experience of something previously taken for granted. Other projects go the way of Wave. Remember Google Author? That was the last time Google set out to "help" the publishing industry.</p> +<p>For the web's sake let's hope Google sticks with AMP. Because if publishers embrace AMP (and the biggest ones already are) and it ends up like Google Author, there's a whole lot of dead links and blank pages in the web's future. Again.</p> @@ -0,0 +1,163 @@ +There's a story going around in these days that the web is too slow, especially over mobile networks. It's a pretty good story. It's a perpetual story. The web, while certainly improved from the days of 14.4k modems, has never been as fast as we want it to be, which is to say the web has never been instant. + +Curiously though, rather than focusing on possible cures like increasing network speeds, finding ways to decrease network latency or even speed up web browsers, the latest version of the "web-is-too-slow" story turns the blame on the web itself. And perhaps more pointedly, the people who make it. + +Certainly there is some truth to the slow web story. The average web page has been increasing in size at a fantastic rate. In January of 2012 the average page tracked by HTTPArchive [transferred 1239kb and made 86 requests](http://httparchive.org/trends.php?s=All&minlabel=Oct+1+2012&maxlabel=Oct+1+2015#bytesTotal&reqTotal). Fast forward to September 2015 and the numbers are 2162kb of data and 103 requests. Overall size doesn't directly correlate to page load time, but it is a pretty good indicator that the web *is* slow and things are actually getting worse, not better. + +While the web is slow and getting slower, native mobile applications are getting faster. Mobile devices get more powerful with every release cycle and applications take advantage of that. Apps get faster, the web gets slower. + +This, so the story goes, is why Facebook must invent Facebook Instant Articles, why Apple News must come to exist and why Google must now go and create Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Users have come to expect that everything should be as fast as native apps so Facebook, Apple and Google need to make sure the web feels the same way. + +Google is late to the game, but its new Accelerated Mobile Pages project has the same goals as Facebook and Apple's efforts -- make the web feel like a native application on mobile devices. It's worth noting that all three companies seem utterly unconcerned with speeding up the web on the desktop. + +All of these efforts -- Instant Articles, Apple News and AMP -- are to help speed up our experience of the web on mobile devices by stripping out all that junk that messy web developers and publishers have included in their websites. All those ads, all those images, all those interactive graphics, all those comment sections, all those extras that take too long to load. + +Instead, Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News and now AMP will present stripped down pages that load quickly even over the paltry 3G speeds still found in much of the United States. + +In the case of AMP there are apparently two things playing the role of villans in the "web is too slow" story: JavaScript and advertisements that use JavaScript. + +It sounds like a pretty good story. It has good guys (Google) and bad guys (everyone not using Google Ads) and it's true to most of our experiences. Who isn't sick of intrusive ads and terrible JavaScript libraries begging for us to sign up for some terrible newsletter? + +But this story has some fundamental problems. For example, Google owns the largest ad server network on the web, if ads are the problem, why doesn't Google get to work speeding up the ads? More on that in bit. + +But first, AMP. + +## What is AMP? + +AMP bills itself as a subset of HTML. That is true, to a point. But as one has probably come to expect with a new project from a big company on the web, AMP also re-invents the wheel quite a few times. There's a name for this behavior: Not Invented Here or NIH. + +For example, pretty much everything AMP does could be accomplished through RSS, which is an open standard that's been around for over a decade. It's even been declared dead, but it still persists in part because it's fantastically useful and works just about everywhere. Even if you don't like RSS, and Google, for whatever reasons, has never seemed to like RSS, there's JSON, RDF and several other means of finding and stripping out the core content on a page. + +The problem with RSS, JSON and RDF is that that Google didn't invent them. And so AMP. + +First though, what is AMP? AMP is a markup language that looks a lot like HTML without the bells and whistles. In fact, if you head over to the [AMP project announcement](https://www.ampproject.org/how-it-works/) you'll see an AMP page rendered in your browser. It looks like any other page on the web. + +AMP markup uses a basic set of tags from HTML. An extremely limited set of tags. Form tags? Nope. Audio or video tags? Nope. Embed? Certainly not. Script tags? Nope. There's a very short list of the HTML tags in allowed in AMP documents available over on the [project page](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-html-format.md). There's also no JavaScript allowed. Those ads and tracking scripts will never be part of AMP documents (don't worry, Google will still be tracking you). + +Amp defines several of its own tags, things like `'amp-youtube`, `amp-ad` or `amp-pixel`. The extra tags are part of what's known as [web components](http://www.w3.org/TR/components-intro/), which is not now, but likely will eventually be a web standard (or possibly ActiveX part 2, only the future knows for sure). + +So far AMP probably sounds like a pretty good idea to most readers. Faster pages, no tracking scripts, no JavaScript at all so no overlay ads about signing up for newsletters or downloading apps no one needs... Except, wait for it, actually there is some JavaScript -- Google's JavaScript. Also, Google's ads. Also Google's tracking pixels. + +The more you look at AMP the less it looks like a good idea. Let's start with some of the poor technical decisions in the current incarnation of AMP. Or at least they're poor decisions if you like the open web and the current HTML standards. + +AMP re-invents the wheel for images using a custom component `amp-img` instead of HTML's `img` tag (not only does Google ignore RSS, JSON and RDF, it ignores HTML). AMP doesn't stop there. It does the same things with `amp-audio` and `amp-video` rather than the HTML standard `audio` and `video`. AMP developers argue that this allows AMP to only serve images when required, which isn't possible with the HTML img tag. That, however, is a limitation of web browsers, not HTML itself. AMP also very clearly has treated [accessibility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_accessibility) as an after thought, or more likely, not a thought at all. You lose more than just HTML tags with AMP. + +In other words AMP is technically half baked at best. + +But the markup that is AMP is really only one part of the picture. After all, as pointed out above, if all they really wanted to do is strip out all the enhancements and just present content of a page there are quite a few already existing ways to do that, including RSS, JSON and RDF. In fact, Google used to have an RSS reader that did just this. So why AMP? + +Speeding things up for users is a nice side benefit, but the point of AMP, like Facebook Articles, is to lock in users to a particular site/format/service. In this case the users aren't you and I reading, it's the publishers putting the content on the web. + +# It's the Ads Stupid + +The goal of Facebook Instant Articles is to keep you on Facebook. No need to explore the larger web when it's all right there in Facebook, especially when it loads so much faster in the Facebook app than it does in a browser on the web. + +AMP exists because Google recognized what a threat Facebook Instant Articles is to Google's ability to serve ads. + +This is why it's called Accelerated *Mobile* Pages. Sorry desktop users, Google already knows how to get ads to you. + +If you watch the [AMP demo](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/introducing-accelerated-mobile-pages.html), which shows how AMP might work when it's integrated into search results next year, you'll notice that the viewer effectively never leaves Google. The AMP pages are laid over the Google search page much the way outside webpages are loaded in native applications on most mobile platforms. The experience from the user's point of view is just like the experience of a mobile app. + +Google needs the web to be on par with the speeds in mobile apps. Google has been trying for some time to speed up the web, but as the stats at the start of this piece indicate, it hasn't really worked. + +To its credit the company has some of the smartest engineers around working on just this problem. Google has made one of the fastest web browsers around (if not the fastest) and in doing so has pushed other vendors to speed up their browsers as well. Since Chrome debuted web browsers have become faster and better at an astonishing rate. Score one for Google. + +It's also been touting the benefits of mobile-friendly pages, first by labeling them as such in search results on mobile devices and then later by ranking mobile friendly pages above not-so-friendly ones when other factors are the same. It's also been quick to adopt speed improving new HTML standards like the responsive images effort, which was first supported by Chrome. Score another one or two for Google. + +The company has also been championing speed through its various page speed tools and has even gone so far as to include speed as a factor in search engine rankings. And yet, look at those page size charts again. Pages keep getting bigger, networks speeds do not. So the web keeps slowing down. Score one for nobody. + +In other words Google has tried just about everything within its considerable power as a search monopoly to get web developers and publishers large and small to speed up their pages. + +It just isn't working. + +## Content Blockers 'comin' + +Google is hardly alone in wanting the web to be fast. You and I want that too. And when web pages slow down we go looking for a way to speed them up again. + +One increasingly popular reaction to slow web pages are content blockers, typically in the form of browser add-ons that stop pages from loading anything but the primary content of the page. Content blockers have been around for over a decade now (No Script first appeared for Firefox in 2005), but their use has always been limited. That changed with Apple's iOS 9, which for the first time has put content blocking tools in the hands of millions. + +It's worth noting that the existence of content blockers is not entirely the result of slow websites, much of the appeal also lies in blocking intrusive ads and stopping the intrusive tracking which often comes with those ads. + +But it's those two things, advertisements and trackers -- which typically mean loading at least a few, and in the most egregious examples dozens, of third-party scripts -- that form no small part of why even some of the web's most popular sites are, frankly, dog slow. + +And dog slow sites are a problem for Google. If a site takes too long to load users leave and never see those Google ads. But dog slow sites are even more of a problem if sites are only dog slow in the web browser -- where Google has free reign -- and not in native apps like Facebook and Apple News, where Google has limited, if any access at all. Given a choice between fast walled gardens and slow open web Google is worried that most of us will chose fast walled garden. + +Combine all the eyeballs using iOS with content blockers, reading the web via Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News and you suddenly have a whole lot of eyeballs that will never see any Google ads. That's a problem for Google, one that AMP is designed to fix. + +## AMP: Static Pages that Require Google's JavaScript + +The most basic thing you can do on the web is create a flat HTML file that sits on a server and contains some basic tags. This type of page will always be lightning fast. It's also insanely simple. This is literally all you need to do to put information on the web. There's no need for JavaScript, no need even for CSS. + +This is more or less what AMP wants you to create (AMP doesn't care if your pages are actually static or -- more likely -- generated from a database, the point is what's rendered is static). + +But then AMP wants to turn around and require that that page include a third-party script in order to load. AMP deliberately sets the opacity of the entire page to 0 until the script loads and only then is the page revealed. + +As developer Justin Avery [asks](https://responsivedesign.is/articles/whats-the-deal-with-accelerated-mobile-pages-amp), "surely the document itself is going to be faster than loading a library to try and make it load faster." Why yes they would. + +Ironically, for something that is ostensibly trying to encourage better behavior from developers and publishers, this means that pages using progressive enhancement, with perhaps a couple of scripts that don't track you, but do add some functionality to the page -- in other words sites following best practices and trying to do things right -- will potentially be slower in AMP. + +In the end, developers and publishers who have been following best practices for web development and don't rely on dozens of tracking networks and ads have little to gain from AMP. + +Unfortunately, the publishers building their sites like that right now are few and far between. Most publishers have much to gain from generating AMP pages -- at least in terms of speed. Google says that AMP can improve page speed index scores by between 15-85%. That huge range is likely a direct result of how many third-party scripts are being loaded on some sites. + +The dependency on JavaScript has another detrimental effect, AMP documents depend on JavaScript, which is to say that if their (albeit small) script fails to load for some reason -- you're going through a tunnel on a train, only have a flaky one bar connection at the beach or any other myriad familiar mobile web scenarios -- the AMP page is completely blank. + +When an AMP page fails, it fails spectacularly. Google knows better than this. Even Gmail still offers a pure HTML-based fallback version of itself. + +## AMP for Publishers + +Why require a bit of JavaScript to load what amounts to one of the simplest possible pages on the web? Well, the developers would argue (correctly) that it's needed to parse, among other things, those `amp-img`, `amp-youtube` and other non-standard elements. + +It also creates a kind of lock-in. Not nearly the sort of lock-in that publishers get into with Facebook Instant Articles, AMP is after all available for everyone, not just big name publishers who sign a deal with Google. + +So why would publishers want to use AMP? Google, while its influence has dipped a tad across industries (as Facebook and Twitter continue to drive more traffic), is still a powerful driver of traffic. When Google promises more eyeballs on their stories, big media listens. + +In this deal, all big media has to do is give up their ad networks. And their interactive maps. And their data visualizations. And their comment systems. And their community of readers. + +That deal isn't just for big media though, your WordPress blog can get in on the stripped down action as well. + +Given that WordPress powers roughly 24 percent of all sites on the web, having an easy way to generate AMP documents from WordPress means a huge boost in adoption for AMP. It's certainly possible to build fast websites using WordPress, but it's also easy to do the opposite. WordPress plugins often have dramatic and negative impact on load times. It isn't uncommon to see a WordPress site loading not just one, but often several external JavaScript libraries because the user installed 3 plugins that each used a different library. + +AMP neatly solves that problem by stripping everything out. + +Why would anyone want to do this? Well, most probably wouldn't want to do just this. That is, AMP isn't trying to get rid of the web as we know it, it just wants to create a parallel one. + +Publishers would not stop generating regular pages, they will simply also generate AMP files, usually, judging by the early adopter examples, by appending `/amp` to the end of the URL. + +The AMP page and canonical page would reference each other through standard HTML tags. User agents could then pick and choose between them, that is, Google's web crawler might grab the AMP page, but desktop Firefox might hit the AMP page and redirect to the canonical URL. + +What this amounts to is that, after years of telling the web to stop making m. mobile-specific websites, Google is telling the web to make `/amp`-specific mobile pages. Potato, potato. + +Still, hypocritical or not, this is a best case scenario for AMP. + +There are worse possibilities. What happens if AMP is widely adopted in an initial rush of enthusiasm and then abandoned few years later? All those millions of links shared in the mean time will suddenly lead to nothing. Don't forget, without Google's JavaScript library no one can see content encoded in AMP HTML. If history is any guide publishers will get an email letting them know that Google is turning off AMP a few months before it shuts it down and then all those links will just disappear. + +Another common defense of AMP is that AMP is an source project and it's all on GitHub for anyone to critique and improve. Google is fond of open source, which is better than closed in some ways, but not much different in others. + +AMP is not Debian, Google is very much in control of the project, regardless of where it might be hosting the code. No one is going to fork AMP HTML and get the web to adopt your version (if you want to fork something try the satirical [Be Nice AMP Project](https://github.com/soulgalore/benice-ampproject)). + +Still, people are stepping in to call out some of the [most](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/517) [egregious](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/481) [decisions](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/545) in AMP's technical design. There are already open issues surrounding nearly every technical shortcoming mentioned in this article. At the time of writing all the issues remain open. + +## AMP and the Open Web + +While AMP clearly has problems, and just might be a big conspiracy to lock publishers into a Google-controlled format, it does, thus far, seem to be friendlier to the open web than Facebook Instant Articles. + +In fact, if you want to be optimistic, you could look at AMP as the carrot that Google has been looking for in its effort to speed up the web. + +As noted web developer (and AMP optimist) Jeremy Keith [writes](https://adactio.com/journal/9646) in a piece on AMP, "my hope is that the current will flow in both directions. As well as publishers creating AMP versions of their pages in order to appease Google, perhaps they will start to ask 'Why can't our regular pages be this fast?' By showing that there is life beyond big bloated invasive web pages, perhaps the AMP project will work as a demo of what the whole web could be." + +Not everyone is that optimistic about AMP though. Developer and Author Tim Kadlec [writes](http://timkadlec.com/2015/10/amp-and-incentives/), "[AMP] doesn't feel like something helping the open web so much as it feels like something bringing a little bit of the walled garden mentality of native development onto the web... Using a very specific tool to build a tailored version of my page in order to 'reach everyone' doesn't fit any definition of the 'open web' that I've ever heard." + +Indeed AMP is very much Google's moderately walled garden response to Facebook's impenetrable fortress of a garden. + +There's one other important aspect to AMP that helps speed up their pages -- Google will cache your pages on its CDN for free. + +As developer and creator of RSS, Dave Winer [says in a post on AMP](http://scripting.com/2015/10/10/supportingStandardsWithoutAllThatNastyInterop.html), "AMP is caching... You can use their caching if you conform to certain rules. If you don't you can use your own caching. I can't imagine there's a lot of difference unless Google weighs search results based on whether you use their code." + +And therein lies the biggest potential problem with AMP. If Google decides to abuse its position as the default search provider for the web and prioritize AMP pages above others then AMP becomes a threat to the open web. + +So far Google has said that AMP pages will not get any priority over regular pages in search results. But that could change. It's hard to imagine why that wouldn't change. Why would Google have faster pages at its disposal and not prioritize them over slower pages? After all speed is already a factor in rankings and AMP does make pages faster. + +Of course it's hard to tell what AMP will do in the long run. Google throws out new projects all the time, sometimes seemingly at random. Some, like GMail, redefine the world's experience of something previously taken for granted. Other projects go the way of Wave. Remember Google Author? That was the last time Google set out to "help" the publishing industry. + +For the web's sake let's hope Google sticks with AMP. Because if publishers embrace AMP (and the biggest ones already are) and it ends up like Google Author, there's a whole lot of dead links and blank pages in the web's future. Again. diff --git a/invoices/paid/2014-05-02_ars-invoice-01.rtf b/invoices/paid/2014-05-02_ars-invoice-01.rtf new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3e8f36 --- /dev/null +++ b/invoices/paid/2014-05-02_ars-invoice-01.rtf @@ -0,0 +1,82 @@ +{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf1265\cocoasubrtf190 +{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 ArialMT;\f1\froman\fcharset0 TimesNewRomanPSMT;} +{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;\red0\green0\blue0;} +{\info +{\title } +{\subject } +{\author } +{\*\company } +{\keywords }}\vieww12240\viewh15840\viewkind1 +\deftab720 +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qr + +\f0\b\fs24 \cf2 Scott Gilbertson\ +412 Holman Ave\ +Athens, GA 30601\ +706 438 4297\ +luxagraf@gmail.com +\f1\b0 +\f0\b \ +5/02/14 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj +\cf2 \ +\ + +\f0 Ars Technica +\f1 \cf0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural +\cf0 \ +\ +\cf2 \ +\ + +\f0 Invoice Number: +\b 001 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qc +\cf2 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural +\cf2 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj + +\f0 \cf2 Article: +\b Ubuntu 14.04 review: Missing the boat on big changes\ + +\b0 Word count: +\b 4272\ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj + +\b0 \cf0 Rate of Pay: +\b $.30/word +\b0 \cf2 \ +Total: +\b $1281.60\ +\ +\ +\ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\sa283\pardirnatural +\cf2 Total for Invoice: $1281.60 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural + +\f0 \cf2 Bank: SchoolsFirstFCU +\f1 \ + +\f0 Address: +\f1 P.O. Box 11547\ +Santa Ana, CA 92711-1547 \ +\ +\ + +\f0 Account Name: Checking\ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj +\cf2 Bank account number:0172510703 +\f1 +\f0 \ +Bank routing number: 322282001 +\f1 +\f0 \ + +\f1 \ +}
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/invoices/paid/2014-06-29_ars-invoice-02.rtf b/invoices/paid/2014-06-29_ars-invoice-02.rtf new file mode 100644 index 0000000..07197ec --- /dev/null +++ b/invoices/paid/2014-06-29_ars-invoice-02.rtf @@ -0,0 +1,77 @@ +{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf1265\cocoasubrtf200 +{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 ArialMT;\f1\froman\fcharset0 TimesNewRomanPSMT;} +{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;} +{\info +{\keywords }}\vieww12240\viewh15840\viewkind1 +\deftab720 +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qr + +\f0\b\fs24 \cf0 Scott Gilbertson\ +412 Holman Ave\ +Athens, GA 30601\ +706 438 4297\ +luxagraf@gmail.com +\f1\b0 +\f0\b \ +6/30/14 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj +\cf0 \ +\ + +\f0 Ars Technica +\f1 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural +\cf0 \ +\ +\ +\ + +\f0 Invoice Number: +\b 002 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qc +\cf0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural +\cf0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj + +\f0 \cf0 Article: +\b Mint 17 is the perfect place for Linux-ers to wait out Ubuntu uncertainty\ + +\b0 Word count: +\b 3196\ + +\b0 Rate of Pay: +\b $.30/word +\b0 \ +Total: +\b $1281.60\ +\ +\ +\ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\sa283\pardirnatural +\cf0 Total for Invoice: $958.80 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural + +\f0 \cf0 Bank: SchoolsFirstFCU +\f1 \ + +\f0 Address: +\f1 P.O. Box 11547\ +Santa Ana, CA 92711-1547 \ +\ +\ + +\f0 Account Name: Checking\ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj +\cf0 Bank account number:0172510703 +\f1 +\f0 \ +Bank routing number: 322282001 +\f1 +\f0 \ + +\f1 \ +}
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/published/New Folder With Items/allaregreen.html b/published/New Folder With Items/allaregreen.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9942738 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/New Folder With Items/allaregreen.html @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +<p>Nicholas Rubin, a 16-year-old programmer from Seattle, has created a browser add-on that makes it incredibly easy to see the influence of money in U.S. politics.</p> +<p>Rubin calls the add-on Greenhouse and it does something so brilliantly simple that once you use it you'll wonder why news sites didn't think of this themselves.</p> +<p>You can install Greenhouse for Firefox, Chrome and Safari over at <a href="http://allaregreen.us/">allaregreen.us</a>.</p> +<p>Greenhouse pulls in campaign contribution data for every Senator and Representative, including the total amount of money received, as well as a breakdown by industry and size of donation. It then combines this with a parser that finds the names of Senators and Representatives in the current page and highlights them. Hover your mouse over the highlighted names and it displays their top campaign contributors.</p> +<p>Greenhouse adds another layer to the news, showing you the story behind the story. In politics, as in many other things, if you want to know the why behind the what, you need to follow the money. Somewhat depressingly, in politics it seems that it's money all the way down.</p> +<p>For example, suppose you read <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/business/senate-hearing-on-general-motors.html">this story</a> in the New York Times, in which three Senators take G.M. to task for failing to recall millions of small cars. What do the three have in common? Just that their top campaign donors are lawyers and law firms.</p> +<p>Or try Greenhouse on this story on House Republicans who think the Affordable Health Care Act is an <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/house-republicans-obamacare-lawsuit-108957.html">illegal overreach</a> by President Barack Obama. Greenhouse will highlight six names in that story. All but one get the majority of their campaign funds from a combination of two groups -- health professionals and the pharmaceutical industry.</p> + +[image="screenshot01.png" caption="Greenhouse in action. Opposed to Health Are reform? Check. Primarily funded by Healthcare Industry? Check."] + +<p>Cynical yet? No? There's plenty more examples; follow the <span class="citation">[@allaregreen]</span>(https://twitter.com/allaregreen) Twitter account for your daily dose of money in U.S. politics. As allaregreen.us puts it, playing of the color encoding of U.S. politics: "Some are red. Some are blue. All are green."</p> +<p>There is one ray of hope in Greenhouse's data. Near the top of the panel it displays you'll see the percentage of contributions under $200. In other words, the percentage of contributions from people like you and me. There's also a small badge indicating the member's position on campaign finance reform.</p> +<p>For his part Rubin says building and using the add-on hasn't made him cynical. "Actually, I think Greenhouse is making me hopeful," Rubin said when I asked about cynicism in U.S. politics. "I've received such great feedback from people around the world... people want transparency like this and Greenhouse may actually play a role in the solution."</p> +<p>Among the early users offering positive feedback is Harvard Law professor and author of <cite>Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It</cite>, Lawrence Lessig, who <a href="http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/88073919937/incredibly-cool-politic-code-get-it">calls Greenhouse</a> "easily the coolest plugin that I use".</p> +<p>Indeed Greenhouse does something most attempts at transparency do not -- it gives context to data. Transparency in government is good, few would argue otherwise, but as Lessig <a href="http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/93500567957/escapethe1990s">wrote recently on his blog</a>, "merely making data available isn't enough to deal with an underlying corruption problem."</p> +<p>Open government data tends to be very big data with little context to it. For example, all the data Greenhouse uses comes from <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/">opensecrets.org</a>, which has had that data available for years. Chances are though, you've never bothered to dig through opensecrets.org and follow the money. By taking that data and injecting it into the context of the news, Rubin has managed to turn raw information into useful knowledge.</p> +<p>Did I mention Rubin is just 16?</p> +<p>The idea for Greenhouse came from a presentation Rubin gave back in 7th grade when a teacher assigned him to the topic of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood#Corporations_as_persons_in_the_United_States">Corporate Personhood</a> and campaign finance. Rubin came away from that experience thinking that more people should know about how corporations run U.S. politics. But, "the information about sources of funding ... wasn't simple and easily accessible when people needed it." Later when Rubin started to teach himself to code he decided to try to combine the two interests and Greenhouse was born.</p> +<p>Rubin plans to keep expanding Greenhouse. He's looking to build a sort of reverse Greenhouse -- a tool that would, for example, highlight all mentions of Google on a webpage and show which campaigns the company contributes to -- as well as a tool for other countries, though the latter will depend on whether or not the data is actually available. He also hopes to build Greenhouse into an interactive community rather than simply a browser add-on.</p> +<p>If you want to participate or just follow along, grab the add-on and follow <span class="citation">@allaregreen</span> on Twitter.</p> diff --git a/published/New Folder With Items/allaregreen.us.txt b/published/New Folder With Items/allaregreen.us.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7b316db --- /dev/null +++ b/published/New Folder With Items/allaregreen.us.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +Nicholas Rubin, a 16-year-old programmer from Seattle, has created a browser add-on that makes it incredibly easy to see the influence of money in U.S. politics. + +Rubin calls the add-on Greenhouse and it does something so brilliantly simple that once you use it you'll wonder why news sites didn't think of this themselves. + +You can install Greenhouse for Firefox, Chrome and Safari over at [allaregreen.us](http://allaregreen.us/). + +Greenhouse pulls in campaign contribution data for every Senator and Representative, including the total amount of money received, as well as a breakdown by industry and size of donation. It then combines this with a parser that finds the names of Senators and Representatives in the current page and highlights them. Hover your mouse over the highlighted names and it displays their top campaign contributors. + +Greenhouse adds another layer to the news, showing you the story behind the story. In politics, as in many other things, if you want to know the why behind the what, you need to follow the money. Somewhat depressingly, in politics it seems that it's money all the way down. + +For example, suppose you read [this story](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/business/senate-hearing-on-general-motors.html) in the New York Times, in which three Senators take G.M. to task for failing to recall millions of small cars. What do the three have in common? Just that their top campaign donors are lawyers and law firms. + +Or try Greenhouse on this story on House Republicans who think the Affordable Health Care Act is an [illegal overreach](http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/house-republicans-obamacare-lawsuit-108957.html) by President Barack Obama. Greenhouse will highlight six names in that story. All but one get the majority of their campaign funds from a combination of two groups -- health professionals and the pharmaceutical industry. + +[image="screenshot01.png" caption="Greenhouse in action. Opposed to Health Are reform? Check. Primarily funded by Healthcare Industry? Check."] + +Cynical yet? No? There's plenty more examples; follow the [@allaregreen](https://twitter.com/allaregreen) Twitter account for your daily dose of money in U.S. politics. As allaregreen.us puts it, playing of the color encoding of U.S. politics: "Some are red. Some are blue. All are green." + +There is one ray of hope in Greenhouse's data. Near the top of the panel it displays you'll see the percentage of contributions under $200. In other words, the percentage of contributions from people like you and me. There's also a small badge indicating the member's position on campaign finance reform. + +For his part Rubin says building and using the add-on hasn't made him cynical. "Actually, I think Greenhouse is making me hopeful," Rubin said when I asked about cynicism in U.S. politics. "I've received such great feedback from people around the world... people want transparency like this and Greenhouse may actually play a role in the solution." + +Among the early users offering positive feedback is Harvard Law professor and author of <cite>Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It</cite>, Lawrence Lessig, who [calls Greenhouse](http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/88073919937/incredibly-cool-politic-code-get-it) "easily the coolest plugin that I use". + +Indeed Greenhouse does something most attempts at transparency do not -- it gives context to data. Transparency in government is good, few would argue otherwise, but as Lessig [wrote recently on his blog](http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/93500567957/escapethe1990s), "merely making data available isn't enough to deal with an underlying corruption problem." + +Open government data tends to be very big data with little context to it. For example, all the data Greenhouse uses comes from [opensecrets.org](http://www.opensecrets.org/), which has had that data available for years. Chances are though, you've never bothered to dig through opensecrets.org and follow the money. By taking that data and injecting it into the context of the news, Rubin has managed to turn raw information into useful knowledge. + +Did I mention Rubin is just 16? + +The idea for Greenhouse came from a presentation Rubin gave back in 7th grade when a teacher assigned him to the topic of [Corporate Personhood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood#Corporations_as_persons_in_the_United_States) and campaign finance. Rubin came away from that experience thinking that more people should know about how corporations run U.S. politics. But, "the information about sources of funding ... wasn't simple and easily accessible when people needed it." Later when Rubin started to teach himself to code he decided to try to combine the two interests and Greenhouse was born. + +Rubin plans to keep expanding Greenhouse. He's looking to build a sort of reverse Greenhouse -- a tool that would, for example, highlight all mentions of Google on a webpage and show which campaigns the company contributes to -- as well as a tool for other countries, though the latter will depend on whether or not the data is actually available. He also hopes to build Greenhouse into an interactive community rather than simply a browser add-on. + +If you want to participate or just follow along, grab the add-on and follow @allaregreen on Twitter. + diff --git a/published/New Folder With Items/allaregreennotes.txt b/published/New Folder With Items/allaregreennotes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5c3fe4 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/New Folder With Items/allaregreennotes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,53 @@ + + +Greenhouse + + + +It sounds cynical, but if you want to understand why politicians make the decisions they make and vote the way they vote you just need to follow the money. + +For every story there is a story behind that story. + + +Robert Anton Wilson often used a playful idea of seeing the "fnords", that is seeing the story behind the story. + + +In other words Greenhouse isn't doing anything thousands of other people couldn't have done. But they didn't. Nicholas Rubin did. + +Rubin has received a lot of attention from the press in part because he's just 16 years old, but that catchy factoid sometimes hides just how fantastically useful Greenhouse is regardless of who built it and how old they might be. It's fantastically useful if you want to see the threads behind the news, to follow the money as it were. + + + + + +1. how did you come up with the idea for Greenhouse? + +Corporate personhood and + +(if he talks about corporate personhood, mention that most people don't know that, can he expand a bit on that idea) + +1a) ask about relationship to Lessig. + +2. One of the things I found interesting about Greenhouse is that on one hand staring this data in face can make you cynical about politics, how did you feel about that? Has it been depressing to discover the sort of almost 1 to 1 equation that seems to exist between money and the way politicians vote on issues? + +2a) at the top there you have a little ray of hope -- AKA, the contributions from ordinary people +like you and I. Was that there from the beginning? and do you see those numbers +as a kind of solution? (can follow up with Lessigs Grant and Franklin proposal + +3. In reading some of the past coverage of greenhouse I noticed that you had a lot of people from all sides of the political spectrum -- pretty unusual to have Tea Party supports say nice things said about at the same time anti-Tea PArty supporters are saying the same thing. It's a bit like uncovering the money might unite some pretty dissparate ideologies around a common goal -- have you found that to be true, +that money is the common enemy of pretty much everyone seeking political reform? + +3a) what's the most egregious example you know of -- who is the most paid for politician in america? + +4. What are your goals for greenhouse? + +5. i noticed that cory doctorow suggested a sort of reverse tool, where any time the name of a company or individual who makes massive donations comes up it shows the politicians who benefit from that money. Is there data out there for that sort of thing? + +6. Can you share any plans for the future of greenhouse? + +Lessig said recently on his blog that " +Opensecrets.org can tell you. Next time you read an article about how you local representatives voted, head over to opensecrets.org and check to see if the vote happens to -- coincidentally I'm sure -- to benefit the your representative's top donors in any way. Congrats, you've followed the money to the why behind the what. + + + +In this case the "green" in Greenhouse refers to money, as in campaign contributions and how they influence the U.S. political system. The download page gives away the answer in its slogan -- "some are red, some are blue, all are green". diff --git a/published/New Folder With Items/fedora21review.html b/published/New Folder With Items/fedora21review.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2f393b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/New Folder With Items/fedora21review.html @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +<p>The Fedora Project recently rolled out a major update in the form of <a href="https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/">Fedora 21</a>. This release marks the first that's built around the newly restructured Fedora Project.</p> +<p>Like most Linux distros Fedora is a massive, sprawling project that has, frankly, felt unfocused and a bit lost at times. Just what is Fedora? Fedora has served as a kind of showcase distro of GNOME 3 ever since GNOME 3 hit the beta stage, which would seem to target everyday users, but then at the same time the project pours tremendous energy into building developer tools like <a href="http://devassistant.org/">DevAssistant</a>. So is Fedora a developer distro? A newbie-friendly GNOME showcase? A server distro? An obscure robotics distro?</p> +<p>Recently Fedora did a bit of soul searching and discovered that the answer to all those questions is yes. The way to make sense of it all is what Fedora calls <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora.next">Fedora.Next</a>.</p> +<p>Fedora.Next is Fedora's term for its new organization and release structure. There is a core (no, not like the old Fedora Core/Extras division, this is different), then there is a second layer, the APIs and such, and then the "Environments" that users like you and I interact with.</p> +<p>You can think of Fedora.Next's structure as a series of concentric rings where each ring is supported by the one inside it. At the center are the core components of the system, APIs that applications hook into and so on. Up from that are the actual system components and then the most visible of the new layers, what Fedora calls "Environments." For now the available Environments consist of Workstation (Desktop), Server and Cloud. Each environment is optimized to suit what it says on the tin. Because these are very modular it won't be hard for Fedora to add new Environments as needed. For example perhaps there will one day be a Mobile Environment.</p> +<p>The new pre-packaged Environments don't mean you can't configure Fedora however you like, just that these three Environments represent the primary areas of focus for developers. This offers Fedora a bit of direction and focus internally and more targeted "products" for users.</p> +<p>Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller <a href="http://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-present-and-future-a-fedora-next-2014-update-part-ii-whats-happening/">likens</a> the Fedora.Next structure to Lego: "One of the related (and perpetual) community discussions centers around what exactly Fedora is. Traditionally, the answer is: we take the 'raw plastic' of the software out there in the universe and we mold it into high-precision Lego bricks, and users can plug them together."</p> +<p>"The idea [with Environments] is," continues Miller, "we can take some of our bricks, and we can ship those as sets." That doesn't mean though that you can't build your own thing as well. Miller is quick to reassure long-time Fedora fans that the project is "not getting rid of the basic supply of bricks... we want you to build other things."</p> +<p>The renewed sense of focus apparent in the new Fedora.Next release structure seems to have re-invigorated the Fedora project -- at least it looks that way from an outsider's perspective. Whatever the case, Fedora 21 is one of the strongest releases the project has put out in recent memory and is well worth the upgrade.</p> +<h2 id="fedora-21-workstation">Fedora 21 Workstation</h2> +<p>The Workstation Environment is what you would have installed previously if you had just downloaded Fedora Live CD and installed the defaults.</p> +<p>In Fedora 21 that will get you a GNOME desktop. The old "spins", which consist primarily of different desktops, are still available (and presumably build on the same basic set of packages found in the GNOME Workstation release), but as noted earlier Fedora has long been a showcase distro of GNOME 3.x and with that in mind I stuck with the default GNOME 3.14 desktop.</p> + +[image="fedora21-desktop.jpg" caption="The basic GNOME Shell search screen in Fedora 21."] + +<p>First though you have to install Fedora using what I think is supposed to be an intuitive installer that's so simple you can't fail. Except that instead of "can't fail", it's so simple you can't tell what you need to do. Perhaps I'm just too brainwashed by the form-based installers found in Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE, ElementaryOS and well, just about everywhere, but Fedora's button-based installer -- buttons, which hide forms mind you -- drives me crazy. Why make me click an extra button to set up a user account for a workstation environment when I will obviously need a user account?</p> + +[image="fedora21-installer.jpg" caption="Fedora's nearly inscrutable installer, complete with instructions in the form of a tiny-font error message."] + +<p>The Fedora installer isn't part of the GNOME project, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn the same developer who turned the Nautilus file browser into a useless toy also had a go at the Fedora installer. I'm sure you'll figure it out, it's not Arch (at least Arch's arcane install process is well documented), but it gets things off the bumpy start.</p> +<p>The best thing I can say about Fedora's installer is that you only have to use it once. Just remember to create a new user and set your root password.</p> +<h3 id="gnome-3.14">GNOME 3.14</h3> +<p>Once Fedora 21 is installed you'll be greeted by the GNOME 3.14 desktop (assuming you found the button to create a user account).</p> +<p>Fedora leap-frogged over GNOME 3.12 -- Fedora 20 shipped with GNOME 3.10 -- so this is a major leap forward for Fedora fans. GNOME 3.14 brings plenty of new features, including a couple new applications, an updated theme and some more improvements in HiDPI screen support. In fact GNOME has long boasted some of the best HiDPI support around and this release continues to build on that, polishing the little details to the point that I haven't seen anything amiss running Fedora 21 in a virtual machine on a retina Macbook Pro.</p> +<p>Fedora's nearly stock GNOME 3.14 looks great on HiDPI screens and the updated GNOME theme gives the desktop a clean, simple look and feel.</p> +<p>If you're updating all the way from GNOME 3.10 you'll notice a completely rewritten Weather app that taps GNOME's new geolocation API to automatically pull in your local forecast. Fedora 21 does not, however, ship with some of the other new GNOME apps like Photos. Fedora 21 has elected to stick with the slightly more feature-rich Shotwell. GNOME Photos is available in the Fedora repos and has some new online account support, but in my experience it's a bit buggy for actually working with something as important as your photo library.</p> + +[image="fedora21-weather.jpg" caption="GNOME's revamped weather app with geolocation API."] + +<p>This release also brings the first real support for Wayland -- Mutter (GNOME's default display manager) can now work as a Wayland compositor. Just log out of the default session and click the gear icon to choose the "GNOME on Wayland" option. Fedora should seamlessly fall back to X where Wayland isn't supported.</p> +<p>GNOME 3.14 makes for a different, but perfectly usable desktop. At this point the 3.x line is well polished and feels mature. Its rather different take on the desktop interface is not for everyone, in fact it's not my choice for everyday use, but if you come around to its way of thinking GNOME 3 is perfectly capable of getting out of your way and letting you do what you want to do. The only real downside to GNOME I found is the default file manager, Nautilus, which is pretty limited. I swapped it out with the Nautilus fork, <a href="http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?p=198">Nemo</a>, and found I liked GNOME 3 a lot more after that.</p> +<p>If you haven't taken GNOME for a spin in a while it might be worth another look and Fedora 21 makes hands down the best GNOME platform I've tested.</p> +<h3 id="yum-now-with-more-yuminess">Yum, Now With More Yuminess</h3> +<p>As much as I love some of the developer tools and little side projects Fedora churns out (like the GNOME color management tools it pioneered), I've never been a fan of Fedora's package manager. Fedora 21 changes that. Yum is no longer the slow, awkward beast it used to be and by extension neither is the Software center tools (which is the pretty-much-only-works-in-Fedora GNOME Software app).</p> +<p>There was a time when Ubuntu's Software Center was perhaps one of the best graphical software installation tools out there and yum-based distros like Fedora looked slow and ugly in comparison. These days more or less the opposite is true. Not only is Fedora's graphical software app one of the fastest I've ever used (speed will obviously depend somewhat on your internet connection speeds and available mirrors) but it's also clean, well organized and offers a great search tool.</p> + +[image="fedora21-software.jpg" caption="GNOME's Software app in Fedora 21."] + +<p>And Fedora continues to target the developer audience with very up-to-date versions of Perl, Python, Ruby and most other languages you can think of. Anything that isn't there out of the box is most likely available in single DevAssistant command. If you're a developer and you haven't checked out DevAssistant you need to, it's the simplest way I've seen to get a complete development stack up and running.</p> +<h3 id="kernel-updates">Kernel Updates</h3> +<p>Fedora 21 ships with Linux kernel 3.17.1, which brings the usual slew of latest hardware support, but is also notable for giving Fedora 21 tentative support for ARM 64 chips. ARM 64 is not yet considered a "primary architecture" for Fedora, but most things should work according to <a href="http://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-21-to-ship-the-3-16-linux-kernel-and-a-smaller-minimal-install-set/">Fedora Magazine</a>.</p> +<p>Fedora's kernel team has also adopted a more modular approach with this release, stripping things back a bit at the request of the Cloud environment developers. The result is a considerably smaller footprint for the Cloud environment, though both Workstation and Server will be roughly the same as the previous releases size-wise.</p> +<h2 id="fedora-server">Fedora Server</h2> +<p>While the Workstation environment is a good base on which to build your desktop experience, the new Fedora Server Environment is more specifically tailored to the needs of sysadmins and the like.</p> +<p>The first release of the Server Environment features a few new tools, like Cockpit, a server monitoring tool with a web-based interface you can connect to with your browser. If you're new to sysadmin tasks -- things like starting and stopping services, storage admin, and so on, or, if you just dislike doing everything through an SSH session, then Cockpit is worth checking out. It's more or less everything you're already doing on the command line, but available via a web-based GUI. It's all the same processes in the end, you can start Apache in the web panel and stop it from the command line. It's probably not going to replace your hand crafted shell scripts and preferred command line tools, but it's a nice option for newcomers.</p> + +[image="fedora21-server-cockpit.jpg" caption="Cockpit running on locally on Fedora 21 Workstation."] + +<p>This release also bundles in a couple new-to-Fedora tools like OpenLMI, perhaps best thought of as a remote API for system management, and FreeIPA, which aims to simplify the process of managing user and groups securely.</p> +<p>Then there's RoleKit, which is a brand new Fedora creation that looks like it will be very handy in the future, though it's limited right now. In a sense RoleKit is the sysadmin equivalent of Fedora's DevAssistant. That is, RoleKit will help you install and configure packages aimed a specific role. For example, call up everything you need to run a mail server, or everything you need to run a LAMP stack. Promising, but thus far incomplete.</p> +<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> +<p>I've used Fedora off and on since Fedora 6 (which at that time known as Fedora Core 6) and can say without reservation that this is the best release I've ever used.</p> +<p>That said, the GNOME desktop is not for me. Fortunately there are plenty of other "spins" available, including a version with the MATE-desktop, which can now use Compiz if you'd like to re-experience Fedora with wobbly windows just like the days of yore. There are also spins featuring KDE, Xfce and LXDE among other desktops.</p> +<p>More importantly, Fedora 21 sees the project plowing into the future with what feels like a renewed sense of direction and purpose.</p> +<p>If you're a desktop user there's a Fedora for you. If you're a sysadmin there's a Fedora for you. If you're chasing the dream of cloud server futures there's a Fedora for you. And of course if you're just looking for a distro on which to build the ultimate robot, there's still a Fedora for you.</p> diff --git a/published/New Folder With Items/fedora21review.txt b/published/New Folder With Items/fedora21review.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..979db7e --- /dev/null +++ b/published/New Folder With Items/fedora21review.txt @@ -0,0 +1,79 @@ +The Fedora Project recently rolled out a major update in the form of [Fedora 21](https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/). This release marks the first that's built around the newly restructured Fedora Project. + +Like most Linux distros Fedora is a massive, sprawling project that has, frankly, felt unfocused and a bit lost at times. Just what is Fedora? Fedora has served as a kind of showcase distro of GNOME 3 ever since GNOME 3 hit the beta stage, which would seem to target everyday users, but then at the same time the project pours tremendous energy into building developer tools like [DevAssistant](http://devassistant.org/). So is Fedora a developer distro? A newbie-friendly GNOME showcase? A server distro? An obscure robotics distro? + +Recently Fedora did a bit of soul searching and discovered that the answer to all those questions is yes. The way to make sense of it all is what Fedora calls [Fedora.Next](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora.next). + +Fedora.Next is Fedora's term for its new organization and release structure. There is a core (no, not like the old Fedora Core/Extras division, this is different), then there is a second layer, the APIs and such, and then the "Environments" that users like you and I interact with. + +You can think of Fedora.Next's structure as a series of concentric rings where each ring is supported by the one inside it. At the center are the core components of the system, APIs that applications hook into and so on. Up from that are the actual system components and then the most visible of the new layers, what Fedora calls "Environments." For now the available Environments consist of Workstation (Desktop), Server and Cloud. Each environment is optimized to suit what it says on the tin. Because these are very modular it won't be hard for Fedora to add new Environments as needed. For example perhaps there will one day be a Mobile Environment. + +The new pre-packaged Environments don't mean you can't configure Fedora however you like, just that these three Environments represent the primary areas of focus for developers. This offers Fedora a bit of direction and focus internally and more targeted "products" for users. + +Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller [likens](http://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-present-and-future-a-fedora-next-2014-update-part-ii-whats-happening/) the Fedora.Next structure to Lego: "One of the related (and perpetual) community discussions centers around what exactly Fedora is. Traditionally, the answer is: we take the 'raw plastic' of the software out there in the universe and we mold it into high-precision Lego bricks, and users can plug them together." + +"The idea [with Environments] is," continues Miller, "we can take some of our bricks, and we can ship those as sets." That doesn't mean though that you can't build your own thing as well. Miller is quick to reassure long-time Fedora fans that the project is "not getting rid of the basic supply of bricks... we want you to build other things." + +The renewed sense of focus apparent in the new Fedora.Next release structure seems to have re-invigorated the Fedora project -- at least it looks that way from an outsider's perspective. Whatever the case, Fedora 21 is one of the strongest releases the project has put out in recent memory and is well worth the upgrade. + +## Fedora 21 Workstation + +The Workstation Environment is what you would have installed previously if you had just downloaded Fedora Live CD and installed the defaults. + +In Fedora 21 that will get you a GNOME desktop. The old "spins", which consist primarily of different desktops, are still available (and presumably build on the same basic set of packages found in the GNOME Workstation release), but as noted earlier Fedora has long been a showcase distro of GNOME 3.x and with that in mind I stuck with the default GNOME 3.14 desktop. + +First though you have to install Fedora using what I think is supposed to be an intuitive installer that's so simple you can't fail. Except that instead of "can't fail", it's so simple you can't tell what you need to do. Perhaps I'm just too brainwashed by the form-based installers found in Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE, ElementaryOS and well, just about everywhere, but Fedora's button-based installer -- buttons, which hide forms mind you -- drives me crazy. Why make me click an extra button to set up a user account for a workstation environment when I will obviously need a user account? + +The Fedora installer isn't part of the GNOME project, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn the same developer who turned the Nautilus file browser into a useless toy also had a go at the Fedora installer. I'm sure you'll figure it out, it's not Arch (at least Arch's arcane install process is well documented), but it gets things off the bumpy start. + +The best thing I can say about Fedora's installer is that you only have to use it once. Just remember to create a new user and set your root password. + +### GNOME 3.14 + +Once Fedora 21 is installed you'll be greeted by the GNOME 3.14 desktop (assuming you found the button to create a user account). + +Fedora leap-frogged over GNOME 3.12 -- Fedora 20 shipped with GNOME 3.10 -- so this is a major leap forward for Fedora fans. GNOME 3.14 brings plenty of new features, including a couple new applications, an updated theme and some more improvements in HiDPI screen support. In fact GNOME has long boasted some of the best HiDPI support around and this release continues to build on that, polishing the little details to the point that I haven't seen anything amiss running Fedora 21 in a virtual machine on a retina Macbook Pro. + +Fedora's nearly stock GNOME 3.14 looks great on HiDPI screens and the updated GNOME theme gives the desktop a clean, simple look and feel. + +If you're updating all the way from GNOME 3.10 you'll notice a completely rewritten Weather app that taps GNOME's new geolocation API to automatically pull in your local forecast. Fedora 21 does not, however, ship with some of the other new GNOME apps like Photos. Fedora 21 has elected to stick with the slightly more feature-rich Shotwell. GNOME Photos is available in the Fedora repos and has some new online account support, but in my experience it's a bit buggy for actually working with something as important as your photo library. + +This release also brings the first real support for Wayland -- Mutter (GNOME's default display manager) can now work as a Wayland compositor. Just log out of the default session and click the gear icon to choose the "GNOME on Wayland" option. Fedora should seamlessly fall back to X where Wayland isn't supported. + +GNOME 3.14 makes for a different, but perfectly usable desktop. At this point the 3.x line is well polished and feels mature. Its rather different take on the desktop interface is not for everyone, in fact it's not my choice for everyday use, but if you come around to its way of thinking GNOME 3 is perfectly capable of getting out of your way and letting you do what you want to do. The only real downside to GNOME I found is the default file manager, Nautilus, which is pretty limited. I swapped it out with the Nautilus fork, [Nemo](http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?p=198), and found I liked GNOME 3 a lot more after that. + +If you haven't taken GNOME for a spin in a while it might be worth another look and Fedora 21 makes hands down the best GNOME platform I've tested. + +### Yum, Now With More Yuminess + +As much as I love some of the developer tools and little side projects Fedora churns out (like the GNOME color management tools it pioneered), I've never been a fan of Fedora's package manager. Fedora 21 changes that. Yum is no longer the slow, awkward beast it used to be and by extension neither is the Software center tools (which is the pretty-much-only-works-in-Fedora GNOME Software app). + +There was a time when Ubuntu's Software Center was perhaps one of the best graphical software installation tools out there and yum-based distros like Fedora looked slow and ugly in comparison. These days more or less the opposite is true. Not only is Fedora's graphical software app one of the fastest I've ever used (speed will obviously depend somewhat on your internet connection speeds and available mirrors) but it's also clean, well organized and offers a great search tool. + +And Fedora continues to target the developer audience with very up-to-date versions of Perl, Python, Ruby and most other languages you can think of. Anything that isn't there out of the box is most likely available in single DevAssistant command. If you're a developer and you haven't checked out DevAssistant you need to, it's the simplest way I've seen to get a complete development stack up and running. + +### Kernel Updates + +Fedora 21 ships with Linux kernel 3.17.1, which brings the usual slew of latest hardware support, but is also notable for giving Fedora 21 tentative support for ARM 64 chips. ARM 64 is not yet considered a "primary architecture" for Fedora, but most things should work according to [Fedora Magazine](http://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-21-to-ship-the-3-16-linux-kernel-and-a-smaller-minimal-install-set/). + +Fedora's kernel team has also adopted a more modular approach with this release, stripping things back a bit at the request of the Cloud environment developers. The result is a considerably smaller footprint for the Cloud environment, though both Workstation and Server will be roughly the same as the previous releases size-wise. + +## Fedora Server + +While the Workstation environment is a good base on which to build your desktop experience, the new Fedora Server Environment is more specifically tailored to the needs of sysadmins and the like. + +The first release of the Server Environment features a few new tools, like Cockpit, a server monitoring tool with a web-based interface you can connect to with your browser. If you're new to sysadmin tasks -- things like starting and stopping services, storage admin, and so on, or, if you just dislike doing everything through an SSH session, then Cockpit is worth checking out. It's more or less everything you're already doing on the command line, but available via a web-based GUI. It's all the same processes in the end, you can start Apache in the web panel and stop it from the command line. It's probably not going to replace your hand crafted shell scripts and preferred command line tools, but it's a nice option for newcomers. + +This release also bundles in a couple new-to-Fedora tools like OpenLMI, perhaps best thought of as a remote API for system management, and FreeIPA, which aims to simplify the process of managing user and groups securely. + +Then there's RoleKit, which is a brand new Fedora creation that looks like it will be very handy in the future, though it's limited right now. In a sense RoleKit is the sysadmin equivalent of Fedora's DevAssistant. That is, RoleKit will help you install and configure packages aimed a specific role. For example, call up everything you need to run a mail server, or everything you need to run a LAMP stack. Promising, but thus far incomplete. + +## Conclusion + +I've used Fedora off and on since Fedora 6 (which at that time known as Fedora Core 6) and can say without reservation that this is the best release I've ever used. + +That said, the GNOME desktop is not for me. Fortunately there are plenty of other "spins" available, including a version with the MATE-desktop, which can now use Compiz if you'd like to re-experience Fedora with wobbly windows just like the days of yore. There are also spins featuring KDE, Xfce and LXDE among other desktops. + +More importantly, Fedora 21 sees the project plowing into the future with what feels like a renewed sense of direction and purpose. + +If you're a desktop user there's a Fedora for you. If you're a sysadmin there's a Fedora for you. If you're chasing the dream of cloud server futures there's a Fedora for you. And of course if you're just looking for a distro on which to build the ultimate robot, there's still a Fedora for you. diff --git a/published/allaregreen.html b/published/allaregreen.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9942738 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/allaregreen.html @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +<p>Nicholas Rubin, a 16-year-old programmer from Seattle, has created a browser add-on that makes it incredibly easy to see the influence of money in U.S. politics.</p> +<p>Rubin calls the add-on Greenhouse and it does something so brilliantly simple that once you use it you'll wonder why news sites didn't think of this themselves.</p> +<p>You can install Greenhouse for Firefox, Chrome and Safari over at <a href="http://allaregreen.us/">allaregreen.us</a>.</p> +<p>Greenhouse pulls in campaign contribution data for every Senator and Representative, including the total amount of money received, as well as a breakdown by industry and size of donation. It then combines this with a parser that finds the names of Senators and Representatives in the current page and highlights them. Hover your mouse over the highlighted names and it displays their top campaign contributors.</p> +<p>Greenhouse adds another layer to the news, showing you the story behind the story. In politics, as in many other things, if you want to know the why behind the what, you need to follow the money. Somewhat depressingly, in politics it seems that it's money all the way down.</p> +<p>For example, suppose you read <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/business/senate-hearing-on-general-motors.html">this story</a> in the New York Times, in which three Senators take G.M. to task for failing to recall millions of small cars. What do the three have in common? Just that their top campaign donors are lawyers and law firms.</p> +<p>Or try Greenhouse on this story on House Republicans who think the Affordable Health Care Act is an <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/house-republicans-obamacare-lawsuit-108957.html">illegal overreach</a> by President Barack Obama. Greenhouse will highlight six names in that story. All but one get the majority of their campaign funds from a combination of two groups -- health professionals and the pharmaceutical industry.</p> + +[image="screenshot01.png" caption="Greenhouse in action. Opposed to Health Are reform? Check. Primarily funded by Healthcare Industry? Check."] + +<p>Cynical yet? No? There's plenty more examples; follow the <span class="citation">[@allaregreen]</span>(https://twitter.com/allaregreen) Twitter account for your daily dose of money in U.S. politics. As allaregreen.us puts it, playing of the color encoding of U.S. politics: "Some are red. Some are blue. All are green."</p> +<p>There is one ray of hope in Greenhouse's data. Near the top of the panel it displays you'll see the percentage of contributions under $200. In other words, the percentage of contributions from people like you and me. There's also a small badge indicating the member's position on campaign finance reform.</p> +<p>For his part Rubin says building and using the add-on hasn't made him cynical. "Actually, I think Greenhouse is making me hopeful," Rubin said when I asked about cynicism in U.S. politics. "I've received such great feedback from people around the world... people want transparency like this and Greenhouse may actually play a role in the solution."</p> +<p>Among the early users offering positive feedback is Harvard Law professor and author of <cite>Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It</cite>, Lawrence Lessig, who <a href="http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/88073919937/incredibly-cool-politic-code-get-it">calls Greenhouse</a> "easily the coolest plugin that I use".</p> +<p>Indeed Greenhouse does something most attempts at transparency do not -- it gives context to data. Transparency in government is good, few would argue otherwise, but as Lessig <a href="http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/93500567957/escapethe1990s">wrote recently on his blog</a>, "merely making data available isn't enough to deal with an underlying corruption problem."</p> +<p>Open government data tends to be very big data with little context to it. For example, all the data Greenhouse uses comes from <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/">opensecrets.org</a>, which has had that data available for years. Chances are though, you've never bothered to dig through opensecrets.org and follow the money. By taking that data and injecting it into the context of the news, Rubin has managed to turn raw information into useful knowledge.</p> +<p>Did I mention Rubin is just 16?</p> +<p>The idea for Greenhouse came from a presentation Rubin gave back in 7th grade when a teacher assigned him to the topic of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood#Corporations_as_persons_in_the_United_States">Corporate Personhood</a> and campaign finance. Rubin came away from that experience thinking that more people should know about how corporations run U.S. politics. But, "the information about sources of funding ... wasn't simple and easily accessible when people needed it." Later when Rubin started to teach himself to code he decided to try to combine the two interests and Greenhouse was born.</p> +<p>Rubin plans to keep expanding Greenhouse. He's looking to build a sort of reverse Greenhouse -- a tool that would, for example, highlight all mentions of Google on a webpage and show which campaigns the company contributes to -- as well as a tool for other countries, though the latter will depend on whether or not the data is actually available. He also hopes to build Greenhouse into an interactive community rather than simply a browser add-on.</p> +<p>If you want to participate or just follow along, grab the add-on and follow <span class="citation">@allaregreen</span> on Twitter.</p> diff --git a/published/allaregreen.us.txt b/published/allaregreen.us.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7b316db --- /dev/null +++ b/published/allaregreen.us.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +Nicholas Rubin, a 16-year-old programmer from Seattle, has created a browser add-on that makes it incredibly easy to see the influence of money in U.S. politics. + +Rubin calls the add-on Greenhouse and it does something so brilliantly simple that once you use it you'll wonder why news sites didn't think of this themselves. + +You can install Greenhouse for Firefox, Chrome and Safari over at [allaregreen.us](http://allaregreen.us/). + +Greenhouse pulls in campaign contribution data for every Senator and Representative, including the total amount of money received, as well as a breakdown by industry and size of donation. It then combines this with a parser that finds the names of Senators and Representatives in the current page and highlights them. Hover your mouse over the highlighted names and it displays their top campaign contributors. + +Greenhouse adds another layer to the news, showing you the story behind the story. In politics, as in many other things, if you want to know the why behind the what, you need to follow the money. Somewhat depressingly, in politics it seems that it's money all the way down. + +For example, suppose you read [this story](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/business/senate-hearing-on-general-motors.html) in the New York Times, in which three Senators take G.M. to task for failing to recall millions of small cars. What do the three have in common? Just that their top campaign donors are lawyers and law firms. + +Or try Greenhouse on this story on House Republicans who think the Affordable Health Care Act is an [illegal overreach](http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/house-republicans-obamacare-lawsuit-108957.html) by President Barack Obama. Greenhouse will highlight six names in that story. All but one get the majority of their campaign funds from a combination of two groups -- health professionals and the pharmaceutical industry. + +[image="screenshot01.png" caption="Greenhouse in action. Opposed to Health Are reform? Check. Primarily funded by Healthcare Industry? Check."] + +Cynical yet? No? There's plenty more examples; follow the [@allaregreen](https://twitter.com/allaregreen) Twitter account for your daily dose of money in U.S. politics. As allaregreen.us puts it, playing of the color encoding of U.S. politics: "Some are red. Some are blue. All are green." + +There is one ray of hope in Greenhouse's data. Near the top of the panel it displays you'll see the percentage of contributions under $200. In other words, the percentage of contributions from people like you and me. There's also a small badge indicating the member's position on campaign finance reform. + +For his part Rubin says building and using the add-on hasn't made him cynical. "Actually, I think Greenhouse is making me hopeful," Rubin said when I asked about cynicism in U.S. politics. "I've received such great feedback from people around the world... people want transparency like this and Greenhouse may actually play a role in the solution." + +Among the early users offering positive feedback is Harvard Law professor and author of <cite>Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It</cite>, Lawrence Lessig, who [calls Greenhouse](http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/88073919937/incredibly-cool-politic-code-get-it) "easily the coolest plugin that I use". + +Indeed Greenhouse does something most attempts at transparency do not -- it gives context to data. Transparency in government is good, few would argue otherwise, but as Lessig [wrote recently on his blog](http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/93500567957/escapethe1990s), "merely making data available isn't enough to deal with an underlying corruption problem." + +Open government data tends to be very big data with little context to it. For example, all the data Greenhouse uses comes from [opensecrets.org](http://www.opensecrets.org/), which has had that data available for years. Chances are though, you've never bothered to dig through opensecrets.org and follow the money. By taking that data and injecting it into the context of the news, Rubin has managed to turn raw information into useful knowledge. + +Did I mention Rubin is just 16? + +The idea for Greenhouse came from a presentation Rubin gave back in 7th grade when a teacher assigned him to the topic of [Corporate Personhood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood#Corporations_as_persons_in_the_United_States) and campaign finance. Rubin came away from that experience thinking that more people should know about how corporations run U.S. politics. But, "the information about sources of funding ... wasn't simple and easily accessible when people needed it." Later when Rubin started to teach himself to code he decided to try to combine the two interests and Greenhouse was born. + +Rubin plans to keep expanding Greenhouse. He's looking to build a sort of reverse Greenhouse -- a tool that would, for example, highlight all mentions of Google on a webpage and show which campaigns the company contributes to -- as well as a tool for other countries, though the latter will depend on whether or not the data is actually available. He also hopes to build Greenhouse into an interactive community rather than simply a browser add-on. + +If you want to participate or just follow along, grab the add-on and follow @allaregreen on Twitter. + diff --git a/published/allaregreennotes.txt b/published/allaregreennotes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5c3fe4 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/allaregreennotes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,53 @@ + + +Greenhouse + + + +It sounds cynical, but if you want to understand why politicians make the decisions they make and vote the way they vote you just need to follow the money. + +For every story there is a story behind that story. + + +Robert Anton Wilson often used a playful idea of seeing the "fnords", that is seeing the story behind the story. + + +In other words Greenhouse isn't doing anything thousands of other people couldn't have done. But they didn't. Nicholas Rubin did. + +Rubin has received a lot of attention from the press in part because he's just 16 years old, but that catchy factoid sometimes hides just how fantastically useful Greenhouse is regardless of who built it and how old they might be. It's fantastically useful if you want to see the threads behind the news, to follow the money as it were. + + + + + +1. how did you come up with the idea for Greenhouse? + +Corporate personhood and + +(if he talks about corporate personhood, mention that most people don't know that, can he expand a bit on that idea) + +1a) ask about relationship to Lessig. + +2. One of the things I found interesting about Greenhouse is that on one hand staring this data in face can make you cynical about politics, how did you feel about that? Has it been depressing to discover the sort of almost 1 to 1 equation that seems to exist between money and the way politicians vote on issues? + +2a) at the top there you have a little ray of hope -- AKA, the contributions from ordinary people +like you and I. Was that there from the beginning? and do you see those numbers +as a kind of solution? (can follow up with Lessigs Grant and Franklin proposal + +3. In reading some of the past coverage of greenhouse I noticed that you had a lot of people from all sides of the political spectrum -- pretty unusual to have Tea Party supports say nice things said about at the same time anti-Tea PArty supporters are saying the same thing. It's a bit like uncovering the money might unite some pretty dissparate ideologies around a common goal -- have you found that to be true, +that money is the common enemy of pretty much everyone seeking political reform? + +3a) what's the most egregious example you know of -- who is the most paid for politician in america? + +4. What are your goals for greenhouse? + +5. i noticed that cory doctorow suggested a sort of reverse tool, where any time the name of a company or individual who makes massive donations comes up it shows the politicians who benefit from that money. Is there data out there for that sort of thing? + +6. Can you share any plans for the future of greenhouse? + +Lessig said recently on his blog that " +Opensecrets.org can tell you. Next time you read an article about how you local representatives voted, head over to opensecrets.org and check to see if the vote happens to -- coincidentally I'm sure -- to benefit the your representative's top donors in any way. Congrats, you've followed the money to the why behind the what. + + + +In this case the "green" in Greenhouse refers to money, as in campaign contributions and how they influence the U.S. political system. The download page gives away the answer in its slogan -- "some are red, some are blue, all are green". diff --git a/published/ars-mobile-friendly.png b/published/ars-mobile-friendly.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2511af0 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ars-mobile-friendly.png diff --git a/published/debian8review.html b/published/debian8review.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..400b996 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/debian8review.html @@ -0,0 +1,80 @@ +<p>Last week the Debian project released Debian 8, the first major update to the stable branch of the venerable Linux distro in two years.</p> +<p>Debian Linux consists of three major development branches: Stable, Testing and Unstable. Work on new versions progresses through each, starting life in Unstable and eventually ending up in Stable.</p> +<p>Debian 8, nicknamed "Jessie" after the cowgirl character in Toy Story 2 and 3 (all Debian releases are named after Toy Story characters), has been in development in the Testing channel for quite a while. But it wasn't until the official feature freeze for this release (in November of last year) that the contents of Testing really become what you'll actually find in Debian 8 today.</p> +<p>If all that sounds complicated and slow that's because it is. And that's kind of the point.</p> +<p>Debian Stable is designed to be, well, stable, and that means long development cycles and a conservative approach to application updates.</p> +<p>As a general rule Debian Stable lags behind pretty much every other distro on the market when it comes to package updates. If you want the latest and greatest, Debian Stable is not the distro for you. Which is to say that, while Debian 8 may bring a ton of new stuff to Debian, it has almost nothing the rest of the Linux world hasn't been using for, in some cases, years. What's more, many things in Debian 8 are still not going to be the latest available versions.</p> +<p>Debian 8 has one giant except to that general rule -- systemd. More on that in a few paragraphs.</p> +<p>Why use Debian then? There are plenty of philosophical reasons -- the legendary <a href="https://www.debian.org/social_contract">Debian social contract</a>, the community and all included software in the repos is free as in freedom, which has long been a hallmark of Debian.</p> +<p>The more practical appeal of Debian is in its legendary stability. I've been running Debian servers since 2005 (Sarge) and have never had a server crash. This stability is part of the reason Debian is the base for dozens of downstream distros.</p> + +[image="debian-family-tree.png" caption="The Debian Family tree (image: Wikimedia)"] + +<p>Not everything downstream uses the Stable channel as its base. In fact it's worth noting that perhaps the most famous project downstream from Debian, Ubuntu, is built off the package base in the Unstable channel. Still, Debian Stable remains one of the most popular distros out there. This is particularly true for web servers where, according to stats from <a href="http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all">W3Techs.com</a> (which should be taken with a grain, if not a generous helping, of salt), Debian accounts for the largest percentage of Linux servers on the web -- 32.3 percent.</p> +<p>All of this makes Debian Stable updates a much bigger deal than faster moving distros like Ubuntu or Fedora.</p> +<p>And because Debian 8 makes the leap to systemd it just might be the biggest change in Debian since the first release back in 1993. Debian is justifiably famous for being so stable you could blindly type <code>apt-get dist-upgrade</code> upgrade on a production box and get away with it. This time though, there's systemd to contend with.</p> +<h2 id="whats-new-in-debian-8">What's New in Debian 8</h2> + +[image="debian-gnome-desktop.png" caption="It might not be new, but it's new to Debian"] + +<p>There is far more to Debian 8 than I can cover here. There's probably more than even John Siracusa would be willing to cover. Debian's official release notes report that 24573 software packages have been updated (that's 66 percent of the distro), but amidst that firehose of updates there's one that stands out -- systemd.</p> +<h3 id="systemd">systemd</h3> +<p>Unless you've been living under a rock you've probably heard at least something about systemd in the last year or two. Most likely what you heard was some froth-mouthed vitriol about how it's either the second coming of the Penguin or the NSA-backed devil incarnate. There are, it seems, no moderate opinions about systemd and the debate surrounding it has been anything but civil, even in the normally pretty civil Debian community.</p> +<p>To understand why you need to understand how your operating system starts up and runs all the various processes it runs. Pardon the analogy, but just as there was one ring that controlled all the rest, there is one application that controls all the rest. This is the init (short for initialization) system. The init system is the first process started when you boot and the last to shutdown. In the time between startup and shutdown the init system is the master controller of all processes and is traditionally assigned the process ID 1.</p> +<p>There are quite a few init systems out there, but most Linux distros (Slackware and Gentoo being notable exceptions) have been using SystemV. SystemV is outdated and riddled with crufty, often no longer needed code and is long overdue for a replacement. Few debate that, but start asking what should replace it and you'll soon see the knives come out.</p> +<p>Systemd is designed to replace SystemV, providing an init system that's cleaner, faster and considerably easier to use. Or at least that's the sales pitch.</p> +<p>Most of the contention about systemd arises because systemd isn't just an init system. Or rather it's an init system that wants to manage far more than processes. If your distro of choice opts to run systemd with all the bells and whistles it will be running some 69 binaries. Some call that monolithic, systemd creator Lennart Poettering <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html">disputes that charge</a> arguing that what people don't like is that it all ships as a single tarball and is all updated and maintained in a single codebase.</p> +<p>Indeed the very centralized nature of the project is what led Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth to call systemd "<a href="http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295">hugely invasive</a>". He went on to say that, "one of the ideas in systemd that we think is really bad is to bring lots of disparate pieces of technology into a single process. So lots of formerly-independent pieces of code, which happen to be under the control of folks driving systemd, have been rolled into that codebase."</p> +<p>Shuttleworth went on to <a href="http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295#comment-403228">acknowledge</a> that "it’s still possible to build independent packages of the different pieces from that code," which has long been Poettering's response to the monolithic charge, but there's no denying that systemd throws out the Unix philosophy of small things with narrowly defined functionality. That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad though.</p> +<p>Much of the debate about systemd is academic at this point because here's a truth that you'll discover in Debian 8, Ubuntu 15.04 and just about every other major distro around: systemd is here.</p> +<p>Sure, you can disable it, boot with SysV if you like, but systemd isn't going away. Your long term options are to either embrace it or cast your lot with <a href="http://debianfork.org/">Devuan</a> or make the switch to FreeBSD.</p> + +[image="debian-systemd.png" caption="Systemd it's in your Debian and it's not going away."] + +<p>I decided that, since systemd appears to be here to stay, and is the default starting with Jessie, it was time to roll up my sleeves and RTFM.</p> +<p>My experience with systemd had been decidedly mixed. On the desktop I hardly notice it. Indeed I doubt anyone using desktop Linux for everyday tasks like email, web browsing, office docs, photo editing and the like will either know or care that they're running systemd. I have encountered a couple problems with the systemd journal feature when running Debian 8 in a virtual machine, but on actual hardware the same problem has not come up.</p> +<p>Debian 8 on the server is a different story though. I've been slowly migrating my sites to Jessie-based servers over the past six months and have had a few hiccups here and there. For example, while systemd likes to say it's fully compatible with older init scripts, that's not completely true.</p> +<p>In my case, enough has gone wrong that I suggest you don't jump in immediately with both feet.</p> +<p>Before you even think of upgrading a server to Debian 8 be sure to read through the <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Incompatibilities/">systemd incompatibilities</a> list. In particular note that if you use tools like /sbin/chkconfig you'll quite possibly be getting incorrect or at the very least incomplete information when systemd is in charge. Also note that systemd services are "executed in completely clean contexts", which means not even $HOME is set, so if you have init scripts depending on such variables they will break.</p> +<p>Then there's the systemd's journal tool which takes some getting used to if you're more familiar with syslog. That said, you can run syslog alongside journal if you prefer not to switch up your workflow too much.</p> +<p>In fact, you can still run Jessie without systemd. All you need to do is use preseed to replace systemd with sysvinit at the end of the install. Check out the <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#Installing_without_systemd">Debian wiki</a> for details. This method works well enough on the server, but don't try it with a desktop environment installed.</p> +<p>In the end, after finding some new systemd service scripts for the handful of things I need --Nginx, Gunicorn and some other web app tools -- and figuring out how to set up the journal to actually log useful information I've managed to upgrade to Jessie. On one hand no one likes changes and I could have done without learning a new syntax for init scripts -- though systemd files are at least much easier to read and write -- and all the other headaches. But once you're over the migration hurdles I've found systemd is, well, just fine.</p> +<h2 id="debian-8-on-the-desktop">Debian 8 on the Desktop</h2> +<p>There's more to Debian 8 than systemd, particularly on the desktop where, as noted, most users will probably not even notice it.</p> +<p>The first thing you'll likely notice when installing Debian 8 on the desktop is that there are more desktop choices and picking one is much simpler than before.</p> + +[image="debian-installer-tasksel.png" caption="The wide variety of Desktop options in Debian 8"] + +<p>Quite a bit of work has gone into Debian's tasksel app in this release. That's the application that helps you set up Debian and install all the software you need. The installer now offers a list of desktop environments under the generic "Debian Desktop Environment" option. If you just leave everything at the defaults you'll end up with GNOME 3.14 for your desktop, but you can change that by selecting the options to install Xfce (briefly considered for the default option), KDE, Cinnamon, MATE or LXDE. You can of course opt to install nothing and then install the alternate desktop environment of your choice after the base installation. If you prefer something really lightweight like Openbox or Xmonad this is the way to install it.</p> +<p>In short it's tough to really say that Debian has a default desktop. To test things out I tried Debian with GNOME, Xfce and Cinnamon.</p> +<p>Again, Debian takes a conservative approach so you'll only get GNOME 3.14, though 3.16 was released a few months ago. GNOME 3.14 has a few new tricks up its sleeve, most of which I've <a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/01/16/fedora-21-review-linuxs-sprawliest-distro-finds-a-new-focus/">covered in past reviews</a>.</p> + +[image="debian-gnome-shell2.png" caption="The default Debian desktop: GNOME 3.14"] + +<p>The standout new features in 3.14 include better high resolution display support, several of the new GNOME apps like Photos and the redesigned Weather, a new geolocation framework, which the aforementioned Weather takes advantage of, and the first signs of support for Wayland. With 3.14, Mutter (GNOME's default display manager) can work as a Wayland compositor. It's not the default though, you'll have to select this option from the GNOME login screen.</p> +<p>GNOME 3.14 is a step up from previous versions, but it still feels a bit crippled next to more full featured desktops like Cinnamon or Unity. The Nautilus file manager in particular is a shell of its former self.</p> +<p>Debian's version of GNOME 3.14 is pretty close to stock, but then there aren't many ways to customize GNOME or give it a distro-specific feel.</p> +<p>If GNOME is not to your liking there's plenty of other choices, including the increasingly popular Xfce. This being Debian don't expect to see the latest version of Xfce (which is a huge update and well worth upgrading to as soon as you can by the way), instead you'll get Xfce 4.10. In fact Debian's Xfce is a bit of an outlier compared to other distros.</p> + +[image="debian-xfce.png" caption="Debian with a barebone install of Xfce"] + +<p>Debian treats Xfce as a very minimalist desktop and the experience might be a bit different if you're accustomed to the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach of, for example, Xubuntu. In Debian optional things like the Xfce extras package are not included by default. Naturally you can install the extras from the repositories, but Linux newcomers might not even realize that's an option, which makes Xubuntu's approach seem a bit friendlier.</p> +<p>The best desktop experience in my testing has undoubtedly been Cinnamon. Cinnamon atop Debian has been every bit as reliable and nice to use as Cinnamon is in Linux Mint. The only downside is that you'll only get Cinnamon version 2.2.16, while the latest version of Linux Mint shipped with version 2.4, a not insignificant update.</p> + +[image="debian-cinnamon.jpg" caption="Debian with Cinnamon (not to be confused with Linux Mint Debian Edition)"] + +<p>As for default desktop software, Debian ships with favorites like LibreOffice (v4.3.3) and GIMP 2.8, but you'll also find a few extra apps like GNUcash, GNUmeric and Abiword. There's also Icedove 31.6.0 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird) and Iceweasel 31.6.0esr (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox). Yes, Debian opts to ship with the little-used Firefox Extended Support Release, which lags behind its faster-developing counterpart when it comes to the latest and greatest features on the web.</p> +<p>You've probably noticed a theme here, Debian is behind the curve when it comes to version numbers. Why run Debian on the desktop when similar downstream distros like Xubuntu or Ubuntu GNOME or Linux Mint offer arguably the same thing with newer packages and a more polished interface? These are after all Debian derivatives so aren't you in effect using Debian?</p> +<p>The answer I suspect lies in that legendary Debian stability. And many developers like to mimic the server in their local environment. For the average Linux user though the downstream derivatives are probably a better bet in many cases. Ubuntu and Linux Mint might not be quite as stable, but they deliver more frequent updates to the applications that most people use every day. That means more new features and arguably a better experience. If you want something similar, but for philosophical reasons feel more comfortable with Debian there's always Debian Testing.</p> +<h2 id="debian-on-the-server">Debian on the server</h2> +<p>If Debian on the desktop is perhaps a bit too far behind to entice today's user, nearly the opposite is true on the server. There's systemd to deal with, but once you get past the systemd changes there's much to love about Jessie on the server.</p> +<p>Debian's conservative approach to package updates leads to stability it also sometimes leads to terrible packages hanging around. For example Python developers have had to deal with Python 3.2 package for what seems like an eternity in Debian 7 (unless of course you use backports). Thankfully Jessie bumps Python to 3.4.</p> +<p>Perl, PHP, and most other common development tools have been similarly updated, if not to the bleeding edge then at least to the latest stable versions. Web server packages like Apache and lighttpd see similar incremental updates in Jessie.</p> +<p>Some things are thankfully missing in this release as well, notably the secure sockets layer protocol SSLv3 is gone by default, which should make for more secure HTTPS connections on the web (assuming people update).</p> +<h2 id="kernel">Kernel</h2> +<p>Jessie ships with the 3.16 series Linux kernel, which might sound a tad out of date until you consider that its predecessor, Wheezy was using the 3.2 series.</p> +<p>There's been an incredible number of changes since 3.2, far too many to cover in details, but some of the highlights include a host of graphics card improvements (particularly open source Nvidia drivers), EFI boot support, ARM 64-bit support, RAID5 multithreading, Automatic GPU switching in laptops with dual GPUs and support for nftables, the successor of iptables among many, many other new features.</p> +<p>There's also been a ton of work put into filesystem improvements with ext4 support getting a lot attention and much better <a href="http://linuxfoundation.ubicast.tv/videos/btrfs-filesystem-status-and-new-features/">support for Btrfs</a>.</p> +<h2 id="should-you-upgrade">Should You Upgrade?</h2> +<p>In a word: Yes. This is Debian, releases are infrequent and rather massive so there's more than enough in the way of new features and package updates to make the update worth it. The caveat is that you should do a lot of testing before migrating your servers to systemd. VPS instances are cheap, fire one up, install Jessie and spend a few weeks testing because while it's stable Jessie's systemd init is a big change that takes some time to wrap your head around.</p> +<p>If Debian is your desktop of choice you don't have as much to worry about with systemd. In fact you're unlikely to even notice it.</p> diff --git a/published/debian8review.txt b/published/debian8review.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..581e1f0 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/debian8review.txt @@ -0,0 +1,130 @@ +Last week the Debian project released Debian 8, the first major update to the stable branch of the venerable Linux distro in two years. + +Debian Linux consists of three major development branches: Stable, Testing and Unstable. Work on new versions progresses through each, starting life in Unstable and eventually ending up in Stable. + +Debian 8, nicknamed "Jessie" after the cowgirl character in Toy Story 2 and 3 (all Debian releases are named after Toy Story characters), has been in development in the Testing channel for quite a while. But it wasn't until the official feature freeze for this release (in November of last year) that the contents of Testing really become what you'll actually find in Debian 8 today. + +If all that sounds complicated and slow that's because it is. And that's kind of the point. + +Debian Stable is designed to be, well, stable, and that means long development cycles and a conservative approach to application updates. + +As a general rule Debian Stable lags behind pretty much every other distro on the market when it comes to package updates. If you want the latest and greatest, Debian Stable is not the distro for you. Which is to say that, while Debian 8 may bring a ton of new stuff to Debian, it has almost nothing the rest of the Linux world hasn't been using for, in some cases, years. What's more, many things in Debian 8 are still not going to be the latest available versions. + +Debian 8 has one giant except to that general rule -- systemd. More on that in a few paragraphs. + +Why use Debian then? There are plenty of philosophical reasons -- the legendary [Debian social contract](https://www.debian.org/social_contract), the community and all included software in the repos is free as in freedom, which has long been a hallmark of Debian. + +The more practical appeal of Debian is in its legendary stability. I've been running Debian servers since 2005 (Sarge) and have never had a server crash. This stability is part of the reason Debian is the base for dozens of downstream distros. + +[tk pic Debian family tree] + +Not everything downstream uses the Stable channel as its base. In fact it's worth noting that perhaps the most famous project downstream from Debian, Ubuntu, is built off the package base in the Unstable channel. Still, Debian Stable remains one of the most popular distros out there. This is particularly true for web servers where, according to stats from [W3Techs.com](http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all) (which should be taken with a grain, if not a generous helping, of salt), Debian accounts for the largest percentage of Linux servers on the web -- 32.3 percent. + +All of this makes Debian Stable updates a much bigger deal than faster moving distros like Ubuntu or Fedora. + +And because Debian 8 makes the leap to systemd it just might be the biggest change in Debian since the first release back in 1993. Debian is justifiably famous for being so stable you could blindly type `apt-get dist-upgrade` upgrade on a production box and get away with it. This time though, there's systemd to contend with. + +##What's New in Debian 8 + +[tk Debian Gnome] + +There is far more to Debian 8 than I can cover here. There's probably more than even John Siracusa would be willing to cover. Debian's official release notes report that 24573 software packages have been updated (that's 66 percent of the distro), but amidst that firehose of updates there's one that stands out -- systemd. + +### systemd + +Unless you've been living under a rock you've probably heard at least something about systemd in the last year or two. Most likely what you heard was some froth-mouthed vitriol about how it's either the second coming of the Penguin or the NSA-backed devil incarnate. There are, it seems, no moderate opinions about systemd and the debate surrounding it has been anything but civil, even in the normally pretty civil Debian community. + +To understand why you need to understand how your operating system starts up and runs all the various processes it runs. Pardon the analogy, but just as there was one ring that controlled all the rest, there is one application that controls all the rest. This is the init (short for initialization) system. The init system is the first process started when you boot and the last to shutdown. In the time between startup and shutdown the init system is the master controller of all processes and is traditionally assigned the process ID 1. + +There are quite a few init systems out there, but most Linux distros (Slackware and Gentoo being notable exceptions) have been using SystemV. SystemV is outdated and riddled with crufty, often no longer needed code and is long overdue for a replacement. Few debate that, but start asking what should replace it and you'll soon see the knives come out. + +Systemd is designed to replace SystemV, providing an init system that's cleaner, faster and considerably easier to use. Or at least that's the sales pitch. + +Most of the contention about systemd arises because systemd isn't just an init system. Or rather it's an init system that wants to manage far more than processes. If your distro of choice opts to run systemd with all the bells and whistles it will be running some 69 binaries. Some call that monolithic, systemd creator Lennart Poettering [disputes that charge](http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html) arguing that what people don't like is that it all ships as a single tarball and is all updated and maintained in a single codebase. + +Indeed the very centralized nature of the project is what led Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth to call systemd "[hugely invasive](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295)". He went on to say that, "one of the ideas in systemd that we think is really bad is to bring lots of disparate pieces of technology into a single process. So lots of formerly-independent pieces of code, which happen to be under the control of folks driving systemd, have been rolled into that codebase." + +Shuttleworth went on to [acknowledge](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295#comment-403228) that "it’s still possible to build independent packages of the different pieces from that code," which has long been Poettering's response to the monolithic charge, but there's no denying that systemd throws out the Unix philosophy of small things with narrowly defined functionality. That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad though. + +Much of the debate about systemd is academic at this point because here's a truth that you'll discover in Debian 8, Ubuntu 15.04 and just about every other major distro around: systemd is here. + +Sure, you can disable it, boot with SysV if you like, but systemd isn't going away. Your long term options are to either embrace it or cast your lot with [Devuan](http://debianfork.org/) or make the switch to FreeBSD. + +I decided that, since systemd appears to be here to stay, and is the default starting with Jessie, it was time to roll up my sleeves and RTFM. + +My experience with systemd had been decidedly mixed. On the desktop I hardly notice it. +Indeed I doubt anyone using desktop Linux for everyday tasks like email, web browsing, office docs, photo editing and the like will either know or care that they're running systemd. I have encountered a couple problems with the systemd journal feature when running Debian 8 in a virtual machine, but on actual hardware the same problem has not come up. + +Debian 8 on the server is a different story though. I've been slowly migrating my sites to Jessie-based servers over the past six months and have had a few hiccups here and there. For example, while systemd likes to say it's fully compatible with older init scripts, that's not completely true. + +In my case, enough has gone wrong that I suggest you don't jump in immediately with both feet. + +Before you even think of upgrading a server to Debian 8 be sure to read through the [systemd incompatibilities](http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Incompatibilities/) list. In particular note that if you use tools like /sbin/chkconfig you'll quite possibly be getting incorrect or at the very least incomplete information when systemd is in charge. Also note that systemd services are "executed in completely clean contexts", which means not even $HOME is set, so if you have init scripts depending on such variables they will break. + +Then there's the systemd's journal tool which takes some getting used to if you're more familiar with syslog. That said, you can run syslog alongside journal if you prefer not to switch up your workflow too much. + +In fact, you can still run Jessie without systemd. All you need to do is use preseed to replace systemd with sysvinit at the end of the install. Check out the [Debian wiki](https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#Installing_without_systemd) for details. This method works well enough on the server, but don't try it with a desktop environment installed. + +In the end, after finding some new systemd service scripts for the handful of things I need --Nginx, Gunicorn and some other web app tools -- and figuring out how to set up the journal to actually log useful information I've managed to upgrade to Jessie. On one hand no one likes changes and I could have done without learning a new syntax for init scripts -- though systemd files are at least much easier to read and write -- and all the other headaches. But once you're over the migration hurdles I've found systemd is, well, just fine. + +## Debian 8 on the Desktop + +There's more to Debian 8 than systemd, particularly on the desktop where, as noted, most users will probably not even notice it. + +The first thing you'll likely notice when installing Debian 8 on the desktop is that there are more desktop choices and picking one is much simpler than before. + +[tk tasksel image] + +Quite a bit of work has gone into Debian's tasksel app in this release. That's the application that helps you set up Debian and install all the software you need. The installer now offers a list of desktop environments under the generic "Debian Desktop Environment" option. If you just leave everything at the defaults you'll end up with GNOME 3.14 for your desktop, but you can change that by selecting the options to install Xfce (briefly considered for the default option), KDE, Cinnamon, MATE or LXDE. You can of course opt to install nothing and then install the alternate desktop environment of your choice after the base installation. If you prefer something really lightweight like Openbox or Xmonad this is the way to install it. + +In short it's tough to really say that Debian has a default desktop. To test things out I tried Debian with GNOME, Xfce and Cinnamon. + +Again, Debian takes a conservative approach so you'll only get GNOME 3.14, though 3.16 was released a few months ago. GNOME 3.14 has a few new tricks up its sleeve, most of which I've [covered in past reviews](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/01/16/fedora-21-review-linuxs-sprawliest-distro-finds-a-new-focus/). + +[tk Debian Gnome] + +The standout new features in 3.14 include better high resolution display support, several of the new GNOME apps like Photos and the redesigned Weather, a new geolocation framework, which the aforementioned Weather takes advantage of, and the first signs of support for Wayland. With 3.14, Mutter (GNOME's default display manager) can work as a Wayland compositor. It's not the default though, you'll have to select this option from the GNOME login screen. + +GNOME 3.14 is a step up from previous versions, but it still feels a bit crippled next to more full featured desktops like Cinnamon or Unity. The Nautilus file manager in particular is a shell of its former self. + +Debian's version of GNOME 3.14 is pretty close to stock, but then there aren't many ways to customize GNOME or give it a distro-specific feel. + +If GNOME is not to your liking there's plenty of other choices, including the increasingly popular Xfce. This being Debian don't expect to see the latest version of Xfce (which is a huge update and well worth upgrading to as soon as you can by the way), instead you'll get Xfce 4.10. In fact Debian's Xfce is a bit of an outlier compared to other distros. + +[tk Debian XFCE] + +Debian treats Xfce as a very minimalist desktop and the experience might be a bit different if you're accustomed to the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach of, for example, Xubuntu. In Debian optional things like the Xfce extras package are not included by default. Naturally you can install the extras from the repositories, but Linux newcomers might not even realize that's an option, which makes Xubuntu's approach seem a bit friendlier. + +The best desktop experience in my testing has undoubtedly been Cinnamon. Cinnamon atop Debian has been every bit as reliable and nice to use as Cinnamon is in Linux Mint. The only downside is that you'll only get Cinnamon version 2.2.16, while the latest version of Linux Mint shipped with version 2.4, a not insignificant update. + +[tk Debian Cinnamon] + +As for default desktop software, Debian ships with favorites like LibreOffice (v4.3.3) and GIMP 2.8, but you'll also find a few extra apps like GNUcash, GNUmeric and Abiword. There's also Icedove 31.6.0 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird) and Iceweasel 31.6.0esr (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox). Yes, Debian opts to ship with the little-used Firefox Extended Support Release, which lags behind its faster-developing counterpart when it comes to the latest and greatest features on the web. + +You've probably noticed a theme here, Debian is behind the curve when it comes to version numbers. Why run Debian on the desktop when similar downstream distros like Xubuntu or Ubuntu GNOME or Linux Mint offer arguably the same thing with newer packages and a more polished interface? These are after all Debian derivatives so aren't you in effect using Debian? + +The answer I suspect lies in that legendary Debian stability. And many developers like to mimic the server in their local environment. For the average Linux user though the downstream derivatives are probably a better bet in many cases. Ubuntu and Linux Mint might not be quite as stable, but they deliver more frequent updates to the applications that most people use every day. That means more new features and arguably a better experience. If you want something similar, but for philosophical reasons feel more comfortable with Debian there's always Debian Testing. + +## Debian on the server + +If Debian on the desktop is perhaps a bit too far behind to entice today's user, nearly the opposite is true on the server. There's systemd to deal with, but once you get past the systemd changes there's much to love about Jessie on the server. + +Debian's conservative approach to package updates leads to stability it also sometimes leads to terrible packages hanging around. For example Python developers have had to deal with Python 3.2 package for what seems like an eternity in Debian 7 (unless of course you use backports). Thankfully Jessie bumps Python to 3.4. + +Perl, PHP, and most other common development tools have been similarly updated, if not to the bleeding edge then at least to the latest stable versions. Web server packages like Apache and lighttpd see similar incremental updates in Jessie. + +Some things are thankfully missing in this release as well, notably the secure sockets layer protocol SSLv3 is gone by default, which should make for more secure HTTPS connections on the web (assuming people update). + +## Kernel + +Jessie ships with the 3.16 series Linux kernel, which might sound a tad out of date until you consider that its predecessor, Wheezy was using the 3.2 series. + +There's been an incredible number of changes since 3.2, far too many to cover in details, but some of the highlights include a host of graphics card improvements (particularly open source Nvidia drivers), EFI boot support, ARM 64-bit support, RAID5 multithreading, Automatic GPU switching in laptops with dual GPUs and support for nftables, the successor of iptables among many, many other new features. + +There's also been a ton of work put into filesystem improvements with ext4 support getting a lot attention and much better [support for Btrfs](http://linuxfoundation.ubicast.tv/videos/btrfs-filesystem-status-and-new-features/). + +## Should You Upgrade? + +In a word: Yes. This is Debian, releases are infrequent and rather massive so there's more than enough in the way of new features and package updates to make the update worth it. The caveat is that you should do a lot of testing before migrating your servers to systemd. VPS instances are cheap, fire one up, install Jessie and spend a few weeks testing because while it's stable Jessie's systemd init is a big change that takes some time to wrap your head around. + +If Debian is your desktop of choice you don't have as much to worry about with systemd. In fact you're unlikely to even notice it. diff --git a/published/fedora21review.html b/published/fedora21review.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2f393b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/fedora21review.html @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +<p>The Fedora Project recently rolled out a major update in the form of <a href="https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/">Fedora 21</a>. This release marks the first that's built around the newly restructured Fedora Project.</p> +<p>Like most Linux distros Fedora is a massive, sprawling project that has, frankly, felt unfocused and a bit lost at times. Just what is Fedora? Fedora has served as a kind of showcase distro of GNOME 3 ever since GNOME 3 hit the beta stage, which would seem to target everyday users, but then at the same time the project pours tremendous energy into building developer tools like <a href="http://devassistant.org/">DevAssistant</a>. So is Fedora a developer distro? A newbie-friendly GNOME showcase? A server distro? An obscure robotics distro?</p> +<p>Recently Fedora did a bit of soul searching and discovered that the answer to all those questions is yes. The way to make sense of it all is what Fedora calls <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora.next">Fedora.Next</a>.</p> +<p>Fedora.Next is Fedora's term for its new organization and release structure. There is a core (no, not like the old Fedora Core/Extras division, this is different), then there is a second layer, the APIs and such, and then the "Environments" that users like you and I interact with.</p> +<p>You can think of Fedora.Next's structure as a series of concentric rings where each ring is supported by the one inside it. At the center are the core components of the system, APIs that applications hook into and so on. Up from that are the actual system components and then the most visible of the new layers, what Fedora calls "Environments." For now the available Environments consist of Workstation (Desktop), Server and Cloud. Each environment is optimized to suit what it says on the tin. Because these are very modular it won't be hard for Fedora to add new Environments as needed. For example perhaps there will one day be a Mobile Environment.</p> +<p>The new pre-packaged Environments don't mean you can't configure Fedora however you like, just that these three Environments represent the primary areas of focus for developers. This offers Fedora a bit of direction and focus internally and more targeted "products" for users.</p> +<p>Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller <a href="http://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-present-and-future-a-fedora-next-2014-update-part-ii-whats-happening/">likens</a> the Fedora.Next structure to Lego: "One of the related (and perpetual) community discussions centers around what exactly Fedora is. Traditionally, the answer is: we take the 'raw plastic' of the software out there in the universe and we mold it into high-precision Lego bricks, and users can plug them together."</p> +<p>"The idea [with Environments] is," continues Miller, "we can take some of our bricks, and we can ship those as sets." That doesn't mean though that you can't build your own thing as well. Miller is quick to reassure long-time Fedora fans that the project is "not getting rid of the basic supply of bricks... we want you to build other things."</p> +<p>The renewed sense of focus apparent in the new Fedora.Next release structure seems to have re-invigorated the Fedora project -- at least it looks that way from an outsider's perspective. Whatever the case, Fedora 21 is one of the strongest releases the project has put out in recent memory and is well worth the upgrade.</p> +<h2 id="fedora-21-workstation">Fedora 21 Workstation</h2> +<p>The Workstation Environment is what you would have installed previously if you had just downloaded Fedora Live CD and installed the defaults.</p> +<p>In Fedora 21 that will get you a GNOME desktop. The old "spins", which consist primarily of different desktops, are still available (and presumably build on the same basic set of packages found in the GNOME Workstation release), but as noted earlier Fedora has long been a showcase distro of GNOME 3.x and with that in mind I stuck with the default GNOME 3.14 desktop.</p> + +[image="fedora21-desktop.jpg" caption="The basic GNOME Shell search screen in Fedora 21."] + +<p>First though you have to install Fedora using what I think is supposed to be an intuitive installer that's so simple you can't fail. Except that instead of "can't fail", it's so simple you can't tell what you need to do. Perhaps I'm just too brainwashed by the form-based installers found in Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE, ElementaryOS and well, just about everywhere, but Fedora's button-based installer -- buttons, which hide forms mind you -- drives me crazy. Why make me click an extra button to set up a user account for a workstation environment when I will obviously need a user account?</p> + +[image="fedora21-installer.jpg" caption="Fedora's nearly inscrutable installer, complete with instructions in the form of a tiny-font error message."] + +<p>The Fedora installer isn't part of the GNOME project, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn the same developer who turned the Nautilus file browser into a useless toy also had a go at the Fedora installer. I'm sure you'll figure it out, it's not Arch (at least Arch's arcane install process is well documented), but it gets things off the bumpy start.</p> +<p>The best thing I can say about Fedora's installer is that you only have to use it once. Just remember to create a new user and set your root password.</p> +<h3 id="gnome-3.14">GNOME 3.14</h3> +<p>Once Fedora 21 is installed you'll be greeted by the GNOME 3.14 desktop (assuming you found the button to create a user account).</p> +<p>Fedora leap-frogged over GNOME 3.12 -- Fedora 20 shipped with GNOME 3.10 -- so this is a major leap forward for Fedora fans. GNOME 3.14 brings plenty of new features, including a couple new applications, an updated theme and some more improvements in HiDPI screen support. In fact GNOME has long boasted some of the best HiDPI support around and this release continues to build on that, polishing the little details to the point that I haven't seen anything amiss running Fedora 21 in a virtual machine on a retina Macbook Pro.</p> +<p>Fedora's nearly stock GNOME 3.14 looks great on HiDPI screens and the updated GNOME theme gives the desktop a clean, simple look and feel.</p> +<p>If you're updating all the way from GNOME 3.10 you'll notice a completely rewritten Weather app that taps GNOME's new geolocation API to automatically pull in your local forecast. Fedora 21 does not, however, ship with some of the other new GNOME apps like Photos. Fedora 21 has elected to stick with the slightly more feature-rich Shotwell. GNOME Photos is available in the Fedora repos and has some new online account support, but in my experience it's a bit buggy for actually working with something as important as your photo library.</p> + +[image="fedora21-weather.jpg" caption="GNOME's revamped weather app with geolocation API."] + +<p>This release also brings the first real support for Wayland -- Mutter (GNOME's default display manager) can now work as a Wayland compositor. Just log out of the default session and click the gear icon to choose the "GNOME on Wayland" option. Fedora should seamlessly fall back to X where Wayland isn't supported.</p> +<p>GNOME 3.14 makes for a different, but perfectly usable desktop. At this point the 3.x line is well polished and feels mature. Its rather different take on the desktop interface is not for everyone, in fact it's not my choice for everyday use, but if you come around to its way of thinking GNOME 3 is perfectly capable of getting out of your way and letting you do what you want to do. The only real downside to GNOME I found is the default file manager, Nautilus, which is pretty limited. I swapped it out with the Nautilus fork, <a href="http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?p=198">Nemo</a>, and found I liked GNOME 3 a lot more after that.</p> +<p>If you haven't taken GNOME for a spin in a while it might be worth another look and Fedora 21 makes hands down the best GNOME platform I've tested.</p> +<h3 id="yum-now-with-more-yuminess">Yum, Now With More Yuminess</h3> +<p>As much as I love some of the developer tools and little side projects Fedora churns out (like the GNOME color management tools it pioneered), I've never been a fan of Fedora's package manager. Fedora 21 changes that. Yum is no longer the slow, awkward beast it used to be and by extension neither is the Software center tools (which is the pretty-much-only-works-in-Fedora GNOME Software app).</p> +<p>There was a time when Ubuntu's Software Center was perhaps one of the best graphical software installation tools out there and yum-based distros like Fedora looked slow and ugly in comparison. These days more or less the opposite is true. Not only is Fedora's graphical software app one of the fastest I've ever used (speed will obviously depend somewhat on your internet connection speeds and available mirrors) but it's also clean, well organized and offers a great search tool.</p> + +[image="fedora21-software.jpg" caption="GNOME's Software app in Fedora 21."] + +<p>And Fedora continues to target the developer audience with very up-to-date versions of Perl, Python, Ruby and most other languages you can think of. Anything that isn't there out of the box is most likely available in single DevAssistant command. If you're a developer and you haven't checked out DevAssistant you need to, it's the simplest way I've seen to get a complete development stack up and running.</p> +<h3 id="kernel-updates">Kernel Updates</h3> +<p>Fedora 21 ships with Linux kernel 3.17.1, which brings the usual slew of latest hardware support, but is also notable for giving Fedora 21 tentative support for ARM 64 chips. ARM 64 is not yet considered a "primary architecture" for Fedora, but most things should work according to <a href="http://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-21-to-ship-the-3-16-linux-kernel-and-a-smaller-minimal-install-set/">Fedora Magazine</a>.</p> +<p>Fedora's kernel team has also adopted a more modular approach with this release, stripping things back a bit at the request of the Cloud environment developers. The result is a considerably smaller footprint for the Cloud environment, though both Workstation and Server will be roughly the same as the previous releases size-wise.</p> +<h2 id="fedora-server">Fedora Server</h2> +<p>While the Workstation environment is a good base on which to build your desktop experience, the new Fedora Server Environment is more specifically tailored to the needs of sysadmins and the like.</p> +<p>The first release of the Server Environment features a few new tools, like Cockpit, a server monitoring tool with a web-based interface you can connect to with your browser. If you're new to sysadmin tasks -- things like starting and stopping services, storage admin, and so on, or, if you just dislike doing everything through an SSH session, then Cockpit is worth checking out. It's more or less everything you're already doing on the command line, but available via a web-based GUI. It's all the same processes in the end, you can start Apache in the web panel and stop it from the command line. It's probably not going to replace your hand crafted shell scripts and preferred command line tools, but it's a nice option for newcomers.</p> + +[image="fedora21-server-cockpit.jpg" caption="Cockpit running on locally on Fedora 21 Workstation."] + +<p>This release also bundles in a couple new-to-Fedora tools like OpenLMI, perhaps best thought of as a remote API for system management, and FreeIPA, which aims to simplify the process of managing user and groups securely.</p> +<p>Then there's RoleKit, which is a brand new Fedora creation that looks like it will be very handy in the future, though it's limited right now. In a sense RoleKit is the sysadmin equivalent of Fedora's DevAssistant. That is, RoleKit will help you install and configure packages aimed a specific role. For example, call up everything you need to run a mail server, or everything you need to run a LAMP stack. Promising, but thus far incomplete.</p> +<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> +<p>I've used Fedora off and on since Fedora 6 (which at that time known as Fedora Core 6) and can say without reservation that this is the best release I've ever used.</p> +<p>That said, the GNOME desktop is not for me. Fortunately there are plenty of other "spins" available, including a version with the MATE-desktop, which can now use Compiz if you'd like to re-experience Fedora with wobbly windows just like the days of yore. There are also spins featuring KDE, Xfce and LXDE among other desktops.</p> +<p>More importantly, Fedora 21 sees the project plowing into the future with what feels like a renewed sense of direction and purpose.</p> +<p>If you're a desktop user there's a Fedora for you. If you're a sysadmin there's a Fedora for you. If you're chasing the dream of cloud server futures there's a Fedora for you. And of course if you're just looking for a distro on which to build the ultimate robot, there's still a Fedora for you.</p> diff --git a/published/fedora21review.txt b/published/fedora21review.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..979db7e --- /dev/null +++ b/published/fedora21review.txt @@ -0,0 +1,79 @@ +The Fedora Project recently rolled out a major update in the form of [Fedora 21](https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/). This release marks the first that's built around the newly restructured Fedora Project. + +Like most Linux distros Fedora is a massive, sprawling project that has, frankly, felt unfocused and a bit lost at times. Just what is Fedora? Fedora has served as a kind of showcase distro of GNOME 3 ever since GNOME 3 hit the beta stage, which would seem to target everyday users, but then at the same time the project pours tremendous energy into building developer tools like [DevAssistant](http://devassistant.org/). So is Fedora a developer distro? A newbie-friendly GNOME showcase? A server distro? An obscure robotics distro? + +Recently Fedora did a bit of soul searching and discovered that the answer to all those questions is yes. The way to make sense of it all is what Fedora calls [Fedora.Next](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora.next). + +Fedora.Next is Fedora's term for its new organization and release structure. There is a core (no, not like the old Fedora Core/Extras division, this is different), then there is a second layer, the APIs and such, and then the "Environments" that users like you and I interact with. + +You can think of Fedora.Next's structure as a series of concentric rings where each ring is supported by the one inside it. At the center are the core components of the system, APIs that applications hook into and so on. Up from that are the actual system components and then the most visible of the new layers, what Fedora calls "Environments." For now the available Environments consist of Workstation (Desktop), Server and Cloud. Each environment is optimized to suit what it says on the tin. Because these are very modular it won't be hard for Fedora to add new Environments as needed. For example perhaps there will one day be a Mobile Environment. + +The new pre-packaged Environments don't mean you can't configure Fedora however you like, just that these three Environments represent the primary areas of focus for developers. This offers Fedora a bit of direction and focus internally and more targeted "products" for users. + +Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller [likens](http://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-present-and-future-a-fedora-next-2014-update-part-ii-whats-happening/) the Fedora.Next structure to Lego: "One of the related (and perpetual) community discussions centers around what exactly Fedora is. Traditionally, the answer is: we take the 'raw plastic' of the software out there in the universe and we mold it into high-precision Lego bricks, and users can plug them together." + +"The idea [with Environments] is," continues Miller, "we can take some of our bricks, and we can ship those as sets." That doesn't mean though that you can't build your own thing as well. Miller is quick to reassure long-time Fedora fans that the project is "not getting rid of the basic supply of bricks... we want you to build other things." + +The renewed sense of focus apparent in the new Fedora.Next release structure seems to have re-invigorated the Fedora project -- at least it looks that way from an outsider's perspective. Whatever the case, Fedora 21 is one of the strongest releases the project has put out in recent memory and is well worth the upgrade. + +## Fedora 21 Workstation + +The Workstation Environment is what you would have installed previously if you had just downloaded Fedora Live CD and installed the defaults. + +In Fedora 21 that will get you a GNOME desktop. The old "spins", which consist primarily of different desktops, are still available (and presumably build on the same basic set of packages found in the GNOME Workstation release), but as noted earlier Fedora has long been a showcase distro of GNOME 3.x and with that in mind I stuck with the default GNOME 3.14 desktop. + +First though you have to install Fedora using what I think is supposed to be an intuitive installer that's so simple you can't fail. Except that instead of "can't fail", it's so simple you can't tell what you need to do. Perhaps I'm just too brainwashed by the form-based installers found in Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE, ElementaryOS and well, just about everywhere, but Fedora's button-based installer -- buttons, which hide forms mind you -- drives me crazy. Why make me click an extra button to set up a user account for a workstation environment when I will obviously need a user account? + +The Fedora installer isn't part of the GNOME project, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn the same developer who turned the Nautilus file browser into a useless toy also had a go at the Fedora installer. I'm sure you'll figure it out, it's not Arch (at least Arch's arcane install process is well documented), but it gets things off the bumpy start. + +The best thing I can say about Fedora's installer is that you only have to use it once. Just remember to create a new user and set your root password. + +### GNOME 3.14 + +Once Fedora 21 is installed you'll be greeted by the GNOME 3.14 desktop (assuming you found the button to create a user account). + +Fedora leap-frogged over GNOME 3.12 -- Fedora 20 shipped with GNOME 3.10 -- so this is a major leap forward for Fedora fans. GNOME 3.14 brings plenty of new features, including a couple new applications, an updated theme and some more improvements in HiDPI screen support. In fact GNOME has long boasted some of the best HiDPI support around and this release continues to build on that, polishing the little details to the point that I haven't seen anything amiss running Fedora 21 in a virtual machine on a retina Macbook Pro. + +Fedora's nearly stock GNOME 3.14 looks great on HiDPI screens and the updated GNOME theme gives the desktop a clean, simple look and feel. + +If you're updating all the way from GNOME 3.10 you'll notice a completely rewritten Weather app that taps GNOME's new geolocation API to automatically pull in your local forecast. Fedora 21 does not, however, ship with some of the other new GNOME apps like Photos. Fedora 21 has elected to stick with the slightly more feature-rich Shotwell. GNOME Photos is available in the Fedora repos and has some new online account support, but in my experience it's a bit buggy for actually working with something as important as your photo library. + +This release also brings the first real support for Wayland -- Mutter (GNOME's default display manager) can now work as a Wayland compositor. Just log out of the default session and click the gear icon to choose the "GNOME on Wayland" option. Fedora should seamlessly fall back to X where Wayland isn't supported. + +GNOME 3.14 makes for a different, but perfectly usable desktop. At this point the 3.x line is well polished and feels mature. Its rather different take on the desktop interface is not for everyone, in fact it's not my choice for everyday use, but if you come around to its way of thinking GNOME 3 is perfectly capable of getting out of your way and letting you do what you want to do. The only real downside to GNOME I found is the default file manager, Nautilus, which is pretty limited. I swapped it out with the Nautilus fork, [Nemo](http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?p=198), and found I liked GNOME 3 a lot more after that. + +If you haven't taken GNOME for a spin in a while it might be worth another look and Fedora 21 makes hands down the best GNOME platform I've tested. + +### Yum, Now With More Yuminess + +As much as I love some of the developer tools and little side projects Fedora churns out (like the GNOME color management tools it pioneered), I've never been a fan of Fedora's package manager. Fedora 21 changes that. Yum is no longer the slow, awkward beast it used to be and by extension neither is the Software center tools (which is the pretty-much-only-works-in-Fedora GNOME Software app). + +There was a time when Ubuntu's Software Center was perhaps one of the best graphical software installation tools out there and yum-based distros like Fedora looked slow and ugly in comparison. These days more or less the opposite is true. Not only is Fedora's graphical software app one of the fastest I've ever used (speed will obviously depend somewhat on your internet connection speeds and available mirrors) but it's also clean, well organized and offers a great search tool. + +And Fedora continues to target the developer audience with very up-to-date versions of Perl, Python, Ruby and most other languages you can think of. Anything that isn't there out of the box is most likely available in single DevAssistant command. If you're a developer and you haven't checked out DevAssistant you need to, it's the simplest way I've seen to get a complete development stack up and running. + +### Kernel Updates + +Fedora 21 ships with Linux kernel 3.17.1, which brings the usual slew of latest hardware support, but is also notable for giving Fedora 21 tentative support for ARM 64 chips. ARM 64 is not yet considered a "primary architecture" for Fedora, but most things should work according to [Fedora Magazine](http://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-21-to-ship-the-3-16-linux-kernel-and-a-smaller-minimal-install-set/). + +Fedora's kernel team has also adopted a more modular approach with this release, stripping things back a bit at the request of the Cloud environment developers. The result is a considerably smaller footprint for the Cloud environment, though both Workstation and Server will be roughly the same as the previous releases size-wise. + +## Fedora Server + +While the Workstation environment is a good base on which to build your desktop experience, the new Fedora Server Environment is more specifically tailored to the needs of sysadmins and the like. + +The first release of the Server Environment features a few new tools, like Cockpit, a server monitoring tool with a web-based interface you can connect to with your browser. If you're new to sysadmin tasks -- things like starting and stopping services, storage admin, and so on, or, if you just dislike doing everything through an SSH session, then Cockpit is worth checking out. It's more or less everything you're already doing on the command line, but available via a web-based GUI. It's all the same processes in the end, you can start Apache in the web panel and stop it from the command line. It's probably not going to replace your hand crafted shell scripts and preferred command line tools, but it's a nice option for newcomers. + +This release also bundles in a couple new-to-Fedora tools like OpenLMI, perhaps best thought of as a remote API for system management, and FreeIPA, which aims to simplify the process of managing user and groups securely. + +Then there's RoleKit, which is a brand new Fedora creation that looks like it will be very handy in the future, though it's limited right now. In a sense RoleKit is the sysadmin equivalent of Fedora's DevAssistant. That is, RoleKit will help you install and configure packages aimed a specific role. For example, call up everything you need to run a mail server, or everything you need to run a LAMP stack. Promising, but thus far incomplete. + +## Conclusion + +I've used Fedora off and on since Fedora 6 (which at that time known as Fedora Core 6) and can say without reservation that this is the best release I've ever used. + +That said, the GNOME desktop is not for me. Fortunately there are plenty of other "spins" available, including a version with the MATE-desktop, which can now use Compiz if you'd like to re-experience Fedora with wobbly windows just like the days of yore. There are also spins featuring KDE, Xfce and LXDE among other desktops. + +More importantly, Fedora 21 sees the project plowing into the future with what feels like a renewed sense of direction and purpose. + +If you're a desktop user there's a Fedora for you. If you're a sysadmin there's a Fedora for you. If you're chasing the dream of cloud server futures there's a Fedora for you. And of course if you're just looking for a distro on which to build the ultimate robot, there's still a Fedora for you. diff --git a/published/google-responsive.html b/published/google-responsive.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a6172df --- /dev/null +++ b/published/google-responsive.html @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +<p>Google has deprecated the desktop web. It's still here, but for Google it just got less important.</p> +<p>At least that's the implicit message in Google's recent <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/04/faqs-april-21st-mobile-friendly.html">mobile search update</a>. The company is now judging how "mobile-friendly" a site is and using that to weight search results served to mobile devices.</p> +<p>This is the third update in Google's slow push for web developers to start building mobile-friendly sites. First Google announced that it would start calling out sites that used Flash and at the same time rewarding mobile-friendly sites. At first that was just a little label next to search results on mobile devices that told viewers the site was "Mobile-friendly".</p> +<p>Now mobile-friendliness has moved from visual alerts and promos to affecting actual page rankings.</p> +<p>Web developers were apparently confused enough by the change that Google posted a <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/04/faqs-april-21st-mobile-friendly.html">lengthy FAQ</a> along with its announcement last week.</p> +<p>Here's what the company says: "the mobile-friendly update will boost the rankings of mobile-friendly pages... in mobile search results worldwide. (Conversely, pages designed for only large screens may see a significant decrease in rankings in mobile search results.)" In other words, sites that work on mobile will outrank sites that don't when all other things are equal.</p> +<p>So what does a site need to do in order for Google to consider it "mobile-friendly"?</p> +<p>The company's guidelines suggest that the site start by avoiding any content that requires Adobe's Flash Player. That will probably sound obvious to most developers at this point, but don't forget that old YouTube and other video embeds were probably done with <code><object></code> tags, which means Flash Player. Google suggests updating to the more modern iframe embed method that's the default on most video hosting sites today.</p> +<p>The other three main criteria in Google's definition of mobile-friendly are making the site readable without zooming and ensuring that content doesn't need to be scrolled horizontally (in other words the site scales to fit on mobile screens). The last one is something that will make anyone with man hands happy: sites need to place links far enough apart so that the desired link can be easily tapped. Fat fingers love white space.</p> +<p>There's been a trend sweeping the web design world by storm of several years now that does all these things a more. In fact if you follow web design at all you know that Google more or less just outlined the central principles of what's known as responsive web design. Responsive web design means building websites that function well across devices, even if they look a bit different on each device.</p> +<p>Technically responsive websites use CSS <span class="citation">@media</span> queries and some other techniques based on web standards behind the scenes, but Google doesn't really care how sites do it, just that they do it. A site could build out a separate mobile site, use responsive design, or some hybrid form of server side adaptive design -- all of those are considered mobile-friendly, but the guidelines themselves could have been lifted from the classic article that started it all, <a href="http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design">Responsive Web Design</a>.</p> + +[image="ars-mobile-friendly.png" caption="ArsTechnica gets Google's mobile-friendly seal of approval."] + +<p>Google has a mobile-friendly <a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/">test page</a> where you can see how your favorite sites do. Ars gets the mobile-friendly label, but's worth noting that the mobile-friendliness of a page is just that -- the page. While the Ars homepage comes through with flying colors, if I drop a Rick Astley video in this article using an object tag to embed it this page will not be considered mobile-friendly and might drop in search results. That means a lot of rick roll videos that were embedded back when the object tag was the main method could be dropping out of the rankings.</p> +<p>It's also worth asking, what if a page isn't mobile-friendly, but it's still useful? What if I the user am willing to suffer through the horror of scrolling and pinching my fingers to read tiny text in search of some obscure new information on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript">Voynich manuscript</a> posted on forum pages that are not, alas, mobile-friendly?</p> +<p>Fear not my crypto-curious friend, according to Google mobile-friendliness is only one ranking signal among many. As Google puts it, "if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query."</p> +<p>Still, if there's a page with great content that's desktop only and a page with great content that uses responsive design, the second page will presumably outrank the first.</p> +<p>The only real ray of hope in there for developers who still haven't embraced some form of responsive design is that this change only affects mobile search results. Desktop searches and rankings are unaffected. So if your site doesn't work on mobile you'll only lose, roughly speaking, <a href="http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop+mobile+tablet-comparison-ww-monthly-201403-201503-bar">35 percent of your traffic</a>.</p> +<p>Now if only Google would start warning me about sites that are just going to hide their content with a "download our app" ad banner that's so big I can't even close it on a mobile device. Surely that's not mobile-friendly?</p> diff --git a/published/google-responsive.txt b/published/google-responsive.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eee9c5c --- /dev/null +++ b/published/google-responsive.txt @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +Google has deprecated the desktop web. It's still here, but for Google it just got less important. + +At least that's the implicit message in Google's recent [mobile search update](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/04/faqs-april-21st-mobile-friendly.html). The company is now judging how "mobile-friendly" a site is and using that to weight search results served to mobile devices. + +This is the third update in Google's slow push for web developers to start building mobile-friendly sites. First Google announced that it would start calling out sites that used Flash and at the same time rewarding mobile-friendly sites. At first that was just a little label next to search results on mobile devices that told viewers the site was "Mobile-friendly". + +Now mobile-friendliness has moved from visual alerts and promos to affecting actual page rankings. + +Web developers were apparently confused enough by the change that Google posted a [lengthy FAQ](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/04/faqs-april-21st-mobile-friendly.html) along with its announcement last week. + +Here's what the company says: "the mobile-friendly update will boost the rankings of mobile-friendly pages... in mobile search results worldwide. (Conversely, pages designed for only large screens may see a significant decrease in rankings in mobile search results.)" In other words, sites that work on mobile will outrank sites that don't when all other things are equal. + +So what does a site need to do in order for Google to consider it "mobile-friendly"? + +The company's guidelines suggest that the site start by avoiding any content that requires Adobe's Flash Player. That will probably sound obvious to most developers at this point, but don't forget that old YouTube and other video embeds were probably done with `<object>` tags, which means Flash Player. Google suggests updating to the more modern iframe embed method that's the default on most video hosting sites today. + +The other three main criteria in Google's definition of mobile-friendly are making the site readable without zooming and ensuring that content doesn't need to be scrolled horizontally (in other words the site scales to fit on mobile screens). The last one is something that will make anyone with man hands happy: sites need to place links far enough apart so that the desired link can be easily tapped. Fat fingers love white space. + +There's been a trend sweeping the web design world by storm of several years now that does all these things a more. In fact if you follow web design at all you know that Google more or less just outlined the central principles of what's known as responsive web design. Responsive web design means building websites that function well across devices, even if they look a bit different on each device. + +Technically responsive websites use CSS @media queries and some other techniques based on web standards behind the scenes, but Google doesn't really care how sites do it, just that they do it. A site could build out a separate mobile site, use responsive design, or some hybrid form of server side adaptive design -- all of those are considered mobile-friendly, but the guidelines themselves could have been lifted from the classic article that started it all, [Responsive Web Design](http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design). + +Google has a mobile-friendly [test page](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/) where you can see how your favorite sites do. Ars gets the mobile-friendly label, but's worth noting that the mobile-friendliness of a page is just that -- the page. While the Ars homepage comes through with flying colors, if I drop a Rick Astley video in this article using an object tag to embed it this page will not be considered mobile-friendly and might drop in search results. That means a lot of rick roll videos that were embedded back when the object tag was the main method could be dropping out of the rankings. + +It's also worth asking, what if a page isn't mobile-friendly, but it's still useful? What if I the user am willing to suffer through the horror of scrolling and pinching my fingers to read tiny text in search of some obscure new information on the [Voynich manuscript](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript) posted on forum pages that are not, alas, mobile-friendly? + +Fear not my crypto-curious friend, according to Google mobile-friendliness is only one ranking signal among many. As Google puts it, "if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query." + +Still, if there's a page with great content that's desktop only and a page with great content that uses responsive design, the second page will presumably outrank the first. + +The only real ray of hope in there for developers who still haven't embraced some form of responsive design is that this change only affects mobile search results. Desktop searches and rankings are unaffected. So if your site doesn't work on mobile you'll only lose, roughly speaking, [35 percent of your traffic](http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop+mobile+tablet-comparison-ww-monthly-201403-201503-bar). + +Now if only Google would start warning me about sites that are just going to hide their content with a "download our app" ad banner that's so big I can't even close it on a mobile device. Surely that's not mobile-friendly? diff --git a/published/intrepid-ibex.png b/published/intrepid-ibex.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..cd3f748 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/intrepid-ibex.png diff --git a/published/invoices/2014-06-29_ars-invoice-02.rtf b/published/invoices/2014-06-29_ars-invoice-02.rtf new file mode 100644 index 0000000..07197ec --- /dev/null +++ b/published/invoices/2014-06-29_ars-invoice-02.rtf @@ -0,0 +1,77 @@ +{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf1265\cocoasubrtf200 +{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 ArialMT;\f1\froman\fcharset0 TimesNewRomanPSMT;} +{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;} +{\info +{\keywords }}\vieww12240\viewh15840\viewkind1 +\deftab720 +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qr + +\f0\b\fs24 \cf0 Scott Gilbertson\ +412 Holman Ave\ +Athens, GA 30601\ +706 438 4297\ +luxagraf@gmail.com +\f1\b0 +\f0\b \ +6/30/14 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj +\cf0 \ +\ + +\f0 Ars Technica +\f1 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural +\cf0 \ +\ +\ +\ + +\f0 Invoice Number: +\b 002 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qc +\cf0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural +\cf0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj + +\f0 \cf0 Article: +\b Mint 17 is the perfect place for Linux-ers to wait out Ubuntu uncertainty\ + +\b0 Word count: +\b 3196\ + +\b0 Rate of Pay: +\b $.30/word +\b0 \ +Total: +\b $1281.60\ +\ +\ +\ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\sa283\pardirnatural +\cf0 Total for Invoice: $958.80 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural + +\f0 \cf0 Bank: SchoolsFirstFCU +\f1 \ + +\f0 Address: +\f1 P.O. Box 11547\ +Santa Ana, CA 92711-1547 \ +\ +\ + +\f0 Account Name: Checking\ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj +\cf0 Bank account number:0172510703 +\f1 +\f0 \ +Bank routing number: 322282001 +\f1 +\f0 \ + +\f1 \ +}
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/published/invoices/paid/2014-05-02_ars-invoice-01.rtf b/published/invoices/paid/2014-05-02_ars-invoice-01.rtf new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3e8f36 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/invoices/paid/2014-05-02_ars-invoice-01.rtf @@ -0,0 +1,82 @@ +{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf1265\cocoasubrtf190 +{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 ArialMT;\f1\froman\fcharset0 TimesNewRomanPSMT;} +{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;\red0\green0\blue0;} +{\info +{\title } +{\subject } +{\author } +{\*\company } +{\keywords }}\vieww12240\viewh15840\viewkind1 +\deftab720 +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qr + +\f0\b\fs24 \cf2 Scott Gilbertson\ +412 Holman Ave\ +Athens, GA 30601\ +706 438 4297\ +luxagraf@gmail.com +\f1\b0 +\f0\b \ +5/02/14 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj +\cf2 \ +\ + +\f0 Ars Technica +\f1 \cf0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural +\cf0 \ +\ +\cf2 \ +\ + +\f0 Invoice Number: +\b 001 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qc +\cf2 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural +\cf2 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj + +\f0 \cf2 Article: +\b Ubuntu 14.04 review: Missing the boat on big changes\ + +\b0 Word count: +\b 4272\ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj + +\b0 \cf0 Rate of Pay: +\b $.30/word +\b0 \cf2 \ +Total: +\b $1281.60\ +\ +\ +\ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\sa283\pardirnatural +\cf2 Total for Invoice: $1281.60 +\f1\b0 \ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural + +\f0 \cf2 Bank: SchoolsFirstFCU +\f1 \ + +\f0 Address: +\f1 P.O. Box 11547\ +Santa Ana, CA 92711-1547 \ +\ +\ + +\f0 Account Name: Checking\ +\pard\tx709\tx1418\tx2127\tx2836\tx3545\tx4254\tx4963\tx5672\tx6381\tx7090\tx7799\tx8508\tx9217\pardeftab720\sl300\pardirnatural\qj +\cf2 Bank account number:0172510703 +\f1 +\f0 \ +Bank routing number: 322282001 +\f1 +\f0 \ + +\f1 \ +}
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/published/kde5review/kdeplasma5.html b/published/kde5review/kdeplasma5.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..08b1ca2 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/kde5review/kdeplasma5.html @@ -0,0 +1,119 @@ +<p>The KDE project has release KDE Plasma 5, a major new version of the venerable K Desktop Environment.</p> +<p>Plasma 5 arrives in the middle of an ongoing debate about the future of the Linux desktop.</p> +<p>On one hand there are the brand new desktop paradigms represented by GNOME and Unity. Both break from the traditional desktop model in significant ways. Both also attempt to create interfaces that will work on the desktop and the much anticipated tablet-based future (which <a href="http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/08/op-ed-tables-really-are-pcsbecause-theres-no-point-in-buying-new-ones/">may or may not ever arrive</a>).</p> +<p>Linux desktops like KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Mate and even Cinnamon are the other side of the fence. None have re-invented themselves too much and continue to offer users a traditional desktop experience. Which is not to say these projects aren't growing and refining. All of them continue to turn out incremental releases that fine tune what is a well-proven desktop model.</p> + +[image="screenshot-unity.png" caption="Ubuntu's Unity desktop."] + +[image="screenshot-gnome.png" caption="GNOME 3 desktop."] + +<p>GNOME and Unity end up getting the lion's share of attention in this debate though. They're both new and different. They're both opinionated and polarizing. For every Linux user that loves them there's another that loves to hate them, which makes for, if nothing else, lively comments and forum posts in the Linux world. But the difference between these two camps is about more than just how your desktop looks and behaves. It's about what the future of computing looks like.</p> +<p>GNOME and Unity believe that the future of computing consists of multiple devices all running the same software. The new desktop paradigm both have created really only make sense in this context. Neither are really building desktops for the future, but include a hybrid desktop fallback mode for now and appear to believe that the real future is in devices. The other side of the schism largely seems to ignore devices.</p> +<p>This split, with these radical new attempts at what a desktop should look like and how it should behave on one hand, and the more traditional setups on the other, amounts to a distributed discussion about what the future of computing looks like.</p> +<p>Unlike the world of closed source OSes, where changes are handed down, like them or leave them, the Linux world is in the middle of a conversation about these ideas.</p> +<p>That said, it can be frustrating as a user. The last thing you need when you're trying to get work done is an update that completely changes your desktop, forcing you to learn new ways of working. Even the best case scenario, moving to another desktop when your old favorite suddenly veers off in a new direction, usually means jettisoning years of muscle memory and familiarity.</p> +<p>There's a simple way to navigate this mess and find the right desktop for you. Here it is in a nutshell: do you want to bend your will to your desktop or do you want to bend your desktop to your will?</p> +<p>If you fall in the first camp and don't mind learning new ways of working then Unity and GNOME 3 will be your best bet. If you fall in the latter camp, XFCE, Cinnamon, Mate and a host of others will all likely prove a good fit. If you want to go non-traditional in the opposite direction from GNOME 3 and Unity, there's always Xmonad, Ratpoison and others that very few Linux users will ever try (a shame, since Xmonad may be the best thing in Linux since Linus said, uh, hey, here's a kernel for your GNU system).</p> + +[image="screenshot01.png" caption="KDE Plasma 5's new boot screen"] + +<p>But what if you fall somewhere in the middle? You like the traditional desktop experience and you're not ready to give up your menu and shortcuts for HUDs and other new tools. At the same time, you're curious about tablets and other form factors and you want something that will work across them all. You, my hypothetical friend, are an excellent candidate for the brand new KDE Plasma 5.</p> +<p>KDE is attempting to do something no other desktop in Linux has tried to date -- move toward the tablet and mobile device future while still producing a desktop experience that's familiar, functional and infinitely customizable.</p> +<h2 id="kde-plasma-5-and-the-world-of-convergence">KDE Plasma 5 and the World of "Convergence"</h2> +<p>KDE users who made it through the transition from KDE 3.5 to 4 likely still flinch at the mention of a major upgrade to any part of KDE, but there's good news for KDE fans in Plasma 5 -- this is a major update yes, but with a handful of exceptions (which I'll get into in a minute) you'd never know it.</p> +<p>It turns out that the incredibly bumpy move to KDE 4 really did lay the groundwork for a better future. And we are now in that future.</p> +<p>With this update KDE is laying the groundwork for the future again, but in a less disruptive way. This time the future means a move to tablets and other form factors. Fear not though, KDE seems poised to do what GNOME and Unity could not -- branch out to other form factors without abandoning the traditional desktop.</p> +<p>KDE has, in other words, resisted the urge to mess with the tried and true just because there's something new on the horizon.</p> +<p>You'd be forgiven for not remembering this, but the whole convergence thing that Canonical goes on about with each new Unity update? KDE started using the word "convergence" way back when Canonical was still running user tests to determine the optimal shade of brown for GNOME 2 menus.</p> +<p>And behold, with KDE Frameworks 5, Qt5 and some other updates to the plumbing that come along with Plasma 5, KDE's version of convergence is here. You may not notice it though; it's under the hood where it belongs.</p> +<p>You also probably won't notice it because while the components are there to allow the KDE project and its developers to build different interfaces, the Plasma 5 desktop is, thus far, the only interface. But the frameworks and developer tools needed are there now. KDE calls these new frameworks the "converged Plasma shell", which is what loads up the desktop in Plasma 5.</p> +<p>KDE plans to build out other interfaces, and the <a href="http://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma5.0/">official release announcement</a> for Plasma 5 says that "a tablet-centric and media center user experience are under development."</p> +<p>KDE's vision of convergence is not unlike what Ubuntu envisions in that the user interface will change based on the device and hardware. For example, you might have the "tablet-centric" interface that's in the works running while you're reading the web on the couch. But get up, walk back to your office, connect to your wireless keyboard and the interface would shift to something more keyboard friendly.</p> +<p>This scenario has some potential problems, some of which Windows 8 users are likely already familiar with. For example, what will happen when a keyboard is plugged in, but you still want to interact with the screen via touch? What happens if you plug in a mouse, but still want to scroll with your fingers?</p> +<p>I mention these small points not to say that KDE hasn't thought them through -- I hope they have -- but because this idea of "convergence" of adaptive user interfaces will be very difficult to get right. One thing KDE has long had that gives me hope for the project's ability to pull off this vision of computing is limitless configurability.</p> +<p>My hope for KDE on a tablet is that I would be able to configure every last detail of the experience. That there would be a way for me to determine what <em>I</em> want to happen when a keyboard is detected rather than letting the OS determine for me.</p> +<h2 id="the-plasma-5-desktop">The Plasma 5 Desktop</h2> +<p>KDE Plasma 5 is KDE 4 evolved rather than any kind of revolutionary new interface.</p> + +[image="screenshot02.png" caption="The KDE Plasma 5 desktop"] + +<p>I've been using this release -- still not completely stable in my testing, though most of the glitches have been graphical, not data threatening -- for over a month now in virtual machines, dual booting on a Retina MacBook Pro and, to see how well it holds up on older hardware, an aging, underpowered Toshiba laptop. I've tested it using Kubuntu (virtual machine and the Toshiba) and atop a fresh install of Arch Linux (dual boot MacBook).</p> +<p>If you'd like to try out Plasma 5, the simplest way is to grab the <a href="http://files.kde.org/snapshots/neon5-latest.iso.mirrorlist">Neon live CD available from KDE</a>. That will get you Plasma with Ubuntu under the hood. If you want to commit and test it on an existing Kubuntu install, here's the commands for that:</p> +<pre><code> +sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neon/kf5 +sudo apt-get update +sudo apt-get install project-neon5-session project-neon5-utils project-neon5-konsole project-neon5-breeze project-neon5-plasma-workspace-wallpapers +</code></pre> + +<p>Restart your machine and you should see a new option at the login screen offering to start up a Neon session.</p> +<p>Once you have Plasma 5 up and running, the first thing you'll notice is the new default KDE theme, known as Breeze.</p> +<h2 id="plasma-5s-breezy-new-look">Plasma 5's Breezy New Look</h2> +<p>Breeze is what KDE refers to as a modernized interface, with "reduced visual clutter throughout the workspace." Indeed, the busy, somewhat cluttered feel that has long been a part of the default KDE look is gone.</p> + +[image="screenshot03.png" caption="The KDE Plasma 5 desktop's Breeze theme is most complete in the Kickoff menu. Note the type to search message."] + +<p>The entire interface has been flattened out, with bigger fonts, better contrast and a sort of flat, "frosted" look that's somewhere between OS X Yosemite, Android L and KDE 4.x. That's not to say KDE ripped off Apple or Google. They couldn't have since Plasma 5 and the Breeze theme were well on their way before Apple revealed Yosemite or Google announced Android L.</p> +<p>Still, while it would be incorrect to say KDE has ripped anyone off, Breeze's visual design and overall aesthetic are very much a product of its time. In that sense it looks "modern", so long as you define modern to mean lots of strong type, few textures or outlines, lots of translucency and monochrome iconography.</p> +<p>KDE's designers have put a lot of work into Breeze and it shows. This isn't just a new coat of paint. Breeze makes KDE more approachable out of the box with cleaned up menus, a less cluttered notification center and a revamped Kickoff start menu.</p> + +[image="screenshot04.png" caption="A cleaner, less nagging notification center"] + +<p>How much Breeze matters depends on whether or not you'll ever even use it. KDE tends to attract users that like customizing their systems which, presumably, includes customizing the theme. One thing to look forward to is what distros that heavily customize the default KDE theme -- notably OpenSUSE -- will do now that Breeze provides a somewhat higher starting bar.</p> +<p>For now at least most distros will probably not jump on Breeze since it is very much a work in progress. Indeed, Breeze is where you'll also notice some of the first signs of incompleteness in Plasma 5. While the Kickoff menu has some nice new icons, most of the rest of the interface does not. And as of the latest updates available in the Kubuntu ppa, Breeze does not use its new Window Decorations. The Window Decorations are installed, but they aren't turned on by default. You can head to the System Settings app and turn them on for a more complete, though possibly buggier, Breeze experience.</p> + +[image="screenshot05.png" caption="Top is the default Oxygen Window Decorations, bottom the new Breeze theme."] + +<p>Not everything is ideal and sometimes it's hard to tell what's a bug or incomplete feature and what is just poorly designed. For example, there's quite a bit of window and overlay translucency in Breeze, some of which looks nice, but at other times it gets in the way. Stacked windows and preview overlays bleed into what's behind them and become hard to read in the background. Pulling them to the foreground solves the problem, but it's hard to say what the value of the transparency is in this case.</p> + +[image="screenshot06.png" caption="Transparency... why?"] + +<p>So yes, Breeze is still a work in progress, and not just in terms of features and design, but also in terms of genuine bugs and glitches. I have encountered some unexpected behavior, particularly with regard to screen redraws, which happen frequently and slow enough to notice them. Windows disappear at times, the menu bar occasionally only draws half of itself.</p> +<p>Plasma 5 has never crashed on me, nor has it lost any data, but little visual glitches abound and I would suggest waiting for things to stabilize and the distro of your choice to integrate it before you jump in with both feet.</p> +<h2 id="plasma-menus-go-vertical">Plasma Menus Go Vertical</h2> +<p>Breeze gives Plasma 5 a new look, but there are also a number of changes in behavior. For example, both the widget explorer and the alt-tab window switcher are now vertically oriented and located in the same place by default -- the far left side of the screen.</p> + +[image="screenshot07.png" caption="The default look for the alt-tab switcher menu."] + +<p>While that consistency is probably good for KDE newcomers, who will learn to expect that various stuff will appear to the left of the screen, it can be a little frustrating for long-time users expecting something else. And some of these changes seem somewhat arbitrary.</p> + +[image="screenshot08.png" caption="The widget explorer menu"] + +<p>The KDE project claims the shift to vertical instead of horizontal lists in things like the widget explorer and window switcher, "provide better usability," but stop short of saying how exactly. The release docs also claim that moving the window switcher to the side of the screen "shifts the user's focus towards the applications and documents, clearing the stage for the task at hand". But if you only call up the window switcher when you're, ahem, switching windows, then it seems more likely that the user is between tasks rather than involved in one.</p> + +[image="screenshot09.png" caption="KDE still loves offering options. Notice the dark gray bar to the right, that's an artifact (glitch) from dragging the window."] + +<p>This is KDE though, not Unity, infinite customization is a feature not a bug. A trip to the System Settings will get your old style window switcher back, indeed there are some 10 different visual possibilities for the window switcher in Plasma 5. If the default is not to your liking, customize away.</p> +<h2 id="so-long-nepomuk-and-thanks-for-all-the-spinning-fans">So Long Nepomuk and Thanks for All the Spinning Fans</h2> +<p>If you're a heavy user of KDE's sometimes awesome, sometimes not, search features, this may be the biggest news in Plasma 5.</p> +<p>It's true, KDE has ditched Nepomuk in favor of a new search engine known as Baloo.</p> +<p>Nepomuk, which started life as an EU-funded metadata search project with the lofty sounding goal of creating a "Networked Environment for Personalized, Ontology-based Management of Unified Knowledge". By the time it trickled down to the KDE project, Nepomuk became a somewhat more mundane desktop search tool that alternated between brilliant and maddening.</p> + +[image="screenshot10.png" caption="Searching for files in Plasma 5"] + +<p>Baloo takes much of what made Nepomuk great -- namely full text file search and an uncanny ability to pick up on relationships between files, for example, knowing that particular document is related to a contact -- and <a href="https://dot.kde.org/2014/02/24/kdes-next-generation-semantic-search">improves it</a>. Actually use the search features in Plasma 5 and you'll notice two things right off the bat -- it's faster and your fan doesn't go haywire every time something new is indexed.</p> +<p>Baloo significantly reduces the resource footprint of searching and, according to KDE, is more accurate. I can't vouch for the latter since I never used search much in older versions of KDE (see fan spinning comments), but in terms of accuracy, simple files searches in Plasma 5 are on par with what you'll find in Ubuntu, OS X and elsewhere. The success of more complex searches involving relationships or complex metadata will vary depending on how much you use the default KDE apps. For example, you need to use the Kontact Suite if you want to take advantage of Baloo-based searches involving relationships between contacts and files.</p> +<p>That will likely change as time goes on though because another big change from Nepomuk is the new, improved developer API. The API for searching means third-party apps can tie in Plasma 5's Semantic Search infrastructure and take advantage of the same tools the default apps use.</p> +<p>Curiously, for something that's seen as much work as Baloo has, the visibility and discoverability of the search feature has taken a step backward. Fire up Plasma 5's Kickoff menu -- KDE's answer to the Windows Start menu -- and search is nowhere to be found. If you look closely you'll see a tiny little reminder to "type to search", which is step up from the first release, which had no indication that you could search, but still isn't as discoverable as a dedicated search box.</p> +<h2 id="kickoff-and-its-new-cousin-kicker">Kickoff and its new Cousin, Kicker</h2> +<p>KDE's answer to the Windows Start button has always been overkill in my view, packing too much in too little space, but with Breeze the menu has been cleaned up a bit and feels less visually overwhelming.</p> + +[image="screenshot11.png" caption="The Kickoff menu in the default theme."] + +<p>If it's still a bit too much for your needs, Plasma 5 offers a new, more traditional menu-based launcher called Kicker. Kicker does less -- it's much closer to the Start menu in XP, a single, narrower pane that offers expanding menus where needed -- and makes a lightweight alternative if all you want to do is launch applications and files. It also has a very obvious search box.</p> + +[image="screenshot12.png" caption="The new Kicker menu option"] + +<p>The other side of the menu bar has been revamped and cleaned up bit as well. The most notable change is the notification app, which seems to kick up fewer notifications and does a better job of displaying them and quickly getting them out of the way.</p> +<h2 id="opengl-qtquick-and-hidpi-screens">OpenGL, QtQuick and HiDPI Screens</h2> +<p>Plasma 5 finishes up KDE's migration to Qt 5 and QtQuick, the latter of which uses a hardware-accelerated OpenGL scenegraph to render graphics. Most of what's new with OpenGL pertains to offloading graphics to any available GPU. That means, provided you've got the hardware for it, Plasma 5 can take full advantage of today's powerful GPUs.</p> +<p>Indeed on newish hardware (my MacBook's NVIDIA GeForce GT graphics card, for example) Plasma 5 is snappy, considerably snappier than its predecessor. Perhaps even more impressive, take away whatever GPU advantage Plasma 5 might gain over KDE 4.x systems and it still feels faster. That is, while running on older hardware still isn't KDE's strong point, but the story is better than it used to be. Still, if you're looking to get some extra mileage out of older hardware, stick with Xfce, LXDE or something even simpler like Openbox.</p> +<p>Interestingly, the revamped Frameworks that make up Plasma 5's graphics stack also pave the way for KDE to switch to the Wayland display server protocol. KDE doesn't seem to be in a hurry to make the switch to Wayland though, noting only that full support will be available in "a future release".</p> +<p>This release also claims improved support for HDPI displays. But, as with the HDPI support in GNOME and Unity, the actual experience is a very mixed bag. Font rendering in particular is nowhere near as smooth as what OS X offers. Even installing and fiddling with Infinality has never produced satisfactory results for me. I'm still not sure if the problem is in my setup and I'm not in fact seeing the new HDPI features. Or, if possibly the KDE project and I just have very different definitions of what constitutes HDPI support. Hopefully it's the former.</p> +<h2 id="whats-missing">What's Missing</h2> +<p>Earlier in this review I said that the transition from KDE 4 to the Plasma 5 desktop would not be as bumpy as the move from KDE 3.x to 4.x. For the most part that's true, but for some people there may be exceptions.</p> +<p>The KDE project says the focus for this release has been "concentrated on tools that make up the central workflows" and notes that "not all features from the Plasma 4.x series are available yet." That might ring a bell for those who made it through the KDE 3 to 4 transition.</p> +<p>In my testing I didn't run across any noticeable gaps in functionality or obvious missing features, save what I've mentioned -- the incomplete Breeze theme, some graphical glitches and some questionable design choices. That said, have a look at the <a href="https://community.kde.org/Plasma/5.0_Errata">list of known issues</a>, in particular the note about performance.</p> +<p>And I suggest trying Plasma 5 first to make sure all your must-haves are there before you jump in with both feet.</p> +<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> +<p>KDE's Plasma 5 release lacks the attention-grabbing, paradigm-shifting changes that keep Unity and GNOME in the spotlight. Instead the KDE project has been focused on improving its core desktop experience. Plasma 5 is not perfect by any means, but unlike Unity and GNOME it's easy to change the things you don't like.</p> +<p>What's perhaps most heartening about this release is that KDE has managed to get a lot of the groundwork done for alternate interfaces without messing with their desktop interface much at all. The speed improvements are also good news. 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Both break from the traditional desktop model in significant ways. Both also attempt to create interfaces that will work on the desktop and the much anticipated tablet-based future (which [may or may not ever arrive](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/08/op-ed-tables-really-are-pcsbecause-theres-no-point-in-buying-new-ones/)). + +Linux desktops like KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Mate and even Cinnamon are the other side of the fence. None have re-invented themselves too much and continue to offer users a traditional desktop experience. Which is not to say these projects aren't growing and refining. All of them continue to turn out incremental releases that fine tune what is a well-proven desktop model. + +[image="screenshot-unity.png" caption="Ubuntu's Unity desktop."] + +[image="screenshot-gnome.png" caption="GNOME 3 desktop."] + +GNOME and Unity end up getting the lion's share of attention in this debate though. They're both new and different. They're both opinionated and polarizing. For every Linux user that loves them there's another that loves to hate them, which makes for, if nothing else, lively comments and forum posts in the Linux world. But the difference between these two camps is about more than just how your desktop looks and behaves. It's about what the future of computing looks like. + +GNOME and Unity believe that the future of computing consists of multiple devices all running the same software. The new desktop paradigm both have created really only make sense in this context. Neither are really building desktops for the future, but include a hybrid desktop fallback mode for now and appear to believe that the real future is in devices. The other side of the schism largely seems to ignore devices. + +This split, with these radical new attempts at what a desktop should look like and how it should behave on one hand, and the more traditional setups on the other, amounts to a distributed discussion about what the future of computing looks like. + +Unlike the world of closed source OSes, where changes are handed down, like them or leave them, the Linux world is in the middle of a conversation about these ideas. + +That said, it can be frustrating as a user. The last thing you need when you're trying to get work done is an update that completely changes your desktop, forcing you to learn new ways of working. Even the best case scenario, moving to another desktop when your old favorite suddenly veers off in a new direction, usually means jettisoning years of muscle memory and familiarity. + +There's a simple way to navigate this mess and find the right desktop for you. Here it is in a nutshell: do you want to bend your will to your desktop or do you want to bend your desktop to your will? + +If you fall in the first camp and don't mind learning new ways of working then Unity and GNOME 3 will be your best bet. If you fall in the latter camp, XFCE, Cinnamon, Mate and a host of others will all likely prove a good fit. If you want to go non-traditional in the opposite direction from GNOME 3 and Unity, there's always Xmonad, Ratpoison and others that very few Linux users will ever try (a shame, since Xmonad may be the best thing in Linux since Linus said, uh, hey, here's a kernel for your GNU system). + +[image="screenshot01.png" caption="KDE Plasma 5's new boot screen"] + +But what if you fall somewhere in the middle? You like the traditional desktop experience and you're not ready to give up your menu and shortcuts for HUDs and other new tools. At the same time, you're curious about tablets and other form factors and you want something that will work across them all. You, my hypothetical friend, are an excellent candidate for the brand new KDE Plasma 5. + +KDE is attempting to do something no other desktop in Linux has tried to date -- move toward the tablet and mobile device future while still producing a desktop experience that's familiar, functional and infinitely customizable. + +## KDE Plasma 5 and the World of "Convergence" + +KDE users who made it through the transition from KDE 3.5 to 4 likely still flinch at the mention of a major upgrade to any part of KDE, but there's good news for KDE fans in Plasma 5 -- this is a major update yes, but with a handful of exceptions (which I'll get into in a minute) you'd never know it. + +It turns out that the incredibly bumpy move to KDE 4 really did lay the groundwork for a better future. And we are now in that future. + +With this update KDE is laying the groundwork for the future again, but in a less disruptive way. This time the future means a move to tablets and other form factors. Fear not though, KDE seems poised to do what GNOME and Unity could not -- branch out to other form factors without abandoning the traditional desktop. + +[image="screenshot02.png" caption="The KDE Plasma 5 desktop"] + +KDE has, in other words, resisted the urge to mess with the tried and true just because there's something new on the horizon. + +You'd be forgiven for not remembering this, but the whole convergence thing that Canonical goes on about with each new Unity update? KDE started using the word "convergence" way back when Canonical was still running user tests to determine the optimal shade of brown for GNOME 2 menus. + +And behold, with KDE Frameworks 5, Qt5 and some other updates to the plumbing that come along with Plasma 5, KDE's version of convergence is here. You may not notice it though; it's under the hood where it belongs. + +You also probably won't notice it because while the components are there to allow the KDE project and its developers to build different interfaces, the Plasma 5 desktop is, thus far, the only interface. But the frameworks and developer tools needed are there now. KDE calls these new frameworks the "converged Plasma shell", which is what loads up the desktop in Plasma 5. + +KDE plans to build out other interfaces, and the [official release announcement](http://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma5.0/) for Plasma 5 says that "a tablet-centric and media center user experience are under development." + +KDE's vision of convergence is not unlike what Ubuntu envisions in that the user interface will change based on the device and hardware. For example, you might have the "tablet-centric" interface that's in the works running while you're reading the web on the couch. But get up, walk back to your office, connect to your wireless keyboard and the interface would shift to something more keyboard friendly. + +This scenario has some potential problems, some of which Windows 8 users are likely already familiar with. For example, what will happen when a keyboard is plugged in, but you still want to interact with the screen via touch? What happens if you plug in a mouse, but still want to scroll with your fingers? + +I mention these small points not to say that KDE hasn't thought them through -- I hope they have -- but because this idea of "convergence" of adaptive user interfaces will be very difficult to get right. One thing KDE has long had that gives me hope for the project's ability to pull off this vision of computing is limitless configurability. + +My hope for KDE on a tablet is that I would be able to configure every last detail of the experience. That there would be a way for me to determine what *I* want to happen when a keyboard is detected rather than letting the OS determine for me. + +## The Plasma 5 Desktop + +KDE Plasma 5 is KDE 4 evolved rather than any kind of revolutionary new interface. + +I've been using this release -- still not completely stable in my testing, though most of the glitches have been graphical, not data threatening -- for over a month now in virtual machines, dual booting on a Retina MacBook Pro and, to see how well it holds up on older hardware, an aging, underpowered Toshiba laptop. I've tested it using Kubuntu (virtual machine and the Toshiba) and atop a fresh install of Arch Linux (dual boot MacBook). + +If you'd like to try out Plasma 5, the simplest way is to grab the [Neon live CD available from KDE](http://files.kde.org/snapshots/neon5-latest.iso.mirrorlist). That will get you Plasma with Ubuntu under the hood. If you want to commit and test it on an existing Kubuntu install, here's the commands for that: + +<pre><code> +sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neon/kf5 +sudo apt-get update +sudo apt-get install project-neon5-session project-neon5-utils project-neon5-konsole project-neon5-breeze project-neon5-plasma-workspace-wallpapers +</code></pre> + +Restart your machine and you should see a new option at the login screen offering to start up a Neon session. + +Once you have Plasma 5 up and running, the first thing you'll notice is the new default KDE theme, known as Breeze. + +## Plasma 5's Breezy New Look + +Breeze is what KDE refers to as a modernized interface, with "reduced visual clutter throughout the workspace." Indeed, the busy, somewhat cluttered feel that has long been a part of the default KDE look is gone. + +[image="screenshot03.png" caption="The KDE Plasma 5 desktop's Breeze theme is most complete in the Kickoff menu. Note the type to search message."] + +The entire interface has been flattened out, with bigger fonts, better contrast and a sort of flat, "frosted" look that's somewhere between OS X Yosemite, Android L and KDE 4.x. That's not to say KDE ripped off Apple or Google. They couldn't have since Plasma 5 and the Breeze theme were well on their way before Apple revealed Yosemite or Google announced Android L. + +Still, while it would be incorrect to say KDE has ripped anyone off, Breeze's visual design and overall aesthetic are very much a product of its time. In that sense it looks "modern", so long as you define modern to mean lots of strong type, few textures or outlines, lots of translucency and monochrome iconography. + +KDE's designers have put a lot of work into Breeze and it shows. This isn't just a new coat of paint. Breeze makes KDE more approachable out of the box with cleaned up menus, a less cluttered notification center and a revamped Kickoff start menu. + +[image="screenshot04.png" caption="A cleaner, less nagging notification center"] + +How much Breeze matters depends on whether or not you'll ever even use it. KDE tends to attract users that like customizing their systems which, presumably, includes customizing the theme. One thing to look forward to is what distros that heavily customize the default KDE theme -- notably OpenSUSE -- will do now that Breeze provides a somewhat higher starting bar. + +For now at least most distros will probably not jump on Breeze since it is very much a work in progress. Indeed, Breeze is where you'll also notice some of the first signs of incompleteness in Plasma 5. While the Kickoff menu has some nice new icons, most of the rest of the interface does not. And as of the latest updates available in the Kubuntu ppa, Breeze does not use its new Window Decorations. The Window Decorations are installed, but they aren't turned on by default. You can head to the System Settings app and turn them on for a more complete, though possibly buggier, Breeze experience. + +[image="screenshot05.png" caption="Top is the default Oxygen Window Decorations, bottom the new Breeze theme."] + +Not everything is ideal and sometimes it's hard to tell what's a bug or incomplete feature and what is just poorly designed. For example, there's quite a bit of window and overlay translucency in Breeze, some of which looks nice, but at other times it gets in the way. Stacked windows and preview overlays bleed into what's behind them and become hard to read in the background. Pulling them to the foreground solves the problem, but it's hard to say what the value of the transparency is in this case. + +[image="screenshot06.png" caption="Transparency... why?"] + +So yes, Breeze is still a work in progress, and not just in terms of features and design, but also in terms of genuine bugs and glitches. I have encountered some unexpected behavior, particularly with regard to screen redraws, which happen frequently and slow enough to notice them. Windows disappear at times, the menu bar occasionally only draws half of itself. + +Plasma 5 has never crashed on me, nor has it lost any data, but little visual glitches abound and I would suggest waiting for things to stabilize and the distro of your choice to integrate it before you jump in with both feet. + +## Plasma Menus Go Vertical + +Breeze gives Plasma 5 a new look, but there are also a number of changes in behavior. For example, both the widget explorer and the alt-tab window switcher are now vertically oriented and located in the same place by default -- the far left side of the screen. + +[image="screenshot07.png" caption="The default look for the alt-tab switcher menu."] + + +While that consistency is probably good for KDE newcomers, who will learn to expect that various stuff will appear to the left of the screen, it can be a little frustrating for long-time users expecting something else. And some of these changes seem somewhat arbitrary. + +[image="screenshot08.png" caption="The widget explorer menu"] + +The KDE project claims the shift to vertical instead of horizontal lists in things like the widget explorer and window switcher, "provide better usability," but stop short of saying how exactly. The release docs also claim that moving the window switcher to the side of the screen "shifts the user's focus towards the applications and documents, clearing the stage for the task at hand". But if you only call up the window switcher when you're, ahem, switching windows, then it seems more likely that the user is between tasks rather than involved in one. + +[image="screenshot09.png" caption="KDE still loves offering options. Notice the dark gray bar to the right, that's an artifact (glitch) from dragging the window."] + +This is KDE though, not Unity, infinite customization is a feature not a bug. A trip to the System Settings will get your old style window switcher back, indeed there are some 10 different visual possibilities for the window switcher in Plasma 5. If the default is not to your liking, customize away. + +## So Long Nepomuk and Thanks for All the Spinning Fans + +If you're a heavy user of KDE's sometimes awesome, sometimes not, search features, this may be the biggest news in Plasma 5. + +It's true, KDE has ditched Nepomuk in favor of a new search engine known as Baloo. + +Nepomuk, which started life as an EU-funded metadata search project with the lofty sounding goal of creating a "Networked Environment for Personalized, Ontology-based Management of Unified Knowledge". By the time it trickled down to the KDE project, Nepomuk became a somewhat more mundane desktop search tool that alternated between brilliant and maddening. + +[image="screenshot10.png" caption="Searching for files in Plasma 5"] + +Baloo takes much of what made Nepomuk great -- namely full text file search and an uncanny ability to pick up on relationships between files, for example, knowing that particular document is related to a contact -- and [improves it](https://dot.kde.org/2014/02/24/kdes-next-generation-semantic-search). Actually use the search features in Plasma 5 and you'll notice two things right off the bat -- it's faster and your fan doesn't go haywire every time something new is indexed. + +Baloo significantly reduces the resource footprint of searching and, according to KDE, is more accurate. I can't vouch for the latter since I never used search much in older versions of KDE (see fan spinning comments), but in terms of accuracy, simple files searches in Plasma 5 are on par with what you'll find in Ubuntu, OS X and elsewhere. The success of more complex searches involving relationships or complex metadata will vary depending on how much you use the default KDE apps. For example, you need to use the Kontact Suite if you want to take advantage of Baloo-based searches involving relationships between contacts and files. + +That will likely change as time goes on though because another big change from Nepomuk is the new, improved developer API. The API for searching means third-party apps can tie in Plasma 5's Semantic Search infrastructure and take advantage of the same tools the default apps use. + +Curiously, for something that's seen as much work as Baloo has, the visibility and discoverability of the search feature has taken a step backward. Fire up Plasma 5's Kickoff menu -- KDE's answer to the Windows Start menu -- and search is nowhere to be found. If you look closely you'll see a tiny little reminder to "type to search", which is step up from the first release, which had no indication that you could search, but still isn't as discoverable as a dedicated search box. + +## Kickoff and its new Cousin, Kicker + +KDE's answer to the Windows Start button has always been overkill in my view, packing too much in too little space, but with Breeze the menu has been cleaned up a bit and feels less visually overwhelming. + +[image="screenshot11.png" caption="The Kickoff menu in the default theme."] + +If it's still a bit too much for your needs, Plasma 5 offers a new, more traditional menu-based launcher called Kicker. Kicker does less -- it's much closer to the Start menu in XP, a single, narrower pane that offers expanding menus where needed -- and makes a lightweight alternative if all you want to do is launch applications and files. It also has a very obvious search box. + +[image="screenshot12.png" caption="The new Kicker menu option"] + +The other side of the menu bar has been revamped and cleaned up bit as well. The most notable change is the notification app, which seems to kick up fewer notifications and does a better job of displaying them and quickly getting them out of the way. + +## OpenGL, QtQuick and HiDPI Screens + +Plasma 5 finishes up KDE's migration to Qt 5 and QtQuick, the latter of which uses a hardware-accelerated OpenGL scenegraph to render graphics. Most of what's new with OpenGL pertains to offloading graphics to any available GPU. That means, provided you've got the hardware for it, Plasma 5 can take full advantage of today's powerful GPUs. + +Indeed on newish hardware (my MacBook's NVIDIA GeForce GT graphics card, for example) Plasma 5 is snappy, considerably snappier than its predecessor. Perhaps even more impressive, take away whatever GPU advantage Plasma 5 might gain over KDE 4.x systems and it still feels faster. That is, while running on older hardware still isn't KDE's strong point, but the story is better than it used to be. Still, if you're looking to get some extra mileage out of older hardware, stick with Xfce, LXDE or something even simpler like Openbox. + +Interestingly, the revamped Frameworks that make up Plasma 5's graphics stack also pave the way for KDE to switch to the Wayland display server protocol. KDE doesn't seem to be in a hurry to make the switch to Wayland though, noting only that full support will be available in "a future release". + +This release also claims improved support for HDPI displays. But, as with the HDPI support in GNOME and Unity, the actual experience is a very mixed bag. Font rendering in particular is nowhere near as smooth as what OS X offers. Even installing and fiddling with Infinality has never produced satisfactory results for me. I'm still not sure if the problem is in my setup and I'm not in fact seeing the new HDPI features. Or, if possibly the KDE project and I just have very different definitions of what constitutes HDPI support. Hopefully it's the former. + +## What's Missing + +Earlier in this review I said that the transition from KDE 4 to the Plasma 5 desktop would not be as bumpy as the move from KDE 3.x to 4.x. For the most part that's true, but for some people there may be exceptions. + +The KDE project says the focus for this release has been "concentrated on tools that make up the central workflows" and notes that "not all features from the Plasma 4.x series are available yet." That might ring a bell for those who made it through the KDE 3 to 4 transition. + +In my testing I didn't run across any noticeable gaps in functionality or obvious missing features, save what I've mentioned -- the incomplete Breeze theme, some graphical glitches and some questionable design choices. That said, have a look at the [list of known issues](https://community.kde.org/Plasma/5.0_Errata), in particular the note about performance. + +And I suggest trying Plasma 5 first to make sure all your must-haves are there before you jump in with both feet. + +## Conclusion + +KDE's Plasma 5 release lacks the attention-grabbing, paradigm-shifting changes that keep Unity and GNOME in the spotlight. Instead the KDE project has been focused on improving its core desktop experience. Plasma 5 is not perfect by any means, but unlike Unity and GNOME it's easy to change the things you don't like. + +What's perhaps most heartening about this release is that KDE has managed to get a lot of the groundwork done for alternate interfaces without messing with their desktop interface much at all. The speed improvements are also good news. If you've tried KDE in the past and found it too "heavy" you might want to give Plasma 5 a fresh look. diff --git a/published/linuxmintreview.txt b/published/linuxmintreview.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8412400 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/linuxmintreview.txt @@ -0,0 +1,109 @@ +The Linux Mint project has released Mint 17.2, a significant upgrade for the Ubuntu-based distro that has become one of Linux's most popular. It's also among the last holdouts of the traditional desktop computing paradigm. + +Mint is Ubuntu for people who don't like the Unity desktop. + +If you want Ubuntu and all the good that comes with it, like an extensive up-to-date set of packages, great documentation and a web full of tutorials and helpful users, but not Unity and its baggage -- like query-logging search "features" some have [called spyware](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do) -- Linux Mint just might be the distro for you. + +Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and in my experience most things that work in Ubuntu will also work in Mint. All those tutorials and .deb files in most cases (not all though) will do just fine with Mint. + +Linux Mint comes in a variety of desktop flavors, most notable though are the dual homegrown desktops, Cinnamon and MATE. Both desktops represent something increasingly rare regardless of your computing platform of choice -- they stick with the tried and true paradigms of earlier desktop software. That is, they both offer task bars, system trays, docks and other familiar metaphors for interacting with and managing your applications and files. + +[image="mint172-cinn-start-menu.png" caption="The default Cinnamon desktop in Linux Mint 17.2"] + +These days the desktops grabbing headlines have, for the most part, left the traditional desktop behind in favor of what's often referred to as a "shell", which offers a search-based interface. The GNOME project and Ubuntu's Unity desktop interfaces both use this approach. + +This is not a sea change that's limited to Linux. The upheaval of the desktop is happening in Windows land as well. Windows 8 also departed from the traditional desktop UI and Windows 10 looks like it will continue that rethinking of the desktop, albeit with a few familiar elements retained. + +Whether it's driven by, in Ubuntu's case, a vision of "convergence" between desktop and mobile or perhaps just the need for something new (which seems to be the case for GNOME 3.x), the developers would have you believe that these mobile-friendly, search based desktops are the future of, well, everything. + +There are however, still some holdouts that still stick with the task bar and start menu style interface. Apple's OS X has thus far been surprisingly conservative about changing its basic metaphors, but then the company has iOS to tantalize developers. + +In the Linux world there are a few holdouts as well. Both KDE and Xfce continue to be more or less what they have always been. The word stolid comes to mind with both. They're both solid options, but the word fun doesn't spring to mind with either. + +Linux Mint on the other hand has managed to do something a bit different, particularly with its Cinnamon desktop which manages to feel both familiar and modern at the same time. + +Linux Mint 17.2 is more than just the Cinnamon desktop -- we'll get to that in a minute -- but for those looking for alternatives to Unity and GNOME 3, Linux Mint 17.2 offers everything you love about Ubuntu without the Unity Desktop. + +## Cinnamon 2.6 + +If you head over to the Linux Mint website you'll find two different downloads available, one for the Cinnamon desktop and one for the MATE desktop. Opt for the former and you'll get Linux Mint 17.2 with Cinnamon 2.6. + +[image="mint172-cinn.png" caption="Cinnamon 2.6 in Linux Mint 17.2"] + +Out of the box Cinnamon rather closely resembles Windows XP, albeit with a mintier green gray theme. You'll find all the familiar elements of traditional desktops though, a start menu, task bar and so on. If Windows XP isn't your idea of a good looking desktop, fear not, Cinnamon is highly customizable and there are a ton of themes and useful applets available for download. + +Among the more obvious new features in this release are better dual monitor support, some new tricks for the panel and a much faster overall desktop experience. + +The latter point -- speed improvements -- is particularly true on older hardware. Cinnamon 2.6 is still not by any means a lightweight desktop, nor would it be my first choice for less powerful hardware, but with this release it is a bit less taxing on older systems. Among the improvements are some code optimizations that have reduced the amount of background refreshes that happen. The menu, for instance, is refreshed about 6 times less and the window manager has been overhauled to reduce idle CPU use. + +For more details on all the under the hood speed improvements in Cinnamon 2.6, check out Linux Mint lead Clément Laforge's [blog post on the subject](http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2015/06/cinnamon-2-6/). Since brevity is the essence of Linux reviews, suffice to say that Linux Mint 17.2 is noticeably snappier than its predecessor on the same hardware, something disappointingly few desktops can claim these days. + +The new and improved dual monitor support primarily addresses a long-time complaint from Cinnamon users with more than one screen -- there was no way to set up your panels independently. That's been fixed, which means you can now have a completely different panel on each of your monitors. In fact, you don't have to have multiple screens to take advantage of this one, the updates to the panel mean you can now set up your single monitor with multiple instances, for example, one at the top and bottom of your screen, though I'm not sure why you'd want to. + +But wait, did you catch that in the last paragraph? Cinnamon 2.6 has a new feature that *addresses a long time complaint from users*. In fact there are quite a few new features that can be traced right back to user submitted bugs and feature requests, which is another thing that feels increasingly rare in Linux desktops. + +This release sees the Cinnamon developers focusing on some of what are sometimes call "paper cut" fixes, which just means there's been a lot of attention to the details, particularly the small, but annoying problems. For example, this release adds a new panel applet called "inhibit" which temporarily bans all notifications. It also turns off screen locking and stops any auto dimming you have set up, making a great tool for when you want to watch a video or play a game. + +[image="mint172-cinn-inhibit.png" caption="The Inhibit applet in action."] + +Sure, you could accomplish all those before using a couple different panes in the system settings app, but with applet you can just drop it in the menu bar and click to easily toggle things on and off. It's not a huge new feature, but it's great to have and it solves the kind of real-world problem ordinary users encounter. + +Along similar lines Cinnamon has an improved sound applet, which supports PulseAudio and has the ability to "detect output devices with greater accuracy". In practical terms that means more outputs "just work". There's also a new feature to set the volume level independently for each running application. + +If you've used Cinnamon for a long time you may well remember some bad old days of desktop freezes and other crashes. This used to happen so much I had a Bash shortcut just to restart Cinnamon. As I noted in my review of Mint 17.1, I haven't had this problem for some time on any of my hardware, but if you do you'll be glad to know there's now a keyboard shortcut to restart Cinnamon. By default it's Ctrl+Alt+Escape, which will restart both the Nemo file manager and the cinnamon-settings-daemon and launch a brand new instance of Cinnamon. + +That's a bit cleaner than good old Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, which kills your session and can potentially lose your work. With Ctrl+Alt+Escape your session stays as it was, including any open apps with unsaved work. I've been using Cinnamon 2.6 for a while now though and haven't needed to restart it yet. + +Linux Mint 17.2 with Cinnamon is well worth the upgrade. In fact, even if you're using Cinnamon elsewhere, which has become increasingly common, with Debian and Fedora now including Cinnamon as an option in their installers, I'd suggest updating. The speed improvements alone are worth it. + + +## MATE 1.10 + +The other primary option for Linux Mint 17.2 is the MATE desktop, which has been updated to version 1.10. + + +[image="mint172-mate.png" caption="The MATE desktop in Linux Mint 17.2"] + +Just like its cohort Cinnamon, the MATE update has seen quite a bit of work go into speeding up the desktop experience and bringing down the memory requirements. Unlike Cinnamon though, MATE is what passes for a "lightweight" desktop these days, which is to say that particularly the memory use improvements will be a huge win for anyone using MATE on older, less capable hardware. MATE is not LXDE or bare Openbox by any means, but neither is it anywhere near as big and memory hungry as GNOME 3 or Unity. + +That said, I didn't really notice the speed improvements. Depending on your hardware and use habits you may find that MATE 1.10 is faster, but MATE has always been pretty speedy so sometimes it's hard to tell. It does definitely use less RAM though. + +Beyond the speed and RAM improvements you won't likely notice a lot of changes in this version of MATE. The default file manager in MATE can now enable and disable extensions without a restart and the MATE documentation is now available within the desktop interface. + +The developers of MATE have initiated a similar "paper cut" project for MATE to fix some of the small issues and also to port some of the new Cinnamon features into MATE, but so far it doesn't look like much has happened on this project. The MATE 1.10 release announcement says that these should come as updates to MATE 1.10.x, so expect to see a few things updated and optimized as the 1.10.x release cycle continues. + +Like Cinnamon, MATE has also grown beyond Linux Mint. In fact, there's now an official Ubuntu flavor based on MATE. Given that Linux Mint is derived from Ubuntu, it's worth asking -- why not just use Ubuntu MATE? If you want the latest version of Ubuntu, need an up-to-date kernel to support new hardware or prefer pure Ubuntu then Ubuntu MATE is probably a better choice. + +There's more to Linux Mint than just the desktop though. And while this release retains the base system of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, there are plenty of improvements to the tools and applications that make Mint, well, Mint. + +## Linux Mint 17.2 + +Linux Mint 17.2 ships with a slew of updates that apply regardless of the desktop you choose. + +Among the places Mint trumps Ubuntu is the Update Manager, which goes well beyond the usual package manager, offering up what amounts to a user-friendly tour of the system via package updates. If you really want to know what's going on with your system and how various package updates relate to one another the Mint Update Manager is one of the best ways I've seen to wrap your head around it. + +The latest feature is support package aliases, which sounds obscure, but is actually very simple. It just means that a package with an otherwise obscure name like "cjs" can be displayed as "cinnamon-cjs" so that it appears along side other Cinnamon updates and perhaps more importantly so that you can tell it's connected in some way to Cinnamon. This makes it easier to debug things after an update if something on your system breaks. Even if you have no idea what "cjs" does (for the record, its a JavaScript/C bridge), at least you know it's part of Cinnamon. + +[image="mint172-mate-update-manager.png" caption="Viewing updates in Linux Mint 17.2"] + +The paper cuts theme mentioned earlier extends beyond the desktops as well. Among the small things in the Update Manager is a option to hide the system tray icon when no updates are available, which keeps your panel a little less cluttered. + +Part of the appeal of using Ubuntu is the wealth of .deb packages out there. In general those same third party packages will also work in Mint, which is great, until it isn't. The problem with .deb files is that you never really know what's in them unless you check and let's face it, you don't. Mint makes it a little easier to check out exactly what you're getting with an update to the Software Sources configuration tool. + +With Mint 17.2 you can now open PPA archives and browse their packages. You can also then install them right from Software Sources, you don't have to switch to another tool. But more importantly you can easily purge .deb packages you installed manually. Just remove the repository/PPA and update. Sure you can do that from the command line too, but doing it through Software Source will be much easier for most users. + +[image="mint172-cinn-ppas.png" caption="Inspecting PPA contents in Linux Mint 17.2"] + +If you do prefer the command line there are a couple updates there as well, including support for an interesting command, "apt recommends", which will list missing recommended packages for a particular package. It's sort of like a post installation way to inspect what happens if you use "--no-install-recommends". + +## Ubuntu 14.04 Core + +As mentioned earlier Linux Mint 17.2 sticks with Ubuntu 14.04 under the hood. That means the kernel remains at 3.16, which might be bad news for newer hardware. Naturally you can update the kernel yourself, though unless you really know what you're doing I don't suggest it. + +There is one big upside to sticking with Ubuntu 14.04 as the base for Mint 17.2 -- there's still now systemd. Mint users won't have to deal with systemd for another year when Mint will make the leap to Ubuntu 16.04 as the new base system. That makes Mint 17.2 a good option for those who want to have an updated desktop in the Ubuntu ecosystem, but postpone the move to systemd for a little while. + +## Conclusion + +Mint 17.2 is well worth the upgrade though much of what you want from it might be easier to get by just upgrading Cinnamon or MATE on their own. The Mint Linux upgrade guide tends to emphasize the wisdom on the old saying, "if it ain't broke..." Those are good words to live by, but, that said, I had no trouble at all upgrading from Mint 17.1. All you need to do is open Update Manager and head to the Edit menu, where you should see an option to "Upgrade to Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela." + +Linux Mint 17.2 is an LTS release and will receive security updates until 2019, and until 2016, all Mint releases will continue to use the same base package system (Ubuntu 14.04). diff --git a/published/markdown-notes.txt b/published/markdown-notes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f2862a3 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/markdown-notes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,208 @@ +We need HTML, but we don't ensuring that our sentences fall into paragraphs, our emphatic points are emphasized and our references are linked. because writing + + +The markup language that surrounds most of our words isn't part of those words. HTML has thankfully been relegated to the background. + + + +dG + +Who should control Markdown? + + +Who should control all the other tools? + +Much of the the strength of + + + + +John Gruber created it, and as Winer writes in arguing why he supports Gruber, "e owe a debt of gratitude to Gruber, for creating Markdown and doing such a great job of getting it established." + + + + + + +If the tools of our culture are controlled solely by those who make them, we always use them at the mercy of the tool makers. + + + + + +> that Gruber felt threatened. I understand this. He wants to be the +> only one who gets to say what "Markdown" is. Unfortunately, he has spent the + + + + + +In the course of writing this I went from generally agreeing with Gruber to agreeing with + +Everything ends there + +That's more or less where the story of Standard Markdown ends + + +> In retrospect, maybe it wasn't well chosen. But I don't think the name was +> ever the real issue. I posted the spec on markdown-discuss on August 14, with +> the name "Standard Markdown" right at the top, and sent it to John Gruber for +> comment, hoping he might get behind some (possibly modified) version of it. +> Nobody said anything about the name then. I think + +> last eight years not saying anything about what it is, even when implementers +> on markdown-discuss were begging for clarification about various issues. That +> is one of the reasons we have so much fragmentation now. + + + + +## What's in a Name + + + +This would be conjecture in many cases, but in this case Atwood has made no secret that he would like to be in charge of Markdown, in fact he's gone so far as to call Gruber a "bad father", of Markdown, which is, frankly, a little creepy even for a good old fashion developer fight. + +Atwood created Stack Overflow so he's not just a little developer who's never had any legal advice before (if such a thing is even still possible in these copyright laced times), so Atwood knows that even when code is open source, project names are not. + +If you don't think Atwood wants to control markdown, consider the other names he wanted to use: + +* Compatible Markdown +* Regular Markdown +* Community Markdown +* Common Markdown +* Uniform Markdown +* Vanilla Markdown + +These are names designed to give your project a ring of authority that supersedes the origin. These are names designed to extinguish. + +Community Markdown is especially infuriating to everyone who has ever used Markdown and is not Jeff Atwood. As developer Dave Winer aptly [writes](http://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/standard-flavored-markdown/2382/19), "we all use Markdown, not just you and your pals. It isn't yours to do with as you please." + +Sometimes it's useful to step back and reframe a question a bit, especially if you sympathize with the ostensible goals of Markdown. + +Suppose you were a group of developers concerned about the future of the MySQL project under Oracle's leadership. You would probably start by forking the MySQL code base and then you would need to name your new project. Given that MySQL is a trademarked name of Oracle, you probably would not call your new project Standard MySQL. If you did you could expect to hear from Oracle's lawyers. A better choice would be to pick a name that has nothing to do with the source -- to forge your own identity. In the case of MySQL the fork is known as Maria DB and its well on its way to being more widely used than MySQL. + +We live where big tech companies are not shy about taking the things they want and destroying the things they don't like. This is what big companies do on the web. No one was better at this than Microsoft back in its heyday. The company even had a [catchy little phrase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_and_extinguish) for it -- embrace, extend, and extinguish. + +There are many reasons this happens but the two main ones familiar to developers are the not invented here syndrome and the desire of big companies to squash, buy or just bully out of existence smaller, similar projects. + +Not invented here and embrace, extend and extinguish are why we have RDFa and Atom when RSS was working just fine. It's why there's Schema.org when Microformats was already there. Google has even demonstrated that you can do this internally, witness the new Activity Stream API when there's not only an external Activity Stream def, but an internal one. + + + + +This is precisely what a group of companies recently tried to do to Markdown. + +The embrace step happened organically. As already noted, text fields the web over offer support for Markdown. Most of these text fields are controlled by large companies. Notably in this case, Stack Overflow, GitHub and Reddit. + +The next step is extend. This also happened organically. Markdown is imperfect. There are edge cases where it fails. Then there are things it doesn't do. When people ported it to other languages they ran into these problems and often solved them in different ways. Gruber has only updated Markdown once, though there are some beta scripts floating around the web. + +So different version of Markdown sometimes do things in different way. This can be confusing sometimes. But that's the nature of forks, they build on, change and improve what came before. Yet, despite that, none of the forks has ever managed to gain the kind of popularity the original enjoys. Much of this is because the name belongs to the original. + +There are only two conditions you need to adhere to when you make your own version of Markdown (which is licensed under a "BSD-style" license). Retain the copyright notice and refrain from calling your version Markdown or otherwise using the name Markdown in your project. + +The problem is that last bit makes it really hard to complete the third step: extinguish. + +Your project is never going to superceed the original because the original is only one called Markdown. + +Remember too that Markdown has been around for 10 years at this point. It's in hundreds, possibly thousands of pieces of software, often behind the scenes, but often identified by name. In order to take over Markdown you need the name. + +So, if you're Jeff Atwood, founder of Stack Overflow, and cohorts (which include developers from GitHub, Reddit and Meteor.com, you name your fork Standard Markdown. + +This the developer equivalent of [spitting in someone's face](https://twitter.com/justin/status/507304506007515136). + + +In the case of Markdown, if you bothered to read the license you would know that using the word Markdown as part of your project requires explicit permission from the author. The web is waiting to see what happens when Standard Stack Overflow launches. + +## Why This Matters + +Eventually Atwood did back down. He half apologized to Gruber and changed the name to CommonMark, which will take its place alongside all the other Markdown forks. The big names failed to take over Markdown. + +There's an XKCD cartoon that nicely summarizes the future of CommonMark. + +Most likely CommonMark will last about as long as the companies involved remain interested, which is to say, as long as it is useful to them. Most of the time what happens is that the specific developers involved will move on to new companies and the company loses interest. The project dies. + +Community driven projects don't necessarily last longer, but they're not prone to the whims of individual companies. The web is littered with examples of this, from Microformats which flourishes even as Schema.org (backed by the big search engines) languishes. RSS is still here and has become, without any input from big companies, a key part of the web's unseen plumping. + +Markdown now gets to join that list. + +That doesn't mean the gripes against Markdown are without merit though. It seems pretty obvious that Atwood and company want control of Markdown, but at least some of the problems they would like to solve are real problems. + +They want to improve Markdown, solve some of the edge cases and make it easier for other developer to integrate it into their projects. They want to standardize it and, despite what I wrote earlier, standardization is often not a bad thing, which is why a lot of developers support Atwood and CommonMark. + +There's another problem. Markdown has already shipped. Markdown is not a new thing. It's ten years old and used in countless pieces of software, most of which are never going to update just to make a spec that one group of programmers think is better. + +Even if Standard Markdown solved all of Markdown's problems and all the problems it will ever have it's too late. Markdown is not Jeff Atwood's toy. It's not Github's, it's not Reddit's, it's not Stack Overflow's. It's not even Gruber's. + +Markdown is ours. At this point Markdown belongs to everyone who uses it. We are the web writers for whom it was intended and yes we have to deal with some inconsistencies, some vague blurriness around the edges you might say. The good news is it's just plain text, so even if markdown disappears entirely you'll still have something perfectly readable. + +If we're going to spend 2 years fixing bugs and improving something, let's make it something more worthwhile, like OpenSSL. Markdown is doing just fine. + + +Markdown bills itself as "a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers". Notice the last two words, "web writers". That's you and me. Assuming you're getting ready to type a comment at the bottom of this article, and you probably are. We are web writers. Those two words will be important in a minute. + + + + + + + + + + + +The hoopla over + + + + + + + + +Because Atwood and the other big companies behind CommonMark have, as far as I can tell, neglected to put any sort of copyright protection on their name, I have forked the code on GitHub and started a project called Standard CommonMark. If you would like to join me, head on over to GitHub. Or don't, I won't be updating it. + + + + + + +That's not to say that standards are not a good thing. They can be a very good thing, but only when they're built from and for a community of end users. + +There's a reason the W3C, which oversees the standardization of HTML, CSS and other web technologies, requires stakeholders to give up copyright. Without that crucial thing, "standardization" is little more than a land grab, just another weapon in a big company's arsenal of tools to crush the competition. + +Fortunately for smaller developers, and the web at large, tactics like this rarely end up working, because the + + +What happens though when a little Perl script written by one person becomes the focus of the ebrace extend extinguish attack? This is the story of a 1450 line Perl script named Markdown and it's adventures on the web. + + + +## Embrace + + + + + + + + + +The programmer’s tendency to indulge their hyper-specced fantasies often produces inaccessibly myopic software that excludes the uninitiated - Sam Stephenson @sstephenson https://twitter.com/sstephenson/status/507931444182667264 + + + + + + +You can write in HTML. It's not that hard, + +There is a better way to do this. Many, many better ways in fact. One of those ways, perhaps the most popular of those ways is using something called Markdown. + + + + +. To do that you would need to use it in your projects, use it on large sites so that the majority of users of the technology are your own. This way you will have a huge number of supporters when it comes time to sway public opinion. + +You will also have a clever, if meaningless, little counter argument to throw out when people protest that Markdown is doing just fine as is -- you'll be able to say that most of the users are only using it because *you* gave it to them. Man you sure are swell. + diff --git a/published/markdown.html b/published/markdown.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..67c54f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/markdown.html @@ -0,0 +1,76 @@ +<p>Markdown is a Perl script that converts plain text into web-ready HTML. Markdown is also a shorthand syntax for writing HTML tags without needing to write the actual HTML. It has been around for a decade now, but hasn't seen an update in all that time -- nearly unheard of for a piece of software. That Markdown continues to work at all is somewhat amazing.</p> +<p>Regrettably, works and works well are not the same thing. Markdown, despite its longevity, has bugs. Luckily Markdown is free software, licensed under a BSD-style license, so anyone can fork it and fix those bugs.</p> +<p>Recently a group of developers who rely on Markdown set out to fix some of those bugs and created what they call a "standard" version. From a pure code standpoint the results are great, but instead of the developer gratitude you might expect, the group found themselves at the center of a much larger and very contentious debate that's ultimately about who we want in control of the tools we use.</p> +<h2 id="html-is-for-browsers">HTML is for Browsers</h2> +<p>The web turned the whole world into writers. Never in the history of the human race have so many people produced so much text. The web has not, however, turned the whole world into writers of HTML. If writing HTML were a requirement to writing on the web, very few people would be writing on the web.</p> +<p>Not that it's particularly <em>hard</em> to write HTML. Only a small subset of the hundreds of HTML tags actually end up in the average bit of text. Most of the time you can get by with paragraph tags, em, strong, and anchor tags for links. And of course list tags, where would the modern web be without list tags?</p> +<p>In other words, it's not that hard to write HTML. But it is a pain.</p> +<p>Typing out all those tags creates an extra wall between you and your thoughts. No one wants to put <code><p></code> at the start of every paragraph. And then <code></p></code> at the end, we just want to hit return and keep typing, which is what I did at the end of the previous paragraph. In fact, despite the fact that you're reading this article as a rendering bit of HTML in a webpage, I have not typed a single HTML tag while writing it.</p> +<p>Chances are you posted something on Twitter today, chatted with your friends on Facebook, wrote something on your WordPress blog, posted something to Tumblr, committed a bit of code to GitHub, answered a question on Stack Overflow or did a hundred other things that ended up rendered in HTML. You most likely did all that without ever actually typing any HTML tags.</p> +<p>Most of the time HTML is hidden by a "rich" text editor, which takes care of creating all the necessary HTML tags for you. WordPress, Tumblr and other sites not aimed at developers tend to use rich text editors.</p> +<p>Developers and the sites they interact with on the other hand often use Markdown.</p> +<h2 id="markdown-a-tool-for-web-writers">Markdown, a Tool for Web Writers</h2> +<p>Markdown began life as a little Perl script written by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz back in 2004. Gruber had just started writing daringfireball.net and quickly realized that the article-as-a-fragment-of-HTML model that most publishing systems used at the time was lacking. Like most of us, Gruber wanted to edit and preview his writing in the text editor of his choice before pasting that text into the publishing system.</p> +<p>HTML is great at many things, but reading raw HTML is terrible. HTML is a markup language, it's a second stage presentation format. That is, you want to get words on the web. So the first stage is to type those words. The second is to add HTML so they look the way you intended in a web browser.</p> +<p>No one wants to read, let alone try to edit, text when it's littered with HTML tags.</p> +<p>Gruber and Swartz wanted to write first and convert to HTML later, which is what Markdown allows you to do. Gruber and Swartz came up with a shorthand syntax for common HTML elements and Markdown then parses through your text, finds those shorthand markers and replaces them with HTML tags. It also automatically wraps your paragraphs in <code><p></code> tags (you just need to leave a blank line between them).</p> +<p>Markdown is not an all or nothing syntax. You can pick and choose what you want to use. For example, in ten years of writing in Markdown I have never used its image syntax. For me Markdown's image syntax is no easier to read or simpler to type than an HTML <code><img></code> tag, so I just use the HTML tag.</p> +<p>Markdown is something you can make your own, which is one of its great strengths. Don't like the inline link syntax? Use the reference syntax, or, just write your links in HTML. Markdown is very flexible. Perhaps too flexible as it turns out.</p> +<p>Markdown was not the first text-to-HTML converter, but it was simple and took most of its shorthand syntax from the real world. It mimicked informal styles that emerged when people tried to overcome the limitations of plain text -- writing styles that grew into conventions in email, IRC and Usenet.</p> +<p>For example, in Markdown if you surround a word with asterisks it is rendered in HTML as <code><em></code> tags, which means it's (usually) italicized. Surround a word with double asterisks and it gets wrapped in <code><strong></code> tags and displayed in a bold font.</p> +<p>Dig through old mailing lists, IRC logs or Usenet postings and you'll find this style of writing everywhere. Markdown might have been formalized and the parser written by Gruber and Swartz, but much of its language evolved collectively and informally over many years of countless people figuring out how to convey meaning effectively in plain text.</p> +<p>Markdown turned out to be wildly successful, particularly among writers who used text editors rather than word processors and were devoted to the idea that your documents, no matter where they end up, should begin life as a text file. In other words, programmers.</p> +<p>In the last ten years Markdown has been forked many times, ported to more than a dozen programming languages and rolled out on some big, often developer oriented websites, for example, Github and Stack Overflow. Markdown isn't just popular with developers though, there are also plugins for every major blogging platform, including Wordpress.com.</p> +<p>All that is nice for those of us who grew to depend on Markdown since it means that we can use the familiar syntax all over the web.</p> +<h2 id="what-is-the-what">What is the What</h2> +<p>The problem with Markdown is that it isn't entirely clear all the time. There are bugs, but worse there are ambiguities and edge cases where it's unclear what should happen. Consider Markdown's list syntax. To create an unordered HTML list in Markdown you write something like this:</p> +<pre><code>* item one +* item two +* item three</code></pre> +<p>Markdown then turns that into this HTML:</p> +<pre><code><ul> + <li>item one</li> + <li>item one</li> + <li>item one</li> +</ul></code></pre> +<p>So far so good. But remember when I said Markdown automatically wraps paragraphs in HTML <code><p></code> tags? Okay so what happens if we do this:</p> +<pre><code>Here's a list of stuff: +* item one +* item two +* item three</code></pre> +<p>There's no line break before it, but any human reader familiar with Markdown would look at this and know there's supposed to be a list there. That means the parser should close the paragraph tag and start creating a list. Or at least that's one way to look at it. The parser might also think, well, there's no line break so it's still part of the paragraph, but there is an asterisk around "item one" and "item two" so those should be wrapped in <code><em></code> tags.</p> +<p>In fact, depending on which fork of Markdown you use there are <a href="http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/?text=Here%27s+a+list+of+stuff%3A%0A*+item+one%0A*+item+two%0A*+item+three%0A">15 possible ways</a> this snippet of Markdown might be rendered.</p> +<p>This is not an isolated example either, there are quite a few cases where Markdown is ambiguous. To be clear, there is no real "right" answer, someone just needs to make a decision about which of those 15 possibilities is "right".</p> +<p>There are also plain old bugs in Markdown as well. That's why when authors port Markdown to other language they end up creating something slightly different and you end up with something that can be rendered 15 different ways.</p> +<p>That's not just annoying for programmers trying to roll Markdown into their projects, it's a huge problem for web writers like you and me who never really know what's going to happen when we put some Markdown in a text field.</p> +<p>In a perfect world Gruber would release an update for Markdown. Perhaps even Markdown 2.0. He might, as Dave Winer has suggested, also move Markdown to some sort of version control system and publicly host the code in such a way that other developers can contribute and improve the code. That is, after all, the point of a FOSS software license -- allowing others to freely use and modify the code. The easier you make it to contribute the more people that will do so.</p> +<p>Regrettably, we don't live in that perfect world. Markdown, while widely adopted and widely used, hasn't seen so much as a bug fix since 2004. There's nothing wrong with that, it's certainly Gruber's right to let Markdown stand as is, but it's not surprising that other people want to fix the problems and make Markdown better.</p> +<p>Recently a group of developers made an effort to do just that. They created a fork of Markdown that solves the inconsistencies and edge cases, fixes the bugs. They also offered up two reference implementations, plenty of documentation and hosted the project on GitHub, which, although not ideal, at least makes it easier for other developers to contribute.</p> +<p>This fork might even be able to solve the ambiguities discussed earlier -- by consensus even. For example, it solves the earlier is-it-a-list or not dilemma by requiring blank lines before lists, a decision made in large part because that's what the majority of existing parsers do and therefore will be what most users will expect.</p> +<p>That all sounds really nice, so why did the project rankle so many developers? Two reasons. First there was the name -- Standard Markdown.</p> +<p>Were the project not using the Markdown name and simply positioning itself as an entirely new thing it would quite possibly have been welcomed by the entire Markdown community. But names have power, names give control. When you use a name you're telling the world you don't want to just improve a thing, you want to control it. Standard Markdown very much wants to be the future of Markdown.</p> +<p>Gruber, understandably, did not like the name. He asked the developers to change it and they did. Standard Markdown became <a href="http://commonmark.org/">CommonMark</a>. That was pretty much the end of the name controversy (though CommonMark could really use a new logo to further distance itself from Markdown).</p> +<p>The far more interesting reason Standard Markdown, now CommonMark, created such a fuss is because of who was behind it. Not the individuals, but the companies they represent.</p> +<h2 id="the-once-and-future-web-of-people">The Once and Future Web of People</h2> +<p>Exploitation of the user is the dominant business model on today's web. Whether that's in the form of data being gathered about you, onerous terms of service you need to abide by or privacy policies that treat you like a commodity, it's hard not to feel like everything is designed to turn you into a device for making someone else massive amounts of money.</p> +<p>Today's web is short on humanity and that's something we need to fix. The problem is deep and systemic. Fixing it will not happen overnight, and may well not happen at all.</p> +<p>In the mean time there seems to be a deep sense among developers that what we don't need is more big companies trying to take over small projects like Markdown.</p> +<p>Despite the disappointing state of the web these days there remain pockets of the internet that still feel untainted. We jealously guard these spaces, our personal little Fugazis of the web that we can point to and say, see, Pinboard.in isn't taking venture capital, Metafilter isn't manipulating me for an exit, and Markdown is still a little script some guy wrote.</p> +<p>CommonMark on the other hand was announced by Jeff Atwood, creator of Stack Overflow. Its contributors include developers from Github and Reddit. It's unclear to what extent the companies these people represent are involved, but it certainly appears that CommonMark is a project coming out of the very big companies many have learned to distrust.</p> +<p>One of the common arguments leveled at Gruber when he objected to the name Standard Markdown was that there are dozens of other projects using the name Markdown that he did not, publicly anyway, object to, why this one. That is to say, why the apparent hypocrisy?</p> +<p>Gruber initially agreed to talk to me about this story, but then never responded to my questions so I can't answer that with his words. But John MacFarlane, creator of the tool Pandoc, and the only CommonMark contributor not associated with a Big Internet Corp., told me that he first posted the spec to the Markdown mailing list in August, several weeks before making it more widely known. He used the name Standard Markdown and Gruber did not raise any objections at the time.</p> +<p>It was only later, when Atwood announced the project and presented it as an effort backed by some of the biggest industry users of Markdown that Gruber protested the use of the name.</p> +<p>Gruber was not alone. Plenty of developers balked, ostensibly at the name, but more likely at the name combined with the backers. Developer Dave Winer captured the sentiment nicely when he <a href="http://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/standard-flavored-markdown/2382/19">wrote</a>, "we all use Markdown, not just you and your pals. It isn't yours to do with as you please."</p> +<h2 id="it-is-yours-to-do-with-as-you-please">It Is Yours to Do With As You Please</h2> +<p>Winer is right in one sense, Markdown belongs to everyone who uses it. In a way this true precisely because Markdown's license says that anyone may do with it as they please. <em>So long as they don't use the name Markdown</em>.</p> +<p>And doing as you please includes forking the project to move in a different direction. In fact, forking <em>is</em> open source. Names are something else though.</p> +<p>When Oracle purchased Sun a group of developers concerned about the future of the MySQL project under Oracle's leadership forked the code and started a new project. They did not call it Standard MySQL though. If they had the Maria DB project most likely would have disappeared under an avalanche of trademark infringement lawsuits. Luckily the MariaDB developers did the right thing from the start, they made a fresh start, renaming the project.</p> +<p>The open source world abounds with successful forks. LibreOffice supplanted OpenOffice, Blink is on its way to being used by more projects than WebKit, and WebKit itself completely overshadows the KHTML project. While not all forks are successful, only about <a href="http://thesai.org/Downloads/Volume3No2/Paper%2021%20-%20Forks%20impacts%20and%20motivations%20in%20free%20and%20open%20source%20projects.pdf">12 percent of them</a> devolve into trademark fights.</p> +<p>Markdown and CommonMark are slightly different since technically CommonMark did not fork the Markdown code, but the Markdown syntax, which is much murkier legal territory. Whether or not Markdown's copyright notice (which applies to derivative works) legally applies to CommonMark is something a judge would have to decided. But legal or no, the name "Standard Markdown" certainly violates the spirit and historical precedence of forking a project.</p> +<p>Changing the name to CommonMark solves the technical problem then, but it allows the bigger problem to go unanswered -- who should be allowed to control our tools? In other words, should you go with Markdown or CommonMark?</p> +<p>The free software movement -- from which the license governing Markdown is derived -- says the answer is any one, or rather anyone who can write code. The license allows anyone to fork and build their own, it's all decentralized and open. Except that as Markdown illustrates, the result of that is not always ideal.</p> +<p>MacFarlane <a href="http://talk.commonmark.org/t/please-lets-tone-down-the-rhetoric/707/2">likens</a> the current state of Markdown to an untended garden, adding that "it is a predictable result that a garden so tended will become untidy, that people will begin to trip on the weeds, and that there will be a call for a cleanup." In other words, people want to know that their list will be a list.</p> +<p>The answer to the question of who controls our tools will come in part from us and in part from the services we choose to use. There may be some benefits to CommonMark for developers and for web writers, but it still has to gain acceptance in the wider world if it has any hope of success.</p> +<p>As Winer <a href="http://scripting.com/2014/09/08/soImSidingWithGruber.html">writes</a>, "Programmers always underestimate deployment, and think they can wave a magic wand and get everyone to upgrade. It's actually nothing like that. Once the investment is made, and years have gone by, no one wants to go back and dig out old infrastructure and replace it with something else."</p> +<p>Stack Overflow, Reddit and GitHub will presumably be moving to CommonMark, which will make it the more familiar version for many users, but unless the CommonMark developers can bring others over to their cause, CommonMark will remain <a href="https://xkcd.com/927/">Yet Another Standard</a>.</p> +<p>In the mean time, CommonMark is very much a work in progress. If you have ideas or want to contribute to the project, head on over to <a href="https://github.com/jgm/stmd">GitHub</a>. It might not be Markdown, but it could end up becoming something better.</p> diff --git a/published/markdown.txt b/published/markdown.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ffc4111 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/markdown.txt @@ -0,0 +1,157 @@ +Markdown is a Perl script that converts plain text into web-ready HTML. Markdown is also a shorthand syntax for writing HTML tags without needing to write the actual HTML. It has been around for a decade now, but hasn't seen an update in all that time -- nearly unheard of for a piece of software. That Markdown continues to work at all is somewhat amazing. + +Regrettably, works and works well are not the same thing. Markdown, despite its longevity, has bugs. Luckily Markdown is free software, licensed under a BSD-style license, so anyone can fork it and fix those bugs. + +Recently a group of developers who rely on Markdown set out to fix some of those bugs and created what they call a "standard" version. From a pure code standpoint the results are great, but instead of the developer gratitude you might expect, the group found themselves at the center of a much larger and very contentious debate that's ultimately about who we want in control of the tools we use. + +## HTML is for Browsers + +The web turned the whole world into writers. Never in the history of the human race have so many people produced so much text. The web has not, however, turned the whole world into writers of HTML. If writing HTML were a requirement to writing on the web, very few people would be writing on the web. + +Not that it's particularly *hard* to write HTML. Only a small subset of the hundreds of HTML tags actually end up in the average bit of text. Most of the time you can get by with paragraph tags, em, strong, and anchor tags for links. And of course list tags, where would the modern web be without list tags? + +In other words, it's not that hard to write HTML. But it is a pain. + +Typing out all those tags creates an extra wall between you and your thoughts. No one wants to put `<p>` at the start of every paragraph. And then `</p>` at the end, we just want to hit return and keep typing, which is what I did at the end of the previous paragraph. In fact, despite the fact that you're reading this article as a rendering bit of HTML in a webpage, I have not typed a single HTML tag while writing it. + +Chances are you posted something on Twitter today, chatted with your friends on Facebook, wrote something on your WordPress blog, posted something to Tumblr, committed a bit of code to GitHub, answered a question on Stack Overflow or did a hundred other things that ended up rendered in HTML. You most likely did all that without ever actually typing any HTML tags. + +Most of the time HTML is hidden by a "rich" text editor, which takes care of creating all the necessary HTML tags for you. WordPress, Tumblr and other sites not aimed at developers tend to use rich text editors. + +Developers and the sites they interact with on the other hand often use Markdown. + +## Markdown, a Tool for Web Writers + +Markdown began life as a little Perl script written by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz back in 2004. Gruber had just started writing daringfireball.net and quickly realized that the article-as-a-fragment-of-HTML model that most publishing systems used at the time was lacking. Like most of us, Gruber wanted to edit and preview his writing in the text editor of his choice before pasting that text into the publishing system. + +HTML is great at many things, but reading raw HTML is terrible. HTML is a markup language, it's a second stage presentation format. That is, you want to get words on the web. So the first stage is to type those words. The second is to add HTML so they look the way you intended in a web browser. + +No one wants to read, let alone try to edit, text when it's littered with HTML tags. + +Gruber and Swartz wanted to write first and convert to HTML later, which is what Markdown allows you to do. Gruber and Swartz came up with a shorthand syntax for common HTML elements and Markdown then parses through your text, finds those shorthand markers and replaces them with HTML tags. It also automatically wraps your paragraphs in `<p>` tags (you just need to leave a blank line between them). + +Markdown is not an all or nothing syntax. You can pick and choose what you want to use. For example, in ten years of writing in Markdown I have never used its image syntax. For me Markdown's image syntax is no easier to read or simpler to type than an HTML `<img>` tag, so I just use the HTML tag. + +Markdown is something you can make your own, which is one of its great strengths. Don't like the inline link syntax? Use the reference syntax, or, just write your links in HTML. Markdown is very flexible. Perhaps too flexible as it turns out. + +Markdown was not the first text-to-HTML converter, but it was simple and took most of its shorthand syntax from the real world. It mimicked informal styles that emerged when people tried to overcome the limitations of plain text -- writing styles that grew into conventions in email, IRC and Usenet. + +For example, in Markdown if you surround a word with asterisks it is rendered in HTML as `<em>` tags, which means it's (usually) italicized. Surround a word with double asterisks and it gets wrapped in `<strong>` tags and displayed in a bold font. + +Dig through old mailing lists, IRC logs or Usenet postings and you'll find this style of writing everywhere. Markdown might have been formalized and the parser written by Gruber and Swartz, but much of its language evolved collectively and informally over many years of countless people figuring out how to convey meaning effectively in plain text. + +Markdown turned out to be wildly successful, particularly among writers who used text editors rather than word processors and were devoted to the idea that your documents, no matter where they end up, should begin life as a text file. In other words, programmers. + +In the last ten years Markdown has been forked many times, ported to more than a dozen programming languages and rolled out on some big, often developer oriented websites, for example, Github and Stack Overflow. Markdown isn't just popular with developers though, there are also plugins for every major blogging platform, including Wordpress.com. + +All that is nice for those of us who grew to depend on Markdown since it means that we can use the familiar syntax all over the web. + +## What is the What + +The problem with Markdown is that it isn't entirely clear all the time. There are bugs, but worse there are ambiguities and edge cases where it's unclear what should happen. Consider Markdown's list syntax. To create an unordered HTML list in Markdown you write something like this: + +~~~ +* item one +* item two +* item three +~~~ + +Markdown then turns that into this HTML: + +~~~ +<ul> + <li>item one</li> + <li>item one</li> + <li>item one</li> +</ul> +~~~ + +So far so good. But remember when I said Markdown automatically wraps paragraphs in HTML `<p>` tags? Okay so what happens if we do this: + +~~~ +Here's a list of stuff: +* item one +* item two +* item three +~~~ + +There's no line break before it, but any human reader familiar with Markdown would look at this and know there's supposed to be a list there. That means the parser should close the paragraph tag and start creating a list. Or at least that's one way to look at it. The parser might also think, well, there's no line break so it's still part of the paragraph, but there is an asterisk around "item one" and "item two" so those should be wrapped in `<em>` tags. + +In fact, depending on which fork of Markdown you use there are [15 possible ways][1] this snippet of Markdown might be rendered. + +This is not an isolated example either, there are quite a few cases where Markdown is ambiguous. To be clear, there is no real "right" answer, someone just needs to make a decision about which of those 15 possibilities is "right". + +There are also plain old bugs in Markdown as well. That's why when authors port Markdown to other language they end up creating something slightly different and you end up with something that can be rendered 15 different ways. + +That's not just annoying for programmers trying to roll Markdown into their projects, it's a huge problem for web writers like you and me who never really know what's going to happen when we put some Markdown in a text field. + +In a perfect world Gruber would release an update for Markdown. Perhaps even Markdown 2.0. He might, as Dave Winer has suggested, also move Markdown to some sort of version control system and publicly host the code in such a way that other developers can contribute and improve the code. That is, after all, the point of a FOSS software license -- allowing others to freely use and modify the code. The easier you make it to contribute the more people that will do so. + +Regrettably, we don't live in that perfect world. Markdown, while widely adopted and widely used, hasn't seen so much as a bug fix since 2004. There's nothing wrong with that, it's certainly Gruber's right to let Markdown stand as is, but it's not surprising that other people want to fix the problems and make Markdown better. + +Recently a group of developers made an effort to do just that. They created a fork of Markdown that solves the inconsistencies and edge cases, fixes the bugs. They also offered up two reference implementations, plenty of documentation and hosted the project on GitHub, which, although not ideal, at least makes it easier for other developers to contribute. + +This fork might even be able to solve the ambiguities discussed earlier -- by consensus even. For example, it solves the earlier is-it-a-list or not dilemma by requiring blank lines before lists, a decision made in large part because that's what the majority of existing parsers do and therefore will be what most users will expect. + +That all sounds really nice, so why did the project rankle so many developers? Two reasons. First there was the name -- Standard Markdown. + +Were the project not using the Markdown name and simply positioning itself as an entirely new thing it would quite possibly have been welcomed by the entire Markdown community. But names have power, names give control. When you use a name you're telling the world you don't want to just improve a thing, you want to control it. Standard Markdown very much wants to be the future of Markdown. + +Gruber, understandably, did not like the name. He asked the developers to change it and they did. Standard Markdown became [CommonMark][6]. That was pretty much the end of the name controversy (though CommonMark could really use a new logo to further distance itself from Markdown). + +The far more interesting reason Standard Markdown, now CommonMark, created such a fuss is because of who was behind it. Not the individuals, but the companies they represent. + +## The Once and Future Web of People + +Exploitation of the user is the dominant business model on today's web. Whether that's in the form of data being gathered about you, onerous terms of service you need to abide by or privacy policies that treat you like a commodity, it's hard not to feel like everything is designed to turn you into a device for making someone else massive amounts of money. + +Today's web is short on humanity and that's something we need to fix. The problem is deep and systemic. Fixing it will not happen overnight, and may well not happen at all. + +In the mean time there seems to be a deep sense among developers that what we don't need is more big companies trying to take over small projects like Markdown. + +Despite the disappointing state of the web these days there remain pockets of the internet that still feel untainted. We jealously guard these spaces, our personal little Fugazis of the web that we can point to and say, see, Pinboard.in isn't taking venture capital, Metafilter isn't manipulating me for an exit, and Markdown is still a little script some guy wrote. + +CommonMark on the other hand was announced by Jeff Atwood, creator of Stack Overflow. Its contributors include developers from Github and Reddit. It's unclear to what extent the companies these people represent are involved, but it certainly appears that CommonMark is a project coming out of the very big companies many have learned to distrust. + +One of the common arguments leveled at Gruber when he objected to the name Standard Markdown was that there are dozens of other projects using the name Markdown that he did not, publicly anyway, object to, why this one. That is to say, why the apparent hypocrisy? + +Gruber initially agreed to talk to me about this story, but then never responded to my questions so I can't answer that with his words. But John MacFarlane, creator of the tool Pandoc, and the only CommonMark contributor not associated with a Big Internet Corp., told me that he first posted the spec to the Markdown mailing list in August, several weeks before making it more widely known. He used the name Standard Markdown and Gruber did not raise any objections at the time. + +It was only later, when Atwood announced the project and presented it as an effort backed by some of the biggest industry users of Markdown that Gruber protested the use of the name. + +Gruber was not alone. Plenty of developers balked, ostensibly at the name, but more likely at the name combined with the backers. Developer Dave Winer captured the sentiment nicely when he [wrote][2], "we all use Markdown, not just you and your pals. It isn't yours to do with as you please." + +## It Is Yours to Do With As You Please + +Winer is right in one sense, Markdown belongs to everyone who uses it. In a way this true precisely because Markdown's license says that anyone may do with it as they please. *So long as they don't use the name Markdown*. + +And doing as you please includes forking the project to move in a different direction. In fact, forking <em>is</em> open source. Names are something else though. + +When Oracle purchased Sun a group of developers concerned about the future of the MySQL project under Oracle's leadership forked the code and started a new project. They did not call it Standard MySQL though. If they had the Maria DB project most likely would have disappeared under an avalanche of trademark infringement lawsuits. Luckily the MariaDB developers did the right thing from the start, they made a fresh start, renaming the project. + +The open source world abounds with successful forks. LibreOffice supplanted OpenOffice, Blink is on its way to being used by more projects than WebKit, and WebKit itself completely overshadows the KHTML project. While not all forks are successful, only about <a href="http://thesai.org/Downloads/Volume3No2/Paper%2021%20-%20Forks%20impacts%20and%20motivations%20in%20free%20and%20open%20source%20projects.pdf">12 percent of them</a> devolve into trademark fights. + +Markdown and CommonMark are slightly different since technically CommonMark did not fork the Markdown code, but the Markdown syntax, which is much murkier legal territory. Whether or not Markdown's copyright notice (which applies to derivative works) legally applies to CommonMark is something a judge would have to decided. But legal or no, the name "Standard Markdown" certainly violates the spirit and historical precedence of forking a project. + +Changing the name to CommonMark solves the technical problem then, but it allows the bigger problem to go unanswered -- who should be allowed to control our tools? In other words, should you go with Markdown or CommonMark? + +The free software movement -- from which the license governing Markdown is derived -- says the answer is any one, or rather anyone who can write code. The license allows anyone to fork and build their own, it's all decentralized and open. Except that as Markdown illustrates, the result of that is not always ideal. + +MacFarlane [likens][3] the current state of Markdown to an untended garden, adding that "it is a predictable result that a garden so tended will become untidy, that people will begin to trip on the weeds, and that there will be a call for a cleanup." In other words, people want to know that their list will be a list. + +The answer to the question of who controls our tools will come in part from us and in part from the services we choose to use. There may be some benefits to CommonMark for developers and for web writers, but it still has to gain acceptance in the wider world if it has any hope of success. + +As Winer [writes][5], "Programmers always underestimate deployment, and think they can wave a magic wand and get everyone to upgrade. It's actually nothing like that. Once the investment is made, and years have gone by, no one wants to go back and dig out old infrastructure and replace it with something else." + +Stack Overflow, Reddit and GitHub will presumably be moving to CommonMark, which will make it the more familiar version for many users, but unless the CommonMark developers can bring others over to their cause, CommonMark will remain [Yet Another Standard][4]. + +In the mean time, CommonMark is very much a work in progress. If you have ideas or want to contribute to the project, head on over to [GitHub][7]. It might not be Markdown, but it could end up becoming something better. + + +[1]: http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/?text=Here%27s+a+list+of+stuff%3A%0A*+item+one%0A*+item+two%0A*+item+three%0A +[2]: http://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/standard-flavored-markdown/2382/19 +[3]: http://talk.commonmark.org/t/please-lets-tone-down-the-rhetoric/707/2 +[4]: https://xkcd.com/927/ +[5]: http://scripting.com/2014/09/08/soImSidingWithGruber.html +[6]: http://commonmark.org/ +[7]: https://github.com/jgm/stmd diff --git a/published/mint17/mint17review.html b/published/mint17/mint17review.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a234fce --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/mint17review.html @@ -0,0 +1,151 @@ +<p>The team behind Linux Mint Mint 17 using kernel 3.13.0-24 this week. Mint 17, nicknamed "Qiana", is based on Ubuntu 14.04. </p> + +<p>Mint 17 marks the start of a major new direction for what has quickly become one of the most popular Linux distros available today. </p> + +<p>Like the recently released Ubuntu 14.04 (<a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/ubuntu-14-04-review-missing-the-boat-on-big-changes/">Ars review</a>), Mint 17 is a Long Term Support Release. For Linux Mint 17 that means support will continue until 2019. Perhaps more important though, this release marks a change in Mint's relationship with Ubuntu, which forms the base on which Mint builds. </p> + +<p>Starting with this release and continuing until 2016, every release of Linux Mint will be built on the same package base -- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. That means that instead of working to keep up with whatever changes Ubuntu makes in the next two years, Mint can focus on those things that make it Mint.</p> + +<p>Given that Ubuntu has some major changes coming in the next two years, Mint's decision makes sense not just because it frees up the Mint team to focus on its two homegrown desktops (Cinnamon and MATE), but also because it spares Mint users the potential bumpy road that is Ubuntu's future. </p> + +<p>In other words, Mint can sit back and work on perfecting its desktop while Ubuntu stumbles through the Wayland and Unity 8 transitions. When things have settled down in Ubuntuland, Mint can jump back in with both feet (assuming it still wants to) when Ubuntu 16.04 LTS arrives.</p> + +<p>If all goes the way Mint developers intend, the changes will give Mint users a more polished, stable distro. </p> + +<p>The decision to stick with 14.04 means that Mint 17 is an important release since it's what Mint will be working with for the next two years. The good news is that Mint 17 will indeed make a great base on which to build.</p> + +<p>As with all Mint releases there are two separate downloads available, one for the Cinnamon desktop and one for the MATE desktop.</p> + +<h2>Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon</h2> + +<p>The more interesting of the two Mint 17 releases, to my mind anyway, is the Cinnamon flavor, which features the just released Cinnamon 2.2.</p> + +[image="screenshot01.png" caption="The stock Cinnamon 2.2 desktop in Linux Mint 17."] + +<p>The Cinnamon desktop is a curious hybrid, combining some of the best elements of KDE with the best elements of the now abandoned GNOME 2.x line. Cinnamon also has more than a few tricks of its own that build on those earlier foundations. That might sound like a recipe for a terrible Frankenstein of a desktop, but fortunately that's not the case. Instead, Cinnamon ends up being perhaps the most user-friendly and all-around useful desktop available on any platform.</p> + +<p>That's not to say there aren't problems in Cinnamon, but fortunately 2.2 solves many of the worst. Cinnamon 2.2 is much faster and much more stable than previous releases. In fact, if you tried out Cinnamon even just a few releases ago and dismissed it as slow and buggy -- can't say I blame you; it was -- I highly suggest you give it another try in Mint 17.</p> + +<p>Among the more noticeable changes in Cinnamon 2.2 is the revamped system settings panel, which is no longer divided up into the somewhat arbitrary sections "normal" and "advanced". Now there are just settings. The various settings panels are all in one place and have been reorganized into some basic categories that make it easy to find what you're looking for and change it.</p> + +[image="screenshot02.png" caption="Cinnamon's revamped settings panel."] + +<p>In fact, given that the new settings app is easy to use and it's simple to jump between settings, I'd like to see a way to remove all the individual settings that clutter up the main Cinnamon menu and just have a single "settings" button that opens the app. Alas, that does not appear to be possible at this time.</p> + +<p>Buried away in the revamped settings panel is one of my favorite new Cinnamon features -- the ability to shade or fade windows with the mouse wheel. To turn this on, head to Settings and click the Windows option. This will bring up a panel with all the options for controlling window behavior. Click the option to set "Action on title bar with mouse scroll" and switch it to whichever option you prefer. Now whenever you want to see what's behind your currently active window, you can just scroll the mouse wheel (or scroll on your trackpad) and the foremost window will fade out (or shade up). </p> + +[image="screenshot03.png" caption="Setting the behavior of the mouse wheel when hovering over window title bars."] + +<p>This makes it much easier to refer, for example, to something in the web browser while you're working in a word processor or text editor. You don't need to switch apps, which can break your concentration and rhythm, when all you want to do is double check a fact. </p> + +[image="screenshot04.png" caption="Fading a window to read what's behind it."] + +<p>It's not an earth-shattering feature -- in fact, buried as it is many users will likely never know it exists -- but it's one of many handy little extras that together add up to give Cinnamon a level of polish and user control that sets it above other desktops.</p> + +<p>Two other notable tweaks to the various settings panels include some changes to Cinnamon's Hot Corners and HUD features. The HUD, which is there to let you know that you are snapping a window to the edge of the screen, now only appears when you get really close to the edge. It's less sensitive which means it's harder to trigger it accidentally. The Hot Corners feature now has options to trigger events on hover, a click or both.</p> + +<p>Another welcome change in Cinnamon 2.2 is support for HiDPI screens. I tested this in a virtual machine running on a Retina Macbook Pro and found that while Cinnamon mostly looks just fine on a HiDPI screen, font rendering in particular isn't all that great. The same can be said of most Linux distros though, HiDPI support or not. One solution is to use <a href="http://www.infinality.net/blog/">Infinality</a>, which makes it relatively easy to tweak the font rendering to your liking.</p> + +<p>Nemo, the default Cinnamon file manager, gets a couple new features in this release, including a new Recent Places sidebar item and a new tab switching keyboard shortcut -- control-+ and control-shift-+ will cycle through your open tabs.</p> + +[image="screenshot05.png" caption="The new Recent Places item makes it easy to find the files you've been working on."] + +<p>The main Cinnamon menu resembles what you'd find in KDE or Windows 7, but looks a bit prettier thanks to some nice icons. Cinnamon 2.2 adds a new option to remove applications right from the menu, which can make the process of uninstalling unneeded apps a little easier. Just right click an item in the menu and you'll see a new option to "uninstall".</p> + +[image="screenshot06.png" caption="Uninstalling app right from the main menu"] + +<p>To go along with the uninstall, the Cinnamon menu also now highlights newly installed applications. Or at least the release notes say it will. I never noticed anything after I installed a new application.</p> + +<p>There a few other minor changes in Cinnamon 2.2, including some bug fixes that make it work better alongside GNOME 3.x on the same machine. You should no longer see GNOME Control Center in Cinnamon, or Cinnamon Settings in GNOME, making it easier to take Cinnamon for a spin without necessarily switching to Mint 17. Along those lines it's worth noting that the old Cinnamon PPA for Ubuntu is no longer being maintained, though given the increasing popularity of Cinnamon, it seems inevitable that a new one will pop up eventually.</p> + +<h2>Linux Mint 17 MATE edition</h2> + +<p>Cinnamon, while nice, definitely requires newer hardware to really shine. If you're looking for a lightweight desktop that sticks with the basic interface that served GNOME 2.x so well, Linux Mint 17 MATE edition is for you.</p> + +[image="screenshot07.png" caption="Linux Mint 17 MATE edition"] + +<p>Mint 17 ships with MATE 1.8, which isn't quite as new as Cinnamon 2.2, having been released in March 2014, but this is the first Mint release to use it. </p> + +<p>The MATE desktop began life as a fork of GNOME 2 and it continues to, by and large, carry on the user interface experience of GNOME 2. Don't come to MATE looking for revolutions, this is a desktop of incremental improvements and refinements.</p> + +<p>The version of MATE that ships with Mint 17 is in fact even lighter than its predecessor, using less RAM than MATE 1.6 running Mint 16. MATE 1.8 also claims to be faster as well, though I did not see a huge difference testing both Mint 17 and Mint 16 on an old EeePC 1000HA. </p> + +<p>While MATE updates tend to be a little boring, there are some new features in MATE 1.8. Marco, the window manager, now supports side-by-side window tiling, making it more consistent with Cinnamon. There's now an option to shuffle pictures when the default image viewer is in slideshow mode. The screensaver also now shows the date and time and MATE's documentation and translations have been improved.</p> + +<p>The Mint dev team has also done some Mint-specific work to improve Mint integration with MATE. The MintMenu got a "huge" amount of bug fixes (which is slightly odd since it's never been particularly buggy in my use, but if you had problems, hopefully this release will fix them). The MintMenu and the Mint-X theme were also adapted to respect mate-panel's transparency settings. If you happen to use Compiz with MATE, the MintDesktop now features a cleaner UI and no longer shows Marco settings when you are running Compiz.</p> + +<h2>Common Ground</h2> + +<p>MATE and Cinnamon share the same base and there are quite a few improvements that apply to the release regardless of which desktop you use.</p> + +<p>Linux Mint 17 gives the Update Manager a notable overhaul. The app offers considerably more information through a revamped user interface that's cleaner and feels much faster than previous releases.</p> + +[image="screenshot08.png" caption="The revamped Update Manager."] + +<p>The Update Manager features a new set of icons to indicate both the nature and severity of an available update. A very important security update for an installed application will be highlighted with a red exclamation point in the left column (to show that it's a security update). If an update isn't security related it gets an downward arrow icon, which doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense, but is at least consistent.</p> + +<p>These indicator icons make it easier to distinguish version upgrades from important security updates, which means you can prioritize security updates while bypassing potentially unwanted version upgrades.</p> + +<p>There's also a new column of numbered and colored ratings designed to show at a glance how likely a new package is to mess up your system.</p> + +[image="screenshot09.png" caption="Update Manager package "levels"."] + +<p>A minty green "1" means that the update in question comes from a certified package, tested or maintained by Mint. A green "2" means the package is recommended (tested and approved by Mint, but not from Mint). A yellow 3 denotes safe upstream packages that have not been explicitly tested, but are believed to be safe. </p> + +<p>Levels 4 and 5, orange and red respectively, are for packages that are considered potentially unsafe, for example updated kernel headers. By default any updates that fall in the 4 or 5 categories are shown, but not selected. If you're confident that you're not going to screw up your system you can go ahead and install them by checking the box.</p> + +<p>Generally speaking the first thing you should do after installing and backing up your new desktop is download the latest security patches and updates. The MintUpdate icon on the task bar will remind you that you should update, but Mint has taken some flack over the years for how and when they push out certain updates, especially kernel updates.</p> + +<p>The new 1-5 ranking system will hopefully make it clear to those without the technical knowledge which updates are fine and which they might want to wait for. Previously Mint didn't even show what will now be labeled "4" and "5" level updates. So while they still won't be installed by default, it's now much easier to go ahead and install these things yourself. For example, I went ahead and updated the kernel and thus far have had no problems. Though again, it's possible there might be problems, so proceed with caution and be sure to read the kernel changelogs before diving in with both feet.</p> + +<p>The improved Update Manager is also easier and less annoying to use in Mint 17. For example, it no longer needs to reload itself in root mode when you click on it and it will not hang up, waiting on the network manager before loading.</p> + +<p>The Update Manager log also now shows all installed updates, whether you installed them through Update Manager, apt-get or something like gdebi. Previously only updates installed via Update Manager would show up in the history.</p> + +<p>Another update tool has a very welcome improvement -- the Driver Manager is now able to install drivers without a connection to the Internet. That means if, like me, you have a Broadcom wifi chip that's not supported out of the box, you can plug in your install disk and install what you need from there. There's no need to dig out an Ethernet cable to get your wifi up and running.</p> + +<p>Under the hood both releases of Mint ship with what amounts to Ubuntu 14.04 plus Mint's unique set of packages.</p> + +[image="screenshot10.png" caption="Mint 17 using kernel 3.13.0-24."] + +<p>That means the kernel is 3.13.0-24, which, as I noted in the Ubuntu review, can be a huge boon depending on your hardware setup. Mint 17 should have no trouble with dual GPU hardware that uses Nvidia Optimus to switch between GPUs. That can mean significantly better battery life, which will be especially helpful to Cinnamon users since its flashier interface is naturally a bit harder on the battery than MATE.</p> + +<p>If you happen to have a newer laptop with UEFI Secure Boot enabled, well, the Mint devs say you should turn it off. The release notes for both Cinnamon and MATE suggest "if your system is using Secure Boot, turn it off." There are, however, numerous reports around the web of people getting Mint 17 working with Secure Boot enabled. </p> + +<p>Mint 17 ships with a compliment of apps that will be familiar to anyone accustomed to the basic Debian/Ubuntu application suite. In Linux Mint 17 you'll find the latest versions of all the usual suspects like Firefox, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Gimp and others. </p> + +<p>There's one new app, HexChat, an IRC client. One possible reason for HexChat is that it automatically starts up configured to join the #linuxmint channel, making it dead-simple for IRC newbies to get some help with their newly installed Mint 17. It's a noisy channel but in the few minutes I hung around I saw several people ask for and receive assistance. If you're having problems and searching the web isn't yielding any answers, fire up HexChat and see if anyone can point you in the right direction.</p> + +<p>Mint ships with repositories for its own packages and the Ubuntu 14.04 repositories. There aren't any third party repos installed by default, but it's not hard to add what you need with Software Sources, which has received a slight makeover in this release. Software Sources now warns you about backports, suggesting you don't enable them unless you know what you're doing. If you leave your install media plugged in you'll see one item under the "Additional repositories" -- all the drivers included, but not installed by default are available through a deb that points to your install media.</p> + +<h2>Mint 17 vs Ubuntu 14.04</h2> + +<p>Given that they share a lot of common elements under the hood, which one you like better will be determined by which desktop you like better. If you want to explore a new desktop paradigm, Ubuntu is clearly the best option. If you're looking for a more traditional desktop along the lines of GNOME 2 or even Windows XP/7, then Mint will be more to your liking.</p> + +<p>In my experience testing both I found them both to be stable and never lacking when it comes to finding the right package. Mint 17 MATE edition is unquestionably the fastest of the three desktops, Cinnamon generally falls in the middle when it comes to performance with the heavyweight Unity bringing up the rear. At least that's how it falls based on RAM use while idle. In real world use on newer hardware I've never noticed a significant performance difference between Unity and Cinnamon.</p> + +<p>In the end I like Mint with Cinnamon over Ubuntu with Unity simply because Mint doesn't require me to uninstall anything just to maintain my privacy. The Mint project also feels like its more in tune with the needs of desktop users, solving real problems and adding useful features rather than working toward some may-or-may-not-work future of "convergence".</p> + +<p>In other words, Mint 17 feels like the perfect place to wait out the uncertainty of Ubuntu's future.</p> + +<h2>XFCE And Linux Mint Debian Edition</h2> + +<p>It doesn't get much press and it hasn't been updated yet to Mint 17, but there is technically an Xfce flavor of Mint as well. It's not listed on the <a href="http://community.linuxmint.com/iso">community page</a> just yet (there is a KDE version listed, though it looks like it will be a while before it's ready). Past releases of the Xfce flavor lagged about a month behind Cinnamon/MATE.</p> + +<p>Then there's Linux Mint Debian Edition, which aims to provide an identical desktop experience, but sitting atop snapshots of Debian testing rather than Ubuntu. LMDE is an interesting beast on several levels. It takes snapshot of what's normally a rolling distro (albeit a conservative one, Debian is not by any means Arch) and then sometimes falls considerably behind on things (for example, Debian Testing is currently using GTK 3.10 while the latest release of LMDE is at 3.8) before pouring in a ton of work and then pushing out a new release.</p> + +<p>As it stands LMDE is quite a ways behind Mint 17, with Cinnamon 2.0 and MATE 1.6 being the latest versions available. Still, if you want both Mint and Debian, LMDE does what you're after.</p> + +<h2>The Future of Linux Mint</h2> + +<p>As I mentioned at the start of this review, Linux Mint 17 will be the base on which the next three releases build. Rather than following Ubuntu through 14.10, 15.04 and 15.10, Mint is planning to release 17.1, 17.2 and 17.3, all based on 14.04.</p> + +<p>The idea behind the change is that sticking with a stable base frees up the Mint team to focus on Cinnamon and MATE (and possibly LMDE as well), but it also means that Mint will be sitting out the transition to Wayland and some of the other pretty major changes that Ubuntu has on the roadmap over the next few years. </p> + +<p>The concern among some Mint users is that by the time Ubuntu 16.04 (the next LTS release) rolls around, Mint may be quite a ways behind. That's a valid concern, especially given Mint's track record with LMDE. Though, to be fair, LMDE has always seemed more like a fun hobby project than a real distro.</p> + +<p>The other potential problem is that Mint may lag behind when it comes to incorporating new packages. The Mint team plans to offer backports for more popular applications like, one assumes, web browsers, mail clients, office suites and the like. </p> + +<p>There's another possible outcome as well -- focusing on what makes Mint Mint might allow the distro time to make itself less dependent on Ubuntu. Such a move would make Mint more of a distro in its own right, rather than an Ubuntu derivative and it would lay the ground work for Mint to move away from Ubuntu should it wish to in the future.</p> + +<p>Whatever does end up happening with future releases, Linux Mint 17 makes a fantastic Linux desktop today. It's stable, familiar enough for Windows refugees to pick it up without missing a beat and has all the familiar tools Ubuntu fans would expect. </p> diff --git a/published/mint17/mint17review.txt b/published/mint17/mint17review.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..181809f --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/mint17review.txt @@ -0,0 +1,151 @@ +The team behind Linux Mint Mint 17 using kernel 3.13.0-24 this week. Mint 17, nicknamed "Qiana", is based on Ubuntu 14.04. + +Mint 17 marks the start of a major new direction for what has quickly become one of the most popular Linux distros available today. + +Like the recently released Ubuntu 14.04 ([Ars review](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/ubuntu-14-04-review-missing-the-boat-on-big-changes/)), Mint 17 is a Long Term Support Release. For Linux Mint 17 that means support will continue until 2019. Perhaps more important though, this release marks a change in Mint's relationship with Ubuntu, which forms the base on which Mint builds. + +Starting with this release and continuing until 2016, every release of Linux Mint will be built on the same package base -- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. That means that instead of working to keep up with whatever changes Ubuntu makes in the next two years, Mint can focus on those things that make it Mint. + +Given that Ubuntu has some major changes coming in the next two years, Mint's decision makes sense not just because it frees up the Mint team to focus on its two homegrown desktops (Cinnamon and MATE), but also because it spares Mint users the potential bumpy road that is Ubuntu's future. + +In other words, Mint can sit back and work on perfecting its desktop while Ubuntu stumbles through the Wayland and Unity 8 transitions. When things have settled down in Ubuntuland, Mint can jump back in with both feet (assuming it still wants to) when Ubuntu 16.04 LTS arrives. + +If all goes the way Mint developers intend, the changes will give Mint users a more polished, stable distro. + +The decision to stick with 14.04 means that Mint 17 is an important release since it's what Mint will be working with for the next two years. The good news is that Mint 17 will indeed make a great base on which to build. + +As with all Mint releases there are two separate downloads available, one for the Cinnamon desktop and one for the MATE desktop. + +## Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon + +The more interesting of the two Mint 17 releases, to my mind anyway, is the Cinnamon flavor, which features the just released Cinnamon 2.2. + +[image="screenshot01.png" caption="The stock Cinnamon 2.2 desktop in Linux Mint 17".] + +The Cinnamon desktop is a curious hybrid, combining some of the best elements of KDE with the best elements of the now abandoned GNOME 2.x line. Cinnamon also has more than a few tricks of its own that build on those earlier foundations. That might sound like a recipe for a terrible Frankenstein of a desktop, but fortunately that's not the case. Instead, Cinnamon ends up being perhaps the most user-friendly and all-around useful desktop available on any platform. + +That's not to say there aren't problems in Cinnamon, but fortunately 2.2 solves many of the worst. Cinnamon 2.2 is much faster and much more stable than previous releases. In fact, if you tried out Cinnamon even just a few releases ago and dismissed it as slow and buggy -- can't say I blame you; it was -- I highly suggest you give it another try in Mint 17. + +Among the more noticeable changes in Cinnamon 2.2 is the revamped system settings panel, which is no longer divided up into the somewhat arbitrary sections "normal" and "advanced". Now there are just settings. The various settings panels are all in one place and have been reorganized into some basic categories that make it easy to find what you're looking for and change it. + +[image="screenshot02.png" caption="Cinnamon's revamped settings panel."] + +In fact, given that the new settings app is easy to use and it's simple to jump between settings, I'd like to see a way to remove all the individual settings that clutter up the main Cinnamon menu and just have a single "settings" button that opens the app. Alas, that does not appear to be possible at this time. + +Buried away in the revamped settings panel is one of my favorite new Cinnamon features -- the ability to shade or fade windows with the mouse wheel. To turn this on, head to Settings and click the Windows option. This will bring up a panel with all the options for controlling window behavior. Click the option to set "Action on title bar with mouse scroll" and switch it to whichever option you prefer. Now whenever you want to see what's behind your currently active window, you can just scroll the mouse wheel (or scroll on your trackpad) and the foremost window will fade out (or shade up). + +[image="screenshot03.png" caption="Setting the behavior of the mouse wheel when hovering over window title bars".] + +This makes it much easier to refer, for example, to something in the web browser while you're working in a word processor or text editor. You don't need to switch apps, which can break your concentration and rhythm, when all you want to do is double check a fact. + +[image="screenshot04.png" caption="Fading a window to read what's behind it".] + +It's not an earth-shattering feature -- in fact, buried as it is many users will likely never know it exists -- but it's one of many handy little extras that together add up to give Cinnamon a level of polish and user control that sets it above other desktops. + +Two other notable tweaks to the various settings panels include some changes to Cinnamon's Hot Corners and HUD features. The HUD, which is there to let you know that you are snapping a window to the edge of the screen, now only appears when you get really close to the edge. It's less sensitive which means it's harder to trigger it accidentally. The Hot Corners feature now has options to trigger events on hover, a click or both. + +Another welcome change in Cinnamon 2.2 is support for HiDPI screens. I tested this in a virtual machine running on a Retina Macbook Pro and found that while Cinnamon mostly looks just fine on a HiDPI screen, font rendering in particular isn't all that great. The same can be said of most Linux distros though, HiDPI support or not. One solution is to use [Infinality](http://www.infinality.net/blog/), which makes it relatively easy to tweak the font rendering to your liking. + +Nemo, the default Cinnamon file manager, gets a couple new features in this release, including a new Recent Places sidebar item and a new tab switching keyboard shortcut -- control-+ and control-shift-+ will cycle through your open tabs. + +[image="screenshot05.png" caption="The new Recent Places item makes it easy to find the files you've been working on."] + +The main Cinnamon menu resembles what you'd find in KDE or Windows 7, but looks a bit prettier thanks to some nice icons. Cinnamon 2.2 adds a new option to remove applications right from the menu, which can make the process of uninstalling unneeded apps a little easier. Just right click an item in the menu and you'll see a new option to "uninstall". + +[image="screenshot06.png" caption="Uninstalling app right from the main menu"] + +To go along with the uninstall, the Cinnamon menu also now highlights newly installed applications. Or at least the release notes say it will. I never noticed anything after I installed a new application. + +There a few other minor changes in Cinnamon 2.2, including some bug fixes that make it work better alongside GNOME 3.x on the same machine. You should no longer see GNOME Control Center in Cinnamon, or Cinnamon Settings in GNOME, making it easier to take Cinnamon for a spin without necessarily switching to Mint 17. Along those lines it's worth noting that the old Cinnamon PPA for Ubuntu is no longer being maintained, though given the increasing popularity of Cinnamon, it seems inevitable that a new one will pop up eventually. + +## Linux Mint 17 MATE edition + +Cinnamon, while nice, definitely requires newer hardware to really shine. If you're looking for a lightweight desktop that sticks with the basic interface that served GNOME 2.x so well, Linux Mint 17 MATE edition is for you. + +[image="screenshot07.png" caption="Linux Mint 17 MATE edition"] + +Mint 17 ships with MATE 1.8, which isn't quite as new as Cinnamon 2.2, having been released in March 2014, but this is the first Mint release to use it. + +The MATE desktop began life as a fork of GNOME 2 and it continues to, by and large, carry on the user interface experience of GNOME 2. Don't come to MATE looking for revolutions, this is a desktop of incremental improvements and refinements. + +The version of MATE that ships with Mint 17 is in fact even lighter than its predecessor, using less RAM than MATE 1.6 running Mint 16. MATE 1.8 also claims to be faster as well, though I did not see a huge difference testing both Mint 17 and Mint 16 on an old EeePC 1000HA. + +While MATE updates tend to be a little boring, there are some new features in MATE 1.8. Marco, the window manager, now supports side-by-side window tiling, making it more consistent with Cinnamon. There's now an option to shuffle pictures when the default image viewer is in slideshow mode. The screensaver also now shows the date and time and MATE's documentation and translations have been improved. + +The Mint dev team has also done some Mint-specific work to improve Mint integration with MATE. The MintMenu got a "huge" amount of bug fixes (which is slightly odd since it's never been particularly buggy in my use, but if you had problems, hopefully this release will fix them). The MintMenu and the Mint-X theme were also adapted to respect mate-panel's transparency settings. If you happen to use Compiz with MATE, the MintDesktop now features a cleaner UI and no longer shows Marco settings when you are running Compiz. + +## Common Ground + +MATE and Cinnamon share the same base and there are quite a few improvements that apply to the release regardless of which desktop you use. + +Linux Mint 17 gives the Update Manager a notable overhaul. The app offers considerably more information through a revamped user interface that's cleaner and feels much faster than previous releases. + +[image="screenshot08.png" caption="The revamped Update Manager."] + +The Update Manager features a new set of icons to indicate both the nature and severity of an available update. A very important security update for an installed application will be highlighted with a red exclamation point in the left column (to show that it's a security update). If an update isn't security related it gets an downward arrow icon, which doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense, but is at least consistent. + +These indicator icons make it easier to distinguish version upgrades from important security updates, which means you can prioritize security updates while bypassing potentially unwanted version upgrades. + +There's also a new column of numbered and colored ratings designed to show at a glance how likely a new package is to mess up your system. + +[image="screenshot09.png" caption="Update Manager package "levels"."] + +A minty green "1" means that the update in question comes from a certified package, tested or maintained by Mint. A green "2" means the package is recommended (tested and approved by Mint, but not from Mint). A yellow 3 denotes safe upstream packages that have not been explicitly tested, but are believed to be safe. + +Levels 4 and 5, orange and red respectively, are for packages that are considered potentially unsafe, for example updated kernel headers. By default any updates that fall in the 4 or 5 categories are shown, but not selected. If you're confident that you're not going to screw up your system you can go ahead and install them by checking the box. + +Generally speaking the first thing you should do after installing and backing up your new desktop is download the latest security patches and updates. The MintUpdate icon on the task bar will remind you that you should update, but Mint has taken some flack over the years for how and when they push out certain updates, especially kernel updates. + +The new 1-5 ranking system will hopefully make it clear to those without the technical knowledge which updates are fine and which they might want to wait for. Previously Mint didn't even show what will now be labeled "4" and "5" level updates. So while they still won't be installed by default, it's now much easier to go ahead and install these things yourself. For example, I went ahead and updated the kernel and thus far have had no problems. Though again, it's possible there might be problems, so proceed with caution and be sure to read the kernel changelogs before diving in with both feet. + +The improved Update Manager is also easier and less annoying to use in Mint 17. For example, it no longer needs to reload itself in root mode when you click on it and it will not hang up, waiting on the network manager before loading. + +The Update Manager log also now shows all installed updates, whether you installed them through Update Manager, apt-get or something like gdebi. Previously only updates installed via Update Manager would show up in the history. + +Another update tool has a very welcome improvement -- the Driver Manager is now able to install drivers without a connection to the Internet. That means if, like me, you have a Broadcom wifi chip that's not supported out of the box, you can plug in your install disk and install what you need from there. There's no need to dig out an Ethernet cable to get your wifi up and running. + +Under the hood both releases of Mint ship with what amounts to Ubuntu 14.04 plus Mint's unique set of packages. + +[image="screenshot10.png" caption="Mint 17 using kernel 3.13.0-24."] + +That means the kernel is 3.13.0-24, which, as I noted in the Ubuntu review, can be a huge boon depending on your hardware setup. Mint 17 should have no trouble with dual GPU hardware that uses Nvidia Optimus to switch between GPUs. That can mean significantly better battery life, which will be especially helpful to Cinnamon users since its flashier interface is naturally a bit harder on the battery than MATE. + +If you happen to have a newer laptop with UEFI Secure Boot enabled, well, the Mint devs say you should turn it off. The release notes for both Cinnamon and MATE suggest "if your system is using Secure Boot, turn it off." There are, however, numerous reports around the web of people getting Mint 17 working with Secure Boot enabled. + +Mint 17 ships with a compliment of apps that will be familiar to anyone accustomed to the basic Debian/Ubuntu application suite. In Linux Mint 17 you'll find the latest versions of all the usual suspects like Firefox, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Gimp and others. + +There's one new app, HexChat, an IRC client. One possible reason for HexChat is that it automatically starts up configured to join the #linuxmint channel, making it dead-simple for IRC newbies to get some help with their newly installed Mint 17. It's a noisy channel but in the few minutes I hung around I saw several people ask for and receive assistance. If you're having problems and searching the web isn't yielding any answers, fire up HexChat and see if anyone can point you in the right direction. + +Mint ships with repositories for its own packages and the Ubuntu 14.04 repositories. There aren't any third party repos installed by default, but it's not hard to add what you need with Software Sources, which has received a slight makeover in this release. Software Sources now warns you about backports, suggesting you don't enable them unless you know what you're doing. If you leave your install media plugged in you'll see one item under the "Additional repositories" -- all the drivers included, but not installed by default are available through a deb that points to your install media. + +## Mint 17 vs Ubuntu 14.04 + +Given that they share a lot of common elements under the hood, which one you like better will be determined by which desktop you like better. If you want to explore a new desktop paradigm, Ubuntu is clearly the best option. If you're looking for a more traditional desktop along the lines of GNOME 2 or even Windows XP/7, then Mint will be more to your liking. + +In my experience testing both I found them both to be stable and never lacking when it comes to finding the right package. Mint 17 MATE edition is unquestionably the fastest of the three desktops, Cinnamon generally falls in the middle when it comes to performance with the heavyweight Unity bringing up the rear. At least that's how it falls based on RAM use while idle. In real world use on newer hardware I've never noticed a significant performance difference between Unity and Cinnamon. + +In the end I like Mint with Cinnamon over Ubuntu with Unity simply because Mint doesn't require me to uninstall anything just to maintain my privacy. The Mint project also feels like its more in tune with the needs of desktop users, solving real problems and adding useful features rather than working toward some may-or-may-not-work future of "convergence". + +In other words, Mint 17 feels like the perfect place to wait out the uncertainty of Ubuntu's future. + +## XFCE And Linux Mint Debian Edition + +It doesn't get much press and it hasn't been updated yet to Mint 17, but there is technically an Xfce flavor of Mint as well. It's not listed on the <a href="http://community.linuxmint.com/iso">community page</a> just yet (there is a KDE version listed, though it looks like it will be a while before it's ready). Past releases of the Xfce flavor lagged about a month behind Cinnamon/MATE. + +Then there's Linux Mint Debian Edition, which aims to provide an identical desktop experience, but sitting atop snapshots of Debian testing rather than Ubuntu. LMDE is an interesting beast on several levels. It takes snapshot of what's normally a rolling distro (albeit a conservative one, Debian is not by any means Arch) and then sometimes falls considerably behind on things (for example, Debian Testing is currently using GTK 3.10 while the latest release of LMDE is at 3.8) before pouring in a ton of work and then pushing out a new release. + +As it stands LMDE is quite a ways behind Mint 17, with Cinnamon 2.0 and MATE 1.6 being the latest versions available. Still, if you want both Mint and Debian, LMDE does what you're after. + +## The Future of Linux Mint + +As I mentioned at the start of this review, Linux Mint 17 will be the base on which the next three releases build. Rather than following Ubuntu through 14.10, 15.04 and 15.10, Mint is planning to release 17.1, 17.2 and 17.3, all based on 14.04. + +The idea behind the change is that sticking with a stable base frees up the Mint team to focus on Cinnamon and MATE (and possibly LMDE as well), but it also means that Mint will be sitting out the transition to Wayland and some of the other pretty major changes that Ubuntu has on the roadmap over the next few years. + +The concern among some Mint users is that by the time Ubuntu 16.04 (the next LTS release) rolls around, Mint may be quite a ways behind. That's a valid concern, especially given Mint's track record with LMDE. Though, to be fair, LMDE has always seemed more like a fun hobby project than a real distro. + +The other potential problem is that Mint may lag behind when it comes to incorporating new packages. The Mint team plans to offer backports for more popular applications like, one assumes, web browsers, mail clients, office suites and the like. + +There's another possible outcome as well -- focusing on what makes Mint Mint might allow the distro time to make itself less dependent on Ubuntu. Such a move would make Mint more of a distro in its own right, rather than an Ubuntu derivative and it would lay the ground work for Mint to move away from Ubuntu should it wish to in the future. + +Whatever does end up happening with future releases, Linux Mint 17 makes a fantastic Linux desktop today. It's stable, familiar enough for Windows refugees to pick it up without missing a beat and has all the familiar tools Ubuntu fans would expect. diff --git a/published/mint17/screenshot01.png b/published/mint17/screenshot01.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b3fc2dd --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/screenshot01.png diff --git a/published/mint17/screenshot02.png b/published/mint17/screenshot02.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b51920 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/screenshot02.png diff --git a/published/mint17/screenshot03.png b/published/mint17/screenshot03.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..19d3b61 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/screenshot03.png diff --git a/published/mint17/screenshot04.png b/published/mint17/screenshot04.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..53a2eb4 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/screenshot04.png diff --git a/published/mint17/screenshot05.png b/published/mint17/screenshot05.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6cd3e0e --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/screenshot05.png diff --git a/published/mint17/screenshot06.png b/published/mint17/screenshot06.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5faf9e3 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/screenshot06.png diff --git a/published/mint17/screenshot07.png b/published/mint17/screenshot07.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..feb4c63 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/screenshot07.png diff --git a/published/mint17/screenshot08.png b/published/mint17/screenshot08.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2c9c842 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/screenshot08.png diff --git a/published/mint17/screenshot09.png b/published/mint17/screenshot09.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3ce86f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/screenshot09.png diff --git a/published/mint17/screenshot10.png b/published/mint17/screenshot10.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..46eaa63 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint17/screenshot10.png diff --git a/published/mint171review.html b/published/mint171review.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9b339fe --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint171review.html @@ -0,0 +1,74 @@ +<p>The Linux Mint team recently released Linux Mint 17.1, a somewhat minor, but still welcome upgrade to the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint ecosystem.</p> +<p>While Linux Mint 17.1 arrives as it usually does, a few weeks after the release of a new version of Ubuntu, version 17.1 is <em>not</em> based on Ubuntu's latest effort, 14.10, but remains tied to the last Long Term Support release, <a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/ubuntu-14-04-review-missing-the-boat-on-big-changes/">Ubuntu 14.04</a>.</p> +<p>This is the first time Linux Mint has not used the latest version of Ubuntu for a new release, but that's been the plan all along. Indeed, Mint will not be changing its Ubuntu base again until the next Long Term Support release -- Ubuntu 16.04 -- arrives in 2016.</p> +<p>At first glance this might seem like a bad thing -- Mint is after all missing out on whatever new stuff is in Ubuntu 14.10 (in the case of 14.10 there's not much, but 15.04 will have plenty of new things) -- but it is in fact a very good thing for fans of Mint's own tools, like the homegrown Cinnamon desktop.</p> +<p>Instead of spending all their time and effort making sure whatever Ubuntu has changed in Ubuntu 14.10 works with Mint, Mint developers can more or less ignore the base system and focus on what makes Mint such a great distro, namely, its two primary desktops -- MATE and Cinnamon.</p> +<h1 id="linux-mint-17.1">Linux Mint 17.1</h1> +<p>While most of what's new in Mint 17.1 will be seen in the updated desktops, there are some components common to both Cinnamon and MATE. While accessing some of these new tools varies slightly by desktop, the results are the same in both.</p> +<p>Among those new and improved elements is one you'll notice right off the bat -- the new login screen.</p> +<p>If you start the Mint installation process and walk away, as I did, you'll likely come back to an image slideshow that's slowly flipping through all the various wallpapers Mint 17.1 offers -- which is a lot, since it contains not only those that are new with this release, but all the wallpapers that came with every previous Mint release. Suffice to say, if you need some new desktop wallpaper, Mint 17.1 has you covered.</p> + +[image="mint171__login-screen.jpg" caption="The new Mint 17.1 login screen, complete with slideshow controls."] + +<p>The slideshow is a nice touch and you can control how it behaves with the Login Window Preferences menu, which now has Theme, Auto Login, and Options menu items to access different settings. There's also a theme preview button to test out the other themes available (or any you install yourself).</p> +<p>The newly polished login screen is nice, but far more useful is the revamped Update Manager that ships with Mint 17.1.</p> +<p>Mint has been refining its Update Manager for some time now. The <a href="http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/mint-17-the-perfect-place-for-linux-ers-to-wait-out-ubuntu-uncertainty/">last release</a> saw the introduction of some new icons and a numbered rating system that help let you know which updates are essential and which can be safely ignored. Mint 17.1 builds on those improvements with a new feature that groups package updates together based on source package.</p> +<p>That is, rather than just a list of every new package that's going to be updated, Mint 17.1 will group everything you need to update a single package, say, LibreOffice, into one line in the Update Manager. Select the update and you can see the individual packages listed in the bottom pane. If you want more information on what's new, there's a Changelog tab which will download details on what's new in that package.</p> + +[image="mint171__update-manager.jpg" caption="Mint 17.1's Update Manager."] + +<p>The new grouping system will help users avoid selectively updating packages and potentially breaking the whole because not every necessary part has been updated.</p> +<p>As Mint's lead developer, Clement Lefebvre <a href="http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_rebecca_mate_whatsnew.php#mintupdate">puts it</a>, "when a developer fixes a bug or writes new features, the source code is modified and all packages which are related to it become available under a new version... it is therefore futile and sometimes dangerous to apply some package updates and not others within the same source package."</p> +<p>Because Mint 17.1 groups updates, you'll never apply incomplete updates and it's considerably easier to review exactly what's being updated in each source package because everything is shown together in one place.</p> +<p>The Update Manager in Linux Mint 17.1 also features a redesigned kernels menu that makes it easier to see security updates and any regressions in each kernel update.</p> + + +[image="mint171__kernels.jpg" caption="Viewing various installed kernels in Mint 17.1's Update Manager."] + +<p>The trademark minty green is still the default, but Mint's theme gets quite an overhaul in this release. And those that don't like the default green can banish it in favor of quite a few new colors. There are also a number of dark-on-light theme options available if the default light-on-dark interface isn't what you want.</p> + +[image="mint171__theme-options.jpg" caption="Mint, now with less minty green"] + +<p>Linux Mint 17.1 ships with a new font, Google's Noto font, which is Google's attempt to create a font family that supports all the world's languages.</p> +<p>As noted at the start, this release sticks with the Ubuntu 14.04 base, which means the kernel is v3.13. That's a little behind what most distros released in last couple of months are using. If you're already running Mint 17 without issues then you'll likely be fine with 3.13. The main issue you're likely to run into is if you have any brand new hardware that requires a newer kernel for full support.</p> +<p>One bit of hardware does get some love in this release -- single button trackpads, for example, those used in Apple laptops. If you're planning to run Mint on a Macbook of some kind this release is a must-have. Be sure to check out the new Mouse and Touchpad panel in the System Settings, which now allows you to configure which actions apply to 2-finger and 3-finger clicks (by default it's right and middle click respectively).</p> +<h2 id="linux-mint-17.1-cinnamon-desktop">Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon Desktop</h2> +<p>Cinnamon is Mint's homegrown flagship desktop. If you're not interested in new approaches to the desktop like those being pioneered by Ubuntu's Unity or GNOME 3's Shell interface, Cinnamon offers a more traditional interface based around familiar ideas like a task bar and main menu. Cinnamon is not breaking any new ground on the UI front, but it's polished, fast and reliable.</p> +<p>I've been using Cinnamon nearly full time for quite a few releases now. When it first arrived it was the desktop you knew had potential, but it was buggy enough that I actually created a bash alias to restart it after a crash. Thankfully those days are long gone. Cinnamon has been rock solid in my use ever since Mint 15.</p> +<p>For Mint 17.1 Cinnamon has been updated to version 2.4. This release focuses on reducing memory use and speeding things up. While Cinnamon will never be as lightweight as something like LXDE or Openbox, Cinnamon 2.4 is considerably snappier than its predecessor, even on underpowered hardware like my aging Asus EeePC 1005.</p> +<p>When you install the Cinnamon version of Mint 17.1, once you get past the new slideshow login screen you'll be greeted with yet another new animation -- a GNOME-inspired desktop zoom that gives the Cinnamon boot experience a more polished feel. It's a small thing, but it sets the tone quite nicely for Cinnamon 2.4. The Cinnamon interface remains light-on-dark by default, but as noted earlier there are numerous new theme options and colors to customize things to your liking (most GTK 2 and 3 themes should work as well).</p> +<p>Among the more visual changes in this release are slew of new features in Nemo, Cinnamon's file manager. The latest version of Nemo adds support for what Mint calls "emblems", colored folders and new ways to customize the sidebar.</p> + +[image="mint171__cinn-emblems.jpg" caption="Adding color and emblems to the Documents folder."] + +<p>The emblems are little sub-icons which are displayed on top of the base icon, for example the musical note emblem overlays the Music folder by default. You can now apply any emblem to any folder or file. The emblems make it a little easier to find the folder or file you're looking for in the sidebar or list views (as do the new colored folder options). The emblems and colors would be even better if they showed up in open/save dialogs in other apps, but unfortunately they do not.</p> +<p>Nemo's toolbar has been redesigned and its buttons are now configurable. For example, there's an especially handy button that will open a terminal window in the current directory. It's not there by default, but you can enable it under Edit >> Preferences.</p> + +[image="mint171__cinn-nemo2.jpg" caption="Customizing Nemo's toolbar."] + +<p>The Cinnamon settings panel has been revamped for this release, with panes now displayed in alphabetical order within each section. There are also a couple of new panes, including one dubbed Privacy, which is based on the same tool in GNOME 3 and allows you to control how long recent items are stored. There's also a new a pane for controlling notifications.</p> +<p>Other improvements in Cinnamon 2.4 include support multiple panel launchers, improvements in the sound applet and the usual slew of bug fixes that come with any major update.</p> +<p>The new features, themes, added polish and speed improvements in Cinnamon 2.4 make it quite simply the best desktop I've used on any OS, including Windows and OS X.</p> +<h2 id="linux-mint-17.1-mate-desktop">Linux Mint 17.1 MATE Desktop</h2> +<p>The MATE desktop began life as a fork of GNOME 2, a response to GNOME 3's radical departure from GNOME 2. Since then MATE has gone on to become very much its own thing</p> +<p>That's not to say though that the latest, MATE 1.8, has strayed too far from its GNOME 2 roots, it's still aimed at GNOME 2 fans and those looking for a lightweight, but full-featured desktop. In fact, those GNOME roots are strengthened in this release with the addition of Compiz support. Yes, it's true, MATE and Compiz can be joined for a return to the halcyon days of rotating cubes and wobbly windows.</p> + +[image="mint171__mate-compiz.jpg" caption="Compiz and MATE, together at last."] + +<p>To keep MATE true to its lightweight past, Compiz is not enabled out of the box, but turning it on is just a matter of opening Desktop Settings >> Windows and switching from the default Marco window manager to Compiz. MATE will warn you that Compiz's Settings Manager is a powerful tool capable for rendering your desktop unusable, but once you ignore that warning you'll be able to tweak and break Compiz just like you did when Ubuntu 8.10 was the best thing in Linux.</p> + +[image="mint171__mate-compiz2.jpg" caption="Compiz and MATE... you've been warned."] + +<p>That said, I would not recommend using Compiz with MATE. I found the Compiz support to be little buggy and of course Compiz requires more powerful hardware which negates part of the appeal of MATE. If you want more bang for your desktop buck, I'd go with Cinnamon. Unless you really love rotating cubes and wobbly windows, in which case, perhaps you'll have better luck than I did.</p> +<p>The new Mint-X theme options mentioned earlier give you a few new ways to customize MATE and the new font provides better support for some languages (CJK in particular). Under the hood there are some bug fixes and stability improvements as well.</p> +<p>If you pine for the days of GNOME 2 complete with Compiz wobbly windows and the rest of the desktop effects that once said "this is a Linux desktop" then MATE 2 fits the bill. If you prefer a lightweight desktop that just stays simple and out of the way, MATE is still a great choice, just stick with the default Marco window manager.</p> +<h2 id="mint-17.1-software-stack">Mint 17.1 Software Stack</h2> +<p>When Mint first announced its intention to stick with an Ubuntu 14.04 base for a few years, many users were concerned about what that would mean for application updates. As noted at the start the kernel is not as up-to-date as what you'll find in the latest version of Ubuntu, openSUSE or the coming Fedora 21.</p> +<p>On the application front though things are looking much better. Mint continues to ship with just about everything you need for all-around desktop use and even includes some useful apps often left out of other distros by default (like GIMP and VLC), though this does make the Mint DVD a little on the large size (1.4GB for the Cinnamon DVD).</p> +<p>Both the Cinnamon and MATE versions Mint 17.1 ship with the latest stable versions of all its included apps -- Firefox, LibreOffice, Banshee, VLC and other common applications. So apparently Mint can keep its base system and eat its application updates too.</p> +<h2 id="upgrade-for-a-reason">Upgrade For a Reason</h2> +<p>Mint 17.1 is well worth the upgrade, though as Lefebvre writes in a post on <a href="http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2725">how to upgrade from Mint 17</a>, "upgrade for a reason."</p> +<p>Lefebvre goes on to add, "as excited as we are about 17.1, upgrading blindly for the sake of running the latest version does not make much sense, especially if you're already happy with 17 and everything is working perfectly."</p> +<p>That refreshing bit of pragmatism is worth keeping in mind regardless of which distro or desktop you use, but in fact I had no trouble at all upgrading from Mint 17 and everything is once again working perfectly. All you need to do is open Update Manager and head to the Edit menu where you should see an option to "Upgrade to Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca".</p> +<p>The only problem I've encountered is the known bug involving problems with Skype on 64-bit versions of Mint 17.1. Fortunately there's <a href="http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_rebecca_cinnamon.php#upstream">an easy fix</a>.</p> +<p>Linux Mint 17.1 will receive security updates until 2019 and until 2016 all Mint releases will continue to use the same base package system, AKA Ubuntu 14.04. That means upgrading to 17.2 and beyond should continue to be as painless as the move from 17 to 17.1.</p> diff --git a/published/mint171review.txt b/published/mint171review.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..26bb7b5 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint171review.txt @@ -0,0 +1,97 @@ +The Linux Mint team recently released Linux Mint 17.1, a somewhat minor, but still welcome upgrade to the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint ecosystem. + +While Linux Mint 17.1 arrives as it usually does, a few weeks after the release of a new version of Ubuntu, version 17.1 is *not* based on Ubuntu's latest effort, 14.10, but remains tied to the last Long Term Support release, [Ubuntu 14.04](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/ubuntu-14-04-review-missing-the-boat-on-big-changes/). + +This is the first time Linux Mint has not used the latest version of Ubuntu for a new release, but that's been the plan all along. Indeed, Mint will not be changing its Ubuntu base again until the next Long Term Support release -- Ubuntu 16.04 -- arrives in 2016. + +At first glance this might seem like a bad thing -- Mint is after all missing out on whatever new stuff is in Ubuntu 14.10 (in the case of 14.10 there's not much, but 15.04 will have plenty of new things) -- but it is in fact a very good thing for fans of Mint's own tools, like the homegrown Cinnamon desktop. + +Instead of spending all their time and effort making sure whatever Ubuntu has changed in Ubuntu 14.10 works with Mint, Mint developers can more or less ignore the base system and focus on what makes Mint such a great distro, namely, its two primary desktops -- MATE and Cinnamon. + +# Linux Mint 17.1 + +While most of what's new in Mint 17.1 will be seen in the updated desktops, there are some components common to both Cinnamon and MATE. While accessing some of these new tools varies slightly by desktop, the results are the same in both. + +Among those new and improved elements is one you'll notice right off the bat -- the new login screen. + +If you start the Mint installation process and walk away, as I did, you'll likely come back to an image slideshow that's slowly flipping through all the various wallpapers Mint 17.1 offers -- which is a lot, since it contains not only those that are new with this release, but all the wallpapers that came with every previous Mint release. Suffice to say, if you need some new desktop wallpaper, Mint 17.1 has you covered. + +The slideshow is a nice touch and you can control how it behaves with the Login Window Preferences menu, which now has Theme, Auto Login, and Options menu items to access different settings. There's also a theme preview button to test out the other themes available (or any you install yourself). + +The newly polished login screen is nice, but far more useful is the revamped Update Manager that ships with Mint 17.1. + +Mint has been refining its Update Manager for some time now. The [last release](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/mint-17-the-perfect-place-for-linux-ers-to-wait-out-ubuntu-uncertainty/) saw the introduction of some new icons and a numbered rating system that help let you know which updates are essential and which can be safely ignored. Mint 17.1 builds on those improvements with a new feature that groups package updates together based on source package. + +That is, rather than just a list of every new package that's going to be updated, Mint 17.1 will group everything you need to update a single package, say, LibreOffice, into one line in the Update Manager. Select the update and you can see the individual packages listed in the bottom pane. If you want more information on what's new, there's a Changelog tab which will download details on what's new in that package. + +The new grouping system will help users avoid selectively updating packages and potentially breaking the whole because not every necessary part has been updated. + +As Mint's lead developer, Clement Lefebvre [puts it](http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_rebecca_mate_whatsnew.php#mintupdate), "when a developer fixes a bug or writes new features, the source code is modified and all packages which are related to it become available under a new version... it is therefore futile and sometimes dangerous to apply some package updates and not others within the same source package." + +Because Mint 17.1 groups updates, you'll never apply incomplete updates and it's considerably easier to review exactly what's being updated in each source package because everything is shown together in one place. + +The Update Manager in Linux Mint 17.1 also features a redesigned kernels menu that makes it easier to see security updates and any regressions in each kernel update. + +The trademark minty green is still the default, but Mint's theme gets quite an overhaul in this release. And those that don't like the default green can banish it in favor of quite a few new colors. There are also a number of dark-on-light theme options available if the default light-on-dark interface isn't what you want. + +Linux Mint 17.1 ships with a new font, Google's Noto font, which is Google's attempt to create a font family that supports all the world's languages. + +As noted at the start, this release sticks with the Ubuntu 14.04 base, which means the kernel is v3.13. That's a little behind what most distros released in last couple of months are using. If you're already running Mint 17 without issues then you'll likely be fine with 3.13. The main issue you're likely to run into is if you have any brand new hardware that requires a newer kernel for full support. + +One bit of hardware does get some love in this release -- single button trackpads, for example, those used in Apple laptops. If you're planning to run Mint on a Macbook of some kind this release is a must-have. Be sure to check out the new Mouse and Touchpad panel in the System Settings, which now allows you to configure which actions apply to 2-finger and 3-finger clicks (by default it's right and middle click respectively). + +## Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon Desktop + +Cinnamon is Mint's homegrown flagship desktop. If you're not interested in new approaches to the desktop like those being pioneered by Ubuntu's Unity or GNOME 3's Shell interface, Cinnamon offers a more traditional interface based around familiar ideas like a task bar and main menu. Cinnamon is not breaking any new ground on the UI front, but it's polished, fast and reliable. + +I've been using Cinnamon nearly full time for quite a few releases now. When it first arrived it was the desktop you knew had potential, but it was buggy enough that I actually created a bash alias to restart it after a crash. Thankfully those days are long gone. Cinnamon has been rock solid in my use ever since Mint 15. + +For Mint 17.1 Cinnamon has been updated to version 2.4. This release focuses on reducing memory use and speeding things up. While Cinnamon will never be as lightweight as something like LXDE or Openbox, Cinnamon 2.4 is considerably snappier than its predecessor, even on underpowered hardware like my aging Asus EeePC 1005. + +When you install the Cinnamon version of Mint 17.1, once you get past the new slideshow login screen you'll be greeted with yet another new animation -- a GNOME-inspired desktop zoom that gives the Cinnamon boot experience a more polished feel. It's a small thing, but it sets the tone quite nicely for Cinnamon 2.4. The Cinnamon interface remains light-on-dark by default, but as noted earlier there are numerous new theme options and colors to customize things to your liking (most GTK 2 and 3 themes should work as well). + +Among the more visual changes in this release are slew of new features in Nemo, Cinnamon's file manager. The latest version of Nemo adds support for what Mint calls "emblems", colored folders and new ways to customize the sidebar. + +The emblems are little sub-icons which are displayed on top of the base icon, for example the musical note emblem overlays the Music folder by default. You can now apply any emblem to any folder or file. The emblems make it a little easier to find the folder or file you're looking for in the sidebar or list views (as do the new colored folder options). The emblems and colors would be even better if they showed up in open/save dialogs in other apps, but unfortunately they do not. + +Nemo's toolbar has been redesigned and its buttons are now configurable. For example, there's an especially handy button that will open a terminal window in the current directory. It's not there by default, but you can enable it under Edit >> Preferences. + +The Cinnamon settings panel has been revamped for this release, with panes now displayed in alphabetical order within each section. There are also a couple of new panes, including one dubbed Privacy, which is based on the same tool in GNOME 3 and allows you to control how long recent items are stored. There's also a new a pane for controlling notifications. + +Other improvements in Cinnamon 2.4 include support multiple panel launchers, improvements in the sound applet and the usual slew of bug fixes that come with any major update. + +The new features, themes, added polish and speed improvements in Cinnamon 2.4 make it quite simply the best desktop I've used on any OS, including Windows and OS X. + +## Linux Mint 17.1 MATE Desktop + +The MATE desktop began life as a fork of GNOME 2, a response to GNOME 3's radical departure from GNOME 2. Since then MATE has gone on to become very much its own thing + +That's not to say though that the latest, MATE 1.8, has strayed too far from its GNOME 2 roots, it's still aimed at GNOME 2 fans and those looking for a lightweight, but full-featured desktop. In fact, those GNOME roots are strengthened in this release with the addition of Compiz support. Yes, it's true, MATE and Compiz can be joined for a return to the halcyon days of rotating cubes and wobbly windows. + +To keep MATE true to its lightweight past, Compiz is not enabled out of the box, but turning it on is just a matter of opening Desktop Settings >> Windows and switching from the default Marco window manager to Compiz. MATE will warn you that Compiz's Settings Manager is a powerful tool capable for rendering your desktop unusable, but once you ignore that warning you'll be able to tweak and break Compiz just like you did when Ubuntu 8.10 was the best thing in Linux. + +That said, I would not recommend using Compiz with MATE. I found the Compiz support to be little buggy and of course Compiz requires more powerful hardware which negates part of the appeal of MATE. If you want more bang for your desktop buck, I'd go with Cinnamon. Unless you really love rotating cubes and wobbly windows, in which case, perhaps you'll have better luck than I did. + +The new Mint-X theme options mentioned earlier give you a few new ways to customize MATE and the new font provides better support for some languages (CJK in particular). Under the hood there are some bug fixes and stability improvements as well. + +If you pine for the days of GNOME 2 complete with Compiz wobbly windows and the rest of the desktop effects that once said "this is a Linux desktop" then MATE 2 fits the bill. If you prefer a lightweight desktop that just stays simple and out of the way, MATE is still a great choice, just stick with the default Marco window manager. + +## Mint 17.1 Software Stack + +When Mint first announced its intention to stick with an Ubuntu 14.04 base for a few years, many users were concerned about what that would mean for application updates. As noted at the start the kernel is not as up-to-date as what you'll find in the latest version of Ubuntu, openSUSE or the coming Fedora 21. + +On the application front though things are looking much better. Mint continues to ship with just about everything you need for all-around desktop use and even includes some useful apps often left out of other distros by default (like GIMP and VLC), though this does make the Mint DVD a little on the large size (1.4GB for the Cinnamon DVD). + +Both the Cinnamon and MATE versions Mint 17.1 ship with the latest stable versions of all its included apps -- Firefox, LibreOffice, Banshee, VLC and other common applications. So apparently Mint can keep its base system and eat its application updates too. + +## Upgrade For a Reason + +Mint 17.1 is well worth the upgrade, though as Lefebvre writes in a post on [how to upgrade from Mint 17](http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2725), "upgrade for a reason." + +Lefebvre goes on to add, "as excited as we are about 17.1, upgrading blindly for the sake of running the latest version does not make much sense, especially if you're already happy with 17 and everything is working perfectly." + +That refreshing bit of pragmatism is worth keeping in mind regardless of which distro or desktop you use, but in fact I had no trouble at all upgrading from Mint 17 and everything is once again working perfectly. All you need to do is open Update Manager and head to the Edit menu where you should see an option to "Upgrade to Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca". + +The only problem I've encountered is the known bug involving problems with Skype on 64-bit versions of Mint 17.1. Fortunately there's [an easy fix](http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_rebecca_cinnamon.php#upstream). + +Linux Mint 17.1 will receive security updates until 2019 and until 2016 all Mint releases will continue to use the same base package system, AKA Ubuntu 14.04. That means upgrading to 17.2 and beyond should continue to be as painless as the move from 17 to 17.1. diff --git a/published/mint172/mint172-cinn-inhibit.png b/published/mint172/mint172-cinn-inhibit.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..95543d1 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint172/mint172-cinn-inhibit.png diff --git a/published/mint172/mint172-cinn-ppas.png b/published/mint172/mint172-cinn-ppas.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0e7758f --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint172/mint172-cinn-ppas.png diff --git a/published/mint172/mint172-cinn-start-menu.png b/published/mint172/mint172-cinn-start-menu.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..69e9c25 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint172/mint172-cinn-start-menu.png diff --git a/published/mint172/mint172-cinn.png b/published/mint172/mint172-cinn.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..04cf98c --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint172/mint172-cinn.png diff --git a/published/mint172/mint172-mate-update-manager.png b/published/mint172/mint172-mate-update-manager.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..19f1038 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint172/mint172-mate-update-manager.png diff --git a/published/mint172/mint172-mate.png b/published/mint172/mint172-mate.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..641b8b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mint172/mint172-mate.png diff --git a/published/mintlinuxreview.html b/published/mintlinuxreview.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a158638 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/mintlinuxreview.html @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +<p>The Linux Mint project has released Mint 17.2, a significant upgrade for the Ubuntu-based distro that has become one of Linux's most popular. It's also among the last holdouts of the traditional desktop computing paradigm.</p> +<p>Mint is Ubuntu for people who don't like the Unity desktop.</p> +<p>If you want Ubuntu and all the good that comes with it, like an extensive up-to-date set of packages, great documentation and a web full of tutorials and helpful users, but not Unity and its baggage -- like query-logging search "features" some have <a href="http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do">called spyware</a> -- Linux Mint just might be the distro for you.</p> +<p>Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and in my experience most things that work in Ubuntu will also work in Mint. All those tutorials and .deb files in most cases (not all though) will do just fine with Mint.</p> +<p>Linux Mint comes in a variety of desktop flavors, most notable though are the dual homegrown desktops, Cinnamon and MATE. Both desktops represent something increasingly rare regardless of your computing platform of choice -- they stick with the tried and true paradigms of earlier desktop software. That is, they both offer task bars, system trays, docks and other familiar metaphors for interacting with and managing your applications and files.</p> + +[image="mint172-cinn-start-menu.png" caption="The default Cinnamon desktop in Linux Mint 17.2"] + +<p>These days the desktops grabbing headlines have, for the most part, left the traditional desktop behind in favor of what's often referred to as a "shell", which offers a search-based interface. The GNOME project and Ubuntu's Unity desktop interfaces both use this approach.</p> +<p>This is not a sea change that's limited to Linux. The upheaval of the desktop is happening in Windows land as well. Windows 8 also departed from the traditional desktop UI and Windows 10 looks like it will continue that rethinking of the desktop, albeit with a few familiar elements retained.</p> +<p>Whether it's driven by, in Ubuntu's case, a vision of "convergence" between desktop and mobile or perhaps just the need for something new (which seems to be the case for GNOME 3.x), the developers would have you believe that these mobile-friendly, search based desktops are the future of, well, everything.</p> +<p>There are however, still some holdouts that still stick with the task bar and start menu style interface. Apple's OS X has thus far been surprisingly conservative about changing its basic metaphors, but then the company has iOS to tantalize developers.</p> +<p>In the Linux world there are a few holdouts as well. Both KDE and Xfce continue to be more or less what they have always been. The word stolid comes to mind with both. They're both solid options, but the word fun doesn't spring to mind with either.</p> +<p>Linux Mint on the other hand has managed to do something a bit different, particularly with its Cinnamon desktop which manages to feel both familiar and modern at the same time.</p> +<p>Linux Mint 17.2 is more than just the Cinnamon desktop -- we'll get to that in a minute -- but for those looking for alternatives to Unity and GNOME 3, Linux Mint 17.2 offers everything you love about Ubuntu without the Unity Desktop.</p> +<h2 id="cinnamon-2.6">Cinnamon 2.6</h2> +<p>If you head over to the Linux Mint website you'll find two different downloads available, one for the Cinnamon desktop and one for the MATE desktop. Opt for the former and you'll get Linux Mint 17.2 with Cinnamon 2.6.</p> + +[image="mint172-cinn.png" caption="Cinnamon 2.6 in Linux Mint 17.2"] + +<p>Out of the box Cinnamon rather closely resembles Windows XP, albeit with a mintier green gray theme. You'll find all the familiar elements of traditional desktops though, a start menu, task bar and so on. If Windows XP isn't your idea of a good looking desktop, fear not, Cinnamon is highly customizable and there are a ton of themes and useful applets available for download.</p> +<p>Among the more obvious new features in this release are better dual monitor support, some new tricks for the panel and a much faster overall desktop experience.</p> +<p>The latter point -- speed improvements -- is particularly true on older hardware. Cinnamon 2.6 is still not by any means a lightweight desktop, nor would it be my first choice for less powerful hardware, but with this release it is a bit less taxing on older systems. Among the improvements are some code optimizations that have reduced the amount of background refreshes that happen. The menu, for instance, is refreshed about 6 times less and the window manager has been overhauled to reduce idle CPU use.</p> +<p>For more details on all the under the hood speed improvements in Cinnamon 2.6, check out Linux Mint lead Clément Laforge's <a href="http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2015/06/cinnamon-2-6/">blog post on the subject</a>. Since brevity is the essence of Linux reviews, suffice to say that Linux Mint 17.2 is noticeably snappier than its predecessor on the same hardware, something disappointingly few desktops can claim these days.</p> +<p>The new and improved dual monitor support primarily addresses a long-time complaint from Cinnamon users with more than one screen -- there was no way to set up your panels independently. That's been fixed, which means you can now have a completely different panel on each of your monitors. In fact, you don't have to have multiple screens to take advantage of this one, the updates to the panel mean you can now set up your single monitor with multiple instances, for example, one at the top and bottom of your screen, though I'm not sure why you'd want to.</p> +<p>But wait, did you catch that in the last paragraph? Cinnamon 2.6 has a new feature that <em>addresses a long time complaint from users</em>. In fact there are quite a few new features that can be traced right back to user submitted bugs and feature requests, which is another thing that feels increasingly rare in Linux desktops.</p> +<p>This release sees the Cinnamon developers focusing on some of what are sometimes call "paper cut" fixes, which just means there's been a lot of attention to the details, particularly the small, but annoying problems. For example, this release adds a new panel applet called "inhibit" which temporarily bans all notifications. It also turns off screen locking and stops any auto dimming you have set up, making a great tool for when you want to watch a video or play a game.</p> + +[image="mint172-cinn-inhibit.png" caption="The Inhibit applet in action."] + +<p>Sure, you could accomplish all those before using a couple different panes in the system settings app, but with applet you can just drop it in the menu bar and click to easily toggle things on and off. It's not a huge new feature, but it's great to have and it solves the kind of real-world problem ordinary users encounter.</p> +<p>Along similar lines Cinnamon has an improved sound applet, which supports PulseAudio and has the ability to "detect output devices with greater accuracy". In practical terms that means more outputs "just work". There's also a new feature to set the volume level independently for each running application.</p> +<p>If you've used Cinnamon for a long time you may well remember some bad old days of desktop freezes and other crashes. This used to happen so much I had a Bash shortcut just to restart Cinnamon. As I noted in my review of Mint 17.1, I haven't had this problem for some time on any of my hardware, but if you do you'll be glad to know there's now a keyboard shortcut to restart Cinnamon. By default it's Ctrl+Alt+Escape, which will restart both the Nemo file manager and the cinnamon-settings-daemon and launch a brand new instance of Cinnamon.</p> +<p>That's a bit cleaner than good old Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, which kills your session and can potentially lose your work. With Ctrl+Alt+Escape your session stays as it was, including any open apps with unsaved work. I've been using Cinnamon 2.6 for a while now though and haven't needed to restart it yet.</p> +<p>Linux Mint 17.2 with Cinnamon is well worth the upgrade. In fact, even if you're using Cinnamon elsewhere, which has become increasingly common, with Debian and Fedora now including Cinnamon as an option in their installers, I'd suggest updating. The speed improvements alone are worth it.</p> +<h2 id="mate-1.10">MATE 1.10</h2> +<p>The other primary option for Linux Mint 17.2 is the MATE desktop, which has been updated to version 1.10.</p> + +[image="mint172-mate.png" caption="The MATE desktop in Linux Mint 17.2"] + +<p>Just like its cohort Cinnamon, the MATE update has seen quite a bit of work go into speeding up the desktop experience and bringing down the memory requirements. Unlike Cinnamon though, MATE is what passes for a "lightweight" desktop these days, which is to say that particularly the memory use improvements will be a huge win for anyone using MATE on older, less capable hardware. MATE is not LXDE or bare Openbox by any means, but neither is it anywhere near as big and memory hungry as GNOME 3 or Unity.</p> +<p>That said, I didn't really notice the speed improvements. Depending on your hardware and use habits you may find that MATE 1.10 is faster, but MATE has always been pretty speedy so sometimes it's hard to tell. It does definitely use less RAM though.</p> +<p>Beyond the speed and RAM improvements you won't likely notice a lot of changes in this version of MATE. The default file manager in MATE can now enable and disable extensions without a restart and the MATE documentation is now available within the desktop interface.</p> +<p>The developers of MATE have initiated a similar "paper cut" project for MATE to fix some of the small issues and also to port some of the new Cinnamon features into MATE, but so far it doesn't look like much has happened on this project. The MATE 1.10 release announcement says that these should come as updates to MATE 1.10.x, so expect to see a few things updated and optimized as the 1.10.x release cycle continues.</p> +<p>Like Cinnamon, MATE has also grown beyond Linux Mint. In fact, there's now an official Ubuntu flavor based on MATE. Given that Linux Mint is derived from Ubuntu, it's worth asking -- why not just use Ubuntu MATE? If you want the latest version of Ubuntu, need an up-to-date kernel to support new hardware or prefer pure Ubuntu then Ubuntu MATE is probably a better choice.</p> +<p>There's more to Linux Mint than just the desktop though. And while this release retains the base system of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, there are plenty of improvements to the tools and applications that make Mint, well, Mint.</p> +<h2 id="linux-mint-17.2">Linux Mint 17.2</h2> +<p>Linux Mint 17.2 ships with a slew of updates that apply regardless of the desktop you choose.</p> +<p>Among the places Mint trumps Ubuntu is the Update Manager, which goes well beyond the usual package manager, offering up what amounts to a user-friendly tour of the system via package updates. If you really want to know what's going on with your system and how various package updates relate to one another the Mint Update Manager is one of the best ways I've seen to wrap your head around it.</p> +<p>The latest feature is support package aliases, which sounds obscure, but is actually very simple. It just means that a package with an otherwise obscure name like "cjs" can be displayed as "cinnamon-cjs" so that it appears along side other Cinnamon updates and perhaps more importantly so that you can tell it's connected in some way to Cinnamon. This makes it easier to debug things after an update if something on your system breaks. Even if you have no idea what "cjs" does (for the record, its a JavaScript/C bridge), at least you know it's part of Cinnamon.</p> + +[image="mint172-mate-update-manager.png" caption="Viewing updates in Linux Mint 17.2"] + +<p>The paper cuts theme mentioned earlier extends beyond the desktops as well. Among the small things in the Update Manager is a option to hide the system tray icon when no updates are available, which keeps your panel a little less cluttered.</p> +<p>Part of the appeal of using Ubuntu is the wealth of .deb packages out there. In general those same third party packages will also work in Mint, which is great, until it isn't. The problem with .deb files is that you never really know what's in them unless you check and let's face it, you don't. Mint makes it a little easier to check out exactly what you're getting with an update to the Software Sources configuration tool.</p> +<p>With Mint 17.2 you can now open PPA archives and browse their packages. You can also then install them right from Software Sources, you don't have to switch to another tool. But more importantly you can easily purge .deb packages you installed manually. Just remove the repository/PPA and update. Sure you can do that from the command line too, but doing it through Software Source will be much easier for most users.</p> + +[image="mint172-cinn-ppas.png" caption="Inspecting PPA contents in Linux Mint 17.2"] + +<p>If you do prefer the command line there are a couple updates there as well, including support for an interesting command, "apt recommends", which will list missing recommended packages for a particular package. It's sort of like a post installation way to inspect what happens if you use "--no-install-recommends".</p> +<h2 id="ubuntu-14.04-core">Ubuntu 14.04 Core</h2> +<p>As mentioned earlier Linux Mint 17.2 sticks with Ubuntu 14.04 under the hood. That means the kernel remains at 3.16, which might be bad news for newer hardware. Naturally you can update the kernel yourself, though unless you really know what you're doing I don't suggest it.</p> +<p>There is one big upside to sticking with Ubuntu 14.04 as the base for Mint 17.2 -- there's still now systemd. Mint users won't have to deal with systemd for another year when Mint will make the leap to Ubuntu 16.04 as the new base system. That makes Mint 17.2 a good option for those who want to have an updated desktop in the Ubuntu ecosystem, but postpone the move to systemd for a little while.</p> +<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2> +<p>Mint 17.2 is well worth the upgrade though much of what you want from it might be easier to get by just upgrading Cinnamon or MATE on their own. The Mint Linux upgrade guide tends to emphasize the wisdom on the old saying, "if it ain't broke..." Those are good words to live by, but, that said, I had no trouble at all upgrading from Mint 17.1. All you need to do is open Update Manager and head to the Edit menu, where you should see an option to "Upgrade to Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela."</p> +<p>Linux Mint 17.2 is an LTS release and will receive security updates until 2019, and until 2016, all Mint releases will continue to use the same base package system (Ubuntu 14.04).</p> diff --git a/published/pic-globe-responsive.png b/published/pic-globe-responsive.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e0557b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/pic-globe-responsive.png diff --git a/published/pic-marcotte-example.png b/published/pic-marcotte-example.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5c1cc9 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/pic-marcotte-example.png diff --git a/published/pic-notes.txt b/published/pic-notes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3b6a22a --- /dev/null +++ b/published/pic-notes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,75 @@ + + + + +[8/4/14, 1:29:59 PM] Mathew Marquis: https://responsiveimagescg.github.io/eq-usecases +[8/4/14, 1:33:41 PM] Mathew Marquis: http://discourse.specifiction.org/ +[8/4/14, 1:36:24 PM] Mathew Marquis: https://twitter.com/zcorpan +[8/4/14, 1:37:01 PM] Mathew Marquis: https://twitter.com/marcosc + +https://github.com/ResponsiveImagesCG/newsletters + +So the genisus of this article was another article I did on the 25th anniversary of the web and how much web development has changed over the eyars. We moved from sort of the web developer as someone who knew how to make IE behave to a world where developers are proposing, developing and even crowdfunding a new html element into existence. + +I think if we went back even just ten years and told that story about the future of web development, no one would believe you. + +So I wanted to tell the story of picture and the people who made it happen. So maybe we could start with how you came to be involved in the development of the picture element. + +Boston globe site + +Bruce Lawson. 2007 independently eloved name + +Who set up the community group? + +simon peters at opera proposed that, instead of a new element to handle images, picture wrap around img community effort from irc. + +timeline: + +* first picture element proposal without srcset +* very rough proposal on the mailing list +* Shot down on the mailing list when... +* community group starts +* that got shot down with the suggestion that developers create a community group, which they do. +* Apple introduces srcset for img (Mozilla rejects that idea, Chrome says sure, but doesn't do anything) +* tab atkins hybrid src-n proposal is independent of everything source ordering of attributes "grotesque" commment. + +* major re-write for picture (Webkit has killed src-n, Firefox killed srcset) + * 3rd version makes it easier to implement + * adds the variant of src-n choosing syntax. + * becomes a wrapper for img + +* Weiss raises money to implement pic element in Chrome + +* Dust settles a bit and the picture proposal becomes an official draft at W3C + +biggest community group 350 + +we're kind of pirate radio HTML WG. + +Client hints, can't get viewport information or respond to any changes client side. + +Yoav Wiess is one of 30 only non-chrome committer. + +tab atkins, Simon peters opera. came up with picture element as a controller. imarcos caceros + +Ian's comments: + +> Some likely elements to success: +> +> - Strong sentiment in the community of the value of such feature, and effective +> communication by the proponents about the value. +> - Effective community building by Mat and others. This would include +> bringing people into the Responsive Images CG, as well as engaging +> with the HTML Working Group and getting interest from a lot of organizations. +> - Tenacity, including engaging with browser vendors and working for a consensus +> solution. +> +> The topic sort of went viral. I don't know the formula for that, but my guess is that the above elements were necessary. + + +But it has indeed been solved and it happened because a small group of people, none of whom had ever written a web standard before, made it happen. + +They went from frustrated developers trying to solve a problem, to standards authors to browser makers. Along the way they created what's now know as the picture element, convinced the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to add it to the HTML5 specification and then helped raise the money to get it implemented in Google Chrome. + +By the end of the year Picture will work in both Chrome and Firefox. + diff --git a/published/pic-ricg-site.png b/published/pic-ricg-site.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..29edc30 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/pic-ricg-site.png diff --git a/published/picture.html b/published/picture.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fe9bc30 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/picture.html @@ -0,0 +1,95 @@ +<p>The web is going to get faster in the very near future. Sadly, this is rare enough to be news.</p> +<p>The speed bump won't be because our devices are getting faster, though they are. Nor will it be because some giant company created something great, though they probably have.</p> +<p>The web will be getting faster very soon because a small group of web developers saw a problem and decided to solve it for all of us.</p> +<p>The problem is images.</p> +<p>As of August 2014 the <a href="http://httparchive.org/interesting.php?a=All&l=Aug%2015%202014&s=Top1000">size of the average page in the top 1,000 sites on the web</a> is 1.7MB. Images account for almost 1MB of that 1.7MB.</p> +<p>If you've got a nice fast fiber connection that image payload isn't such a big deal. But, if you're on a mobile network, that huge image payload is not just slowing you down, it's using up your limited bandwidth and, depending on your mobile data plan, might well be costing you money.</p> +<p>What makes that image payload doubly annoying when you're using a mobile device is that you're getting images intended for giant monitors and they're being loaded on a screen little bigger than your palm. It's a waste of bandwidth delivering pixels you don't need.</p> +<p>Web developers recognized this problem very early on in the growth of what was called the "mobile" web back then.</p> +<p>More recently a few of them banded together to do something that web developers have never done before -- create a new HTML element.</p> +<h2 id="in-the-beginning-was-the-mobile-web">In the Beginning Was the "Mobile Web"</h2> +<p>Browsing the web on your phone hasn't always been what it is today. Even browsing the web on the first iPhone, one of the first phones with a real web browser, was still pretty terrible.</p> +<p>Browsing the web on a small screen back then required constant tapping to zoom in on content that had been optimized for much larger screens. Images took forever to load over the iPhone's slow EDGE network connection and then there was all that Flash content, which didn't load at all. And that was the iPhone. Browsing the web using Blackberry and other OSes crippled mobile browsers was even worse.</p> +<p>It wasn't necessarily the devices' fault, though mobile browsers did, and in many cases still do, lag well behind their desktop brethren. Most of the problem though was the fault of web developers. The web is inherently flexible, but web developers had made it fixed by optimizing sites for large desktop monitors.</p> +<p>To fix this a lot of sites started building a second site. It sounds crazy now, but just a few years ago the going solution for handling new devices like the Blackberry, the then-new iPhone and some of the first Android phones was to use server-side device detection scripts and redirect users to a dedicated site for mobile devices, typically a URL like m.domain.com.</p> +<p>These dedicated mobile URLs -- often referred to as M-dot sites -- typically lacked many features found on their "real" desktop counterparts and often didn't even redirect properly, leaving you on the homepage when you wanted a specific article.</p> +<p>M-dot websites are a fine example of developers encountering a problem and figuring out a way to make it even worse.</p> +<p>Luckily for us, most web developers did not jump on the m-dot bandwagon because something much better came along.</p> +<h2 id="responsive-design-killed-the-m-dot-star">Responsive Design Killed the M-Dot Star</h2> +<p>In 2010 web developer Ethan Marcotte wrote a little article about something he called <a href="http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design">Responsive Web Design</a>.</p> +<p>Marcotte suggested that with the proliferation of mobile devices and the pain of building these dedicated m-dot sites, it might make more sense to embrace the inherently fluid nature of the web and build websites that were flexible. Sites that used relative widths to fit any screen and worked well no matter what device was accessing it.</p> + +[image="pic-marcotte-example.png" caption="Ethan Marcotte's original responsive demo site at roughly phone, tablet and desktop screen sizes"] + +<p>Marcotte's vision gave web developers a way to build sites that flex and rearrange their content based on the size and characteristics of the device in your hand.</p> +<p>Responsive web design isn't perhaps a panacea, but it's pretty close.</p> +<p>Responsive design started with a few more prominent developers making their personal sites responsive, but it quickly took off when Marcotte and the developers at the Filament Group redesigned the <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/">Boston Globe</a> website to make it responsive. The Globe redesign showed that responsive design worked for more than developer portfolios and blogs. The Globe redesign showed that responsive design was the way of the future.</p> +<p>While the Globe redesign was successful from a user standpoint, Marcotte and the Filament Group did run into some problems behind the scenes, particularly with images.</p> +<p>Marcotte's original article dealt with images by scaling them down using CSS. That made them fit smaller screens and preserve the layout of content, but it also means mobile devices were loading huge images that would never be displayed at full resolution.</p> +<p>For the most part this is still what happens on nearly every site you visit on a small screen. Web developers know, as the developers building the Globe site knew, that this is a problem, but solving it is not as easy as it seems at first glance.</p> +<p>In fact solving this problem would require adding a brand new element to HTML.</p> +<h2 id="introducing-the-picture-element">Introducing the Picture Element</h2> +<p>The Picture element story begins with the developers working on the Boston Globe, including Mat Marquis, who would eventually co-author the HTML specification.</p> +<p>In the beginning though, no one working on the Globe site was thinking about creating new HTML elements. Marquis and the other developers just wanted to build a site that loaded faster on mobile devices.</p> +<p>As Marquis explains, they thought they had a solution. "We started with an image for mobile and then selectively enhanced it up from there. It was a hack using cookies and JavaScript. It worked up until about a week before the site launched."</p> +<p>Around this time both Firefox and Chrome were updating their prefetching capabilities and the new image prefetching tools broke the method used on the Globe prototypes.</p> +<p>Browser prefetching was more than just a problem for the solution originally planed for the Globe site. It's actually the crux of what's so difficult about responsive images.</p> +<p>When a server sends a page to your browser the browser first downloads all the HTML on the page and then parses it. Or at least that's what used to happen. Modern web browsers attempt to speed up page load times by downloading images <em>before</em> parsing the page's body. The browser starts downloading the image long before it knows where that image will be in the page layout or how big it will need to be.</p> +<p>This is simultaneously a very good thing -- it means images load faster -- and a very tricky thing -- it means using JavaScript to manipulate images can actually slow down your page even when your JavaScript is trying to load smaller images (because you end up fighting the prefetcher and downloading two images).</p> +<p>Marquis and the rest of the developers working on the site had to scrap their original plan and go back to the drawing board. "We started trying to hash out some solution that we could use going forward... but nothing really materialized." However, they started <a href="http://blog.cloudfour.com/responsive-imgs/">writing about the problem</a> and other developers joined the conversation. The quickly learned they were not alone in struggling with responsive images.</p> +<p>"By this time," Marquis says, "we have 10 or 15 developers and nobody has come up with anything."</p> +<p>The Globe site ended up launched with no solution -- mobile devices were stuck downloading huge images.</p> + +[image="pic-globe-responsive.png" caption="The Boston Globe website at phone, tablet and desktop sizes"] + +<p>Soon other prominent developers outside the Globe project started to weigh in with possible solutions, including Google's Paul Irish and Opera's Bruce Lawson. Still, no one was able to craft a solution that covered <a href="http://usecases.responsiveimages.org/">all the possible use cases</a> developers had identified.</p> +<p>"We soon realized," says Marquis, "that, even if we were able to solve this with a clever bit of JavaScript we would be working around browser-level optimizations rather than working with them." In other words, using JavaScript meant fighting the browser's built-in image prefetching.</p> +<p>Talk then moved to lower-level solutions, including a new HTML element that might somehow get around the image prefetching problems in a way that JavaScript never would. It was Bruce Lawson of Opera who first suggested that a new <code><picture></code> element might be in order. Though they did not know it at the time, a picture element had been proposed once before, but it never went anywhere.</p> +<h2 id="welcome-to-standards-jungle">Welcome to Standards Jungle</h2> +<p>It is one thing to decide a new HTML element is needed. It's quite another thing to actually navigate the stratified, labyrinthine world of web standards. Especially if no one on your team has ever done such a thing.</p> +<p>Perhaps the best thing about being naive though is that you tend to plow forward without the hesitation that attends someone who <em>knows</em> how difficult the road ahead it will be.</p> +<p>And so the developers working on the picture element took their ideas to the WHATWG, one of two groups that oversee the development of HTML. The WHATWG is made up primarily of browser vendors, which makes it a good place to gauge how likely it is that browsers will actually ship your ideas.</p> +<p>To paraphrase Tolstoy, every standards body is unhappy in its own way, but, as Marquis was about to learn, the WHATWG is perhaps most unhappy when people outside it make suggestions about what it ought to do. Suffice to say that Marquis and the rest of the developers involved did not get the WHATWG interested in a new HTML element.</p> +<p>Right around this time the W3C, which is where the second group that oversees HTML, the HTML WG, is based, launched a new idea -- community groups. Community groups are the W3C's attempt to get outsiders involved in the standards process, a place to propose problems and work on solutions.</p> +<p>After being shot down by the WHATWG, someone suggested that the developers start a community group and the <a href="http://responsiveimages.org/">Responsive Images Community Group</a> (RICG) was born.</p> + +[image="pic-ricg-site.png" caption="The Responsive Images Community Group website."] + +<p>The only problem with community groups is that no one in the actual working groups pays any attention to community groups. Or at least they didn't in 2011.</p> +<p>Blissfully unaware of this, Marquis and hundreds of other developers hashed out a responsive image solution in the community group.</p> +<p>Much of that effort was thanks to Marcos Caceres, now at Mozilla, who, unlike the rest of the group members, had some experience with writing web standards. That experience allowed Caceres to span the divide between two worlds -- web development and standards development. Caceres organized the RICG's efforts and helped the group produce the kind of use cases and tests that standards bodies are looking for. As Marquis puts it, "Marcos saw us flailing around in IRC and helped get everything organized."</p> +<p>"I tried to herd all the cats," Caceres jokes. And herd he did. He set up the Github repos to get everything in one place, set up a space for the responsive images site and helped bring everything together into the first use cases document. "This played a really critical role for me and for the community," says Caceres, "because it forced us to articulate what the actual problem was... and to set priorities."</p> +<p>After months of effort, the RICG brought their ideas to the WHATWG IRC. This also did not go well. As Caceres puts it, "standards bodies like to say 'oh we want a lot of input for developers', but then when developers come it ends in tears. Or it used to."</p> +<p>If you read the WHATWG IRC logs from that time you'll see that the WHATWG members fall into a classic "not invented here" trap. Not only did they reject the input from developers, they turned around and, without considering the RICG's work at all, <a href="http://www.w3.org/community/respimg/2012/05/11/respimg-proposal/">proposed their own solution</a>, something called <code>set</code>, an attribute that solved only one of the many use cases Marquis and company had already identified.</p> +<p>Developers were, understandably, miffed.</p> +<p>With developers pushing Picture and browser makers and standards bodies favoring the far more limited and very confusing (albeit still useful) <code>set</code> proposal, it looked like nothing would ever actually come of the RICG's work.</p> +<p>As Paul Irish put it in the <a href="http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20120510#l-747">WHATWG IRC channel</a>, "[Marquis] corralled and led a group of the best mobile web developers, created a CG, isolated a solution (from many), fought for and won consensus within the group, wrote a draft spec and proposed it. Basically he's done the thing standards folks really want "authors" to do. Which is why this this feels so defeating."</p> +<p>Irish was not alone. The developer outcry surrounding the WHATWG's counter proposal was quite vocal, vocal enough that some entirely new proposals surfaced, but browser makers failed to agree on anything. Mozilla killed the WHATWG's idea of <code>set</code> on <code>img</code>. And Chrome refused to implement Picture as it was defined at the time.</p> +<p>If this all sounds like a bad soap opera, well, it was. This process is, believe it or not, how the web you're using right now gets made.</p> +<h2 id="invented-here.">Invented Here.</h2> +<p>To the credit of the WHATWG, the group did eventually overcome their not-invented-here syndrome. Or at least partially overcame it.</p> +<p>Compromises started to happen. The RICG rolled support for many of the ideas in<code>set</code> into their proposal. That wasn't enough to convince the WHATWG, but it got some members working together with the Marquis and the RICG. The WHATWG still didn't like Picture, but they didn't outright reject it anymore either.</p> +<p>To an outsider the revision process looks a bit like a game of Ping Pong, except that every time someone hits the ball it changes shape.</p> +<p>The big breakthrough for Picture came from Opera's Simon Pieters and Apple's Tab Atkins. They made a simple, but powerful, suggestion -- make picture a wrapper for <code>img</code>. That way there would not be two separate elements for images on the web (which was rightly considered confusing), but there would still be a new way to control which image the browser displays.</p> +<p>This is exactly the approach used in the final version of the Picture spec.</p> +<p>When the browser encounters a Picture element, it first evaluates any rules that the web developer might specify. Opera's developer site has a good article on <a href="http://dev.opera.com/articles/native-responsive-images/">all the possibilities Picture offers</a>. Then, after evaluating the various rules, the browser picks the best image based on its own criteria. This is another nice feature since the browser's criteria can include your settings. For example, future browsers might offer an option to stop high-res images from loading over 3G, regardless of what any Picture element on the page might say. Once the browser knows which image is the best choice it actually loads and displays that image in a good old <code>img</code> element.</p> +<p>This solves two big problems -- the browser prefetching problem -- prefetching still works and there's no performance penalty -- and the problem of what to do when the browser doesn't understand picture -- it falls back to whatever is in the <code>img</code> tag.</p> +<p>So, in the final proposal, what happens is Picture wraps an <code>img</code> tag and if the browser is too old to know what to make of a <code><picture></code> element then it loads the fallback <code>img</code> tag. All the accessibility benefits remain since the alt attribute is still on the <code>img</code> element.</p> +<p>Everyone is happy and the web wins.</p> +<h2 id="nice-theory-but-show-me-the-browser">Nice Theory, but Show Me the Browser</h2> +<p>The web only wins if browsers actually support a proposed standard. And at this time last year no browser on the web actually supported Picture.</p> +<p>While Firefox and Chrome had both committed to supporting it, it might be years before it became a priority for either, making Picture little more than a nice theory.</p> +<p>Enter Yoav Weiss, a rare developer who spans the worlds of web development and C++ development. Weiss was a independent contractor who wanted Picture to become a part of the web. Weiss knew C++, the language most browsers are written in, but had never worked on a web browser before.</p> +<p>Still, like Caceres, Weiss was able to bridge a gap, in this case the world of web developers and C++ developers, putting him in a unique position to be able to know what Picture needed to do and how to make it happen. So, after talking it over with other Chromium developers, Weiss started hacking on Blink, the rendering engine that powers Google's Chrome browser.</p> +<p>Implementing Picture was no small task. "Getting Picture into Blink required some infrastructure that wasn't there," says Weiss. "I had two options: either wait for the infrastructure to happen naturally over the course of the next two years, or make it happen myself."</p> +<p>Weiss, who, incidentally, has three young children and, presumably, not much in the way of free time, quickly realized that working night and weekends wasn't going to cut it. Weiss need to turn his work on Picture into a contract job. So he, Marquis and others involved in the community group, set up a <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/picture-element-implementation-in-blink">crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo</a>.</p> +<p>On the face of it it sounds like a doomed proposition -- why would developers fund a feature that will ultimately end up in a web browser they otherwise have no control over?</p> +<p>Then something amazing happened. The campaign didn't just meet its goal, it went way over it. Web developers wanted Picture bad enough to spend their money on the cause.</p> +<p>It could have been the t-shirts. It could have been the novelty of it. Or it could have been that web developers saw how important a solution to the image problem was in a way that the browser makers and standards bodies didn't. Most likely it was some combination of all these and more.</p> +<p>In the end enough money was raised to not only implement Picture in Blink, but to also port Weiss' work back to WebKit so WebKit browsers (including Apple's iOS version of Safari) can use it as well. At the same time Marcos Caceres started work at Mozilla and has helped drive Firefox's support for Picture.</p> +<p>As of today the Picture element will be available in Chrome and Firefox by the end of the year. It's available now in Chrome's dev channel and Firefox 34+ (in Firefox you'll need enable it in <code>about:config</code>). Here's a test page showing the new <a href="https://longhandpixels.net/blog/2014/02/complete-guide-picture-element">Picture element in action</a>.</p> +<p>Apple appears to be adding support to Safari though the backport to WebKit wasn't finished in time for the upcoming Safari 8. Microsoft has likewise been supportive and is considering Picture for the next release of IE.</p> +<h2 id="the-future-of-the-web">The Future of the Web</h2> +<p>The story of the Picture element isn't just an interesting tale of web developers working together to make the web a better place. It's also a glimpse at the future of the web. The separation between between those who build the web and those who create web standards is disappearing. The W3C's community groups are growing and sites like <a href="http://movethewebforward.org/">Move the Web Forward</a> aim to help bridge the gap between developer ideas and standards bodies.</p> +<p>There's even a site devoted to what it calls "<a href="http://specifiction.org/">specifiction</a>" -- giving web developers a place to suggest tools they need, discuss possible solutions and then find the relevant W3C working group to make it happen.</p> +<p>Picture may be almost finished, but the RICG isn't going away. In fact it's renaming itself and taking on a new project -- <a href="http://responsiveimagescg.github.io/eq-usecases/">Element Queries</a>. Coming soon to a browser near you.</p> diff --git a/published/picture.txt b/published/picture.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0e5f634 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/picture.txt @@ -0,0 +1,185 @@ +The web is going to get faster in the very near future. Sadly, this is rare enough to be news. + +The speed bump won't be because our devices are getting faster, though they are. Nor will it be because some giant company created something great, though they probably have. + +The web will be getting faster very soon because a small group of web developers saw a problem and decided to solve it for all of us. + +The problem is images. + +As of August 2014 the [size of the average page in the top 1,000 sites on the web][1] is 1.7MB. Images account for almost 1MB of that 1.7MB. + +If you've got a nice fast fiber connection that image payload isn't such a big deal. But, if you're on a mobile network, that huge image payload is not just slowing you down, it's using up your limited bandwidth and, depending on your mobile data plan, might well be costing you money. + +What makes that image payload doubly annoying when you're using a mobile device is that you're getting images intended for giant monitors and they're being loaded on a screen little bigger than your palm. It's a waste of bandwidth delivering pixels you don't need. + +Web developers recognized this problem very early on in the growth of what was called the "mobile" web back then. + +More recently a few of them banded together to do something that web developers have never done before -- create a new HTML element. + +## In the Beginning Was the "Mobile Web" + +Browsing the web on your phone hasn't always been what it is today. Even browsing the web on the first iPhone, one of the first phones with a real web browser, was still pretty terrible. + +Browsing the web on a small screen back then required constant tapping to zoom in on content that had been optimized for much larger screens. Images took forever to load over the iPhone's slow EDGE network connection and then there was all that Flash content, which didn't load at all. And that was the iPhone. Browsing the web using Blackberry and other OSes crippled mobile browsers was even worse. + +It wasn't necessarily the devices' fault, though mobile browsers did, and in many cases still do, lag well behind their desktop brethren. Most of the problem though was the fault of web developers. The web is inherently flexible, but web developers had made it fixed by optimizing sites for large desktop monitors. + +To fix this a lot of sites started building a second site. It sounds crazy now, but just a few years ago the going solution for handling new devices like the Blackberry, the then-new iPhone and some of the first Android phones was to use server-side device detection scripts and redirect users to a dedicated site for mobile devices, typically a URL like m.domain.com. + +These dedicated mobile URLs -- often referred to as M-dot sites -- typically lacked many features found on their "real" desktop counterparts and often didn't even redirect properly, leaving you on the homepage when you wanted a specific article. + +M-dot websites are a fine example of developers encountering a problem and figuring out a way to make it even worse. + +Luckily for us, most web developers did not jump on the m-dot bandwagon because something much better came along. + +## Responsive Design Killed the M-Dot Star + +In 2010 web developer Ethan Marcotte wrote a little article about something he called [Responsive Web Design][2]. + +Marcotte suggested that with the proliferation of mobile devices and the pain of building these dedicated m-dot sites, it might make more sense to embrace the inherently fluid nature of the web and build websites that were flexible. Sites that used relative widths to fit any screen and worked well no matter what device was accessing it. + +Marcotte's vision gave web developers a way to build sites that flex and rearrange their content based on the size and characteristics of the device in your hand. + +Responsive web design isn't perhaps a panacea, but it's pretty close. + +Responsive design started with a few more prominent developers making their personal sites responsive, but it quickly took off when Marcotte and the developers at the Filament Group redesigned the [Boston Globe][3] website to make it responsive. The Globe redesign showed that responsive design worked for more than developer portfolios and blogs. The Globe redesign showed that responsive design was the way of the future. + +While the Globe redesign was successful from a user standpoint, Marcotte and the Filament Group did run into some problems behind the scenes, particularly with images. + +Marcotte's original article dealt with images by scaling them down using CSS. That made them fit smaller screens and preserve the layout of content, but it also means mobile devices were loading huge images that would never be displayed at full resolution. + +For the most part this is still what happens on nearly every site you visit on a small screen. Web developers know, as the developers building the Globe site knew, that this is a problem, but solving it is not as easy as it seems at first glance. + +In fact solving this problem would require adding a brand new element to HTML. + +## Introducing the Picture Element + +The Picture element story begins with the developers working on the Boston Globe, including Mat Marquis, who would eventually co-author the HTML specification. + +In the beginning though, no one working on the Globe site was thinking about creating new HTML elements. Marquis and the other developers just wanted to build a site that loaded faster on mobile devices. + +As Marquis explains, they thought they had a solution. "We started with an image for mobile and then selectively enhanced it up from there. It was a hack using cookies and JavaScript. It worked up until about a week before the site launched." + +Around this time both Firefox and Chrome were updating their prefetching capabilities and the new image prefetching tools broke the method used on the Globe prototypes. + +Browser prefetching was more than just a problem for the solution originally planed for the Globe site. It's actually the crux of what's so difficult about responsive images. + +When a server sends a page to your browser the browser first downloads all the HTML on the page and then parses it. Or at least that's what used to happen. Modern web browsers attempt to speed up page load times by downloading images *before* parsing the page's body. The browser starts downloading the image long before it knows where that image will be in the page layout or how big it will need to be. + +This is simultaneously a very good thing -- it means images load faster -- and a very tricky thing -- it means using JavaScript to manipulate images can actually slow down your page even when your JavaScript is trying to load smaller images (because you end up fighting the prefetcher and downloading two images). + +Marquis and the rest of the developers working on the site had to scrap their original plan and go back to the drawing board. "We started trying to hash out some solution that we could use going forward... but nothing really materialized." However, they started [writing about the problem][4] and other developers joined the conversation. The quickly learned they were not alone in struggling with responsive images. + +"By this time," Marquis says, "we have 10 or 15 developers and nobody has come up with anything." + +The Globe site ended up launched with no solution -- mobile devices were stuck downloading huge images. + +Soon other prominent developers outside the Globe project started to weigh in with possible solutions, including Google's Paul Irish and Opera's Bruce Lawson. Still, no one was able to craft a solution that covered [all the possible use cases][5] developers had identified. + +"We soon realized," says Marquis, "that, even if we were able to solve this with a clever bit of JavaScript we would be working around browser-level optimizations rather than working with them." In other words, using JavaScript meant fighting the browser's built-in image prefetching. + +Talk then moved to lower-level solutions, including a new HTML element that might somehow get around the image prefetching problems in a way that JavaScript never would. It was Bruce Lawson of Opera who first suggested that a new `<picture>` element might be in order. Though they did not know it at the time, a picture element had been proposed once before, but it never went anywhere. + +## Welcome to Standards Jungle + +It is one thing to decide a new HTML element is needed. It's quite another thing to actually navigate the stratified, labyrinthine world of web standards. Especially if no one on your team has ever done such a thing. + +Perhaps the best thing about being naive though is that you tend to plow forward without the hesitation that attends someone who *knows* how difficult the road ahead it will be. + +And so the developers working on the picture element took their ideas to the WHATWG, one of two groups that oversee the development of HTML. The WHATWG is made up primarily of browser vendors, which makes it a good place to gauge how likely it is that browsers will actually ship your ideas. + +To paraphrase Tolstoy, every standards body is unhappy in its own way, but, as Marquis was about to learn, the WHATWG is perhaps most unhappy when people outside it make suggestions about what it ought to do. Suffice to say that Marquis and the rest of the developers involved did not get the WHATWG interested in a new HTML element. + +Right around this time the W3C, which is where the second group that oversees HTML, the HTML WG, is based, launched a new idea -- community groups. Community groups are the W3C's attempt to get outsiders involved in the standards process, a place to propose problems and work on solutions. + +After being shot down by the WHATWG, someone suggested that the developers start a community group and the [Responsive Images Community Group][6] (RICG) was born. + +The only problem with community groups is that no one in the actual working groups pays any attention to community groups. Or at least they didn't in 2011. + +Blissfully unaware of this, Marquis and hundreds of other developers hashed out a responsive image solution in the community group. + +Much of that effort was thanks to Marcos Caceres, now at Mozilla, who, unlike the rest of the group members, had some experience with writing web standards. That experience allowed Caceres to span the divide between two worlds -- web development and standards development. Caceres organized the RICG's efforts and helped the group produce the kind of use cases and tests that standards bodies are looking for. As Marquis puts it, "Marcos saw us flailing around in IRC and helped get everything organized." + +"I tried to herd all the cats," Caceres jokes. And herd he did. He set up the Github repos to get everything in one place, set up a space for the responsive images site and helped bring everything together into the first use cases document. "This played a really critical role for me and for the community," says Caceres, "because it forced us to articulate what the actual problem was... and to set priorities." + +After months of effort, the RICG brought their ideas to the WHATWG IRC. This also did not go well. As Caceres puts it, "standards bodies like to say 'oh we want a lot of input for developers', but then when developers come it ends in tears. Or it used to." + +If you read the WHATWG IRC logs from that time you'll see that the WHATWG members fall into a classic "not invented here" trap. Not only did they reject the input from developers, they turned around and, without considering the RICG's work at all, [proposed their own solution][7], something called `set`, an attribute that solved only one of the many use cases Marquis and company had already identified. + +Developers were, understandably, miffed. + +With developers pushing Picture and browser makers and standards bodies favoring the far more limited and very confusing (albeit still useful) `set` proposal, it looked like nothing would ever actually come of the RICG's work. + +As Paul Irish put it in the [WHATWG IRC channel][8], "[Marquis] corralled and led a group of the best mobile web developers, created a CG, isolated a solution (from many), fought for and won consensus within the group, wrote a draft spec and proposed it. Basically he's done the thing standards folks really want "authors" to do. Which is why this this feels so defeating." + +Irish was not alone. The developer outcry surrounding the WHATWG's counter proposal was quite vocal, vocal enough that some entirely new proposals surfaced, but browser makers failed to agree on anything. Mozilla killed the WHATWG's idea of `set` on `img`. And Chrome refused to implement Picture as it was defined at the time. + +If this all sounds like a bad soap opera, well, it was. This process is, believe it or not, how the web you're using right now gets made. + +## Invented Here. + +To the credit of the WHATWG, the group did eventually overcome their not-invented-here syndrome. Or at least partially overcame it. + +Compromises started to happen. The RICG rolled support for many of the ideas in`set` into their proposal. That wasn't enough to convince the WHATWG, but it got some members working together with the Marquis and the RICG. The WHATWG still didn't like Picture, but they didn't outright reject it anymore either. + +To an outsider the revision process looks a bit like a game of Ping Pong, except that every time someone hits the ball it changes shape. + +The big breakthrough for Picture came from Opera's Simon Pieters and Apple's Tab Atkins. They made a simple, but powerful, suggestion -- make picture a wrapper for `img`. That way there would not be two separate elements for images on the web (which was rightly considered confusing), but there would still be a new way to control which image the browser displays. + +This is exactly the approach used in the final version of the Picture spec. + +When the browser encounters a Picture element, it first evaluates any rules that the web developer might specify. Opera's developer site has a good article on [all the possibilities Picture offers][9]. Then, after evaluating the various rules, the browser picks the best image based on its own criteria. This is another nice feature since the browser's criteria can include your settings. For example, future browsers might offer an option to stop high-res images from loading over 3G, regardless of what any Picture element on the page might say. Once the browser knows which image is the best choice it actually loads and displays that image in a good old `img` element. + +This solves two big problems -- the browser prefetching problem -- prefetching still works and there's no performance penalty -- and the problem of what to do when the browser doesn't understand picture -- it falls back to whatever is in the `img` tag. + +So, in the final proposal, what happens is Picture wraps an `img` tag and if the browser is too old to know what to make of a `<picture>` element then it loads the fallback `img` tag. All the accessibility benefits remain since the alt attribute is still on the `img` element. + +Everyone is happy and the web wins. + +## Nice Theory, but Show Me the Browser + +The web only wins if browsers actually support a proposed standard. And at this time last year no browser on the web actually supported Picture. + +While Firefox and Chrome had both committed to supporting it, it might be years before it became a priority for either, making Picture little more than a nice theory. + +Enter Yoav Weiss, a rare developer who spans the worlds of web development and C++ development. Weiss was a independent contractor who wanted Picture to become a part of the web. Weiss knew C++, the language most browsers are written in, but had never worked on a web browser before. + +Still, like Caceres, Weiss was able to bridge a gap, in this case the world of web developers and C++ developers, putting him in a unique position to be able to know what Picture needed to do and how to make it happen. So, after talking it over with other Chromium developers, Weiss started hacking on Blink, the rendering engine that powers Google's Chrome browser. + +Implementing Picture was no small task. "Getting Picture into Blink required some infrastructure that wasn't there," says Weiss. "I had two options: either wait for the infrastructure to happen naturally over the course of the next two years, or make it happen myself." + +Weiss, who, incidentally, has three young children and, presumably, not much in the way of free time, quickly realized that working night and weekends wasn't going to cut it. Weiss need to turn his work on Picture into a contract job. So he, Marquis and others involved in the community group, set up a <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/picture-element-implementation-in-blink">crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo</a>. + +On the face of it it sounds like a doomed proposition -- why would developers fund a feature that will ultimately end up in a web browser they otherwise have no control over? + +Then something amazing happened. The campaign didn't just meet its goal, it went way over it. Web developers wanted Picture bad enough to spend their money on the cause. + +It could have been the t-shirts. It could have been the novelty of it. Or it could have been that web developers saw how important a solution to the image problem was in a way that the browser makers and standards bodies didn't. Most likely it was some combination of all these and more. + +In the end enough money was raised to not only implement Picture in Blink, but to also port Weiss' work back to WebKit so WebKit browsers (including Apple's iOS version of Safari) can use it as well. At the same time Marcos Caceres started work at Mozilla and has helped drive Firefox's support for Picture. + +As of today the Picture element will be available in Chrome and Firefox by the end of the year. It's available now in Chrome's dev channel and Firefox 34+ (in Firefox you'll need enable it in `about:config`). Here's a test page showing the new [Picture element in action][10]. + +Apple appears to be adding support to Safari though the backport to WebKit wasn't finished in time for the upcoming Safari 8. Microsoft has likewise been supportive and is considering Picture for the next release of IE. + +## The Future of the Web + +The story of the Picture element isn't just an interesting tale of web developers working together to make the web a better place. It's also a glimpse at the future of the web. The separation between between those who build the web and those who create web standards is disappearing. The W3C's community groups are growing and sites like [Move the Web Forward][11] aim to help bridge the gap between developer ideas and standards bodies. + +There's even a site devoted to what it calls "[specifiction][12]" -- giving web developers a place to suggest tools they need, discuss possible solutions and then find the relevant W3C working group to make it happen. + +Picture may be almost finished, but the RICG isn't going away. In fact it's renaming itself and taking on a new project -- [Element Queries][13]. Coming soon to a browser near you. + +[1]: http://httparchive.org/interesting.php?a=All&l=Aug%2015%202014&s=Top1000 +[2]: http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design +[3]: http://www.bostonglobe.com/ +[4]: http://blog.cloudfour.com/responsive-imgs/ +[5]: http://usecases.responsiveimages.org/ +[6]: http://responsiveimages.org/ +[7]: http://www.w3.org/community/respimg/2012/05/11/respimg-proposal/ +[8]: http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20120510#l-747 +[9]: http://dev.opera.com/articles/native-responsive-images/ +[10]: https://longhandpixels.net/2014/08/picture-test +[11]: http://movethewebforward.org/ +[12]: http://specifiction.org/ +[13]: http://responsiveimagescg.github.io/eq-usecases/ diff --git a/published/ubuntu-anniversary.html b/published/ubuntu-anniversary.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0faf9cd --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu-anniversary.html @@ -0,0 +1,79 @@ +<p>In October of 2004 a new Linux distro appeared on the scene with the curious name, Ubuntu.</p> +<p>There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different Linux distros available, and a new one isn't particularly unusual. Indeed, for some time after its quiet preview announcement Ubuntu went largely unnoticed. It was yet another Debian derivative. It wasn't long, however, before that changed.</p> +<p>Today, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, estimates that there are 25 million Ubuntu users worldwide. Now Ubuntu is poised to launch a mobile version that may well send that number skyrocketing again.</p> +<p>This month marks the tenth anniversary of Ubuntu, here's a look back at the distro through the years, its major ups and downs and a finally a look at the mobile future.</p> +<h2 id="warty-warthog-whats-an-ubuntu">Warty Warthog: What's an Ubuntu?</h2> +[image="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Ubuntu-desktop-2-410-20080706.png" caption="The default desktop of Ubuntu 4.10, Warty Warthog"] +<p>From its launch in 2004, Ubuntu took a different approach to Linux, one that was perhaps best defined by its slogan at the time: "Linux for human beings". The word Ubuntu also recalls the same idea, coming from South African philosophy where it means, literally, "humanness", or, more broadly translated, "humanity toward others".</p> +<p>This distinction is more than simple semantics. It is what makes Ubuntu unique in the annals of Linux history.</p> +<p>The name, combined with the slogan, "Linux for human beings", set Ubuntu apart from other Linux distros of the day, which tended to focus more narrowly on what developers and enterprise users wanted, rather than what "ordinary" desktop users might need. Fedora, for example, takes a very different approach, aiming for users who are also developers and will <a href="http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2010052601135RVRHRL">contribute back to open source</a>.</p> +<p>The focus on "Linux for human beings" set the tone and direction of the Ubuntu project from the beginning. Ubuntu never chased developers. It also did not seem interested in the server market. Instead it was aimed squarely at desktop users (of whom there were significantly fewer in October 2004) and Linux newcomers. The idea was to win over "ordinary" users from Windows.</p> +<p>Ubuntu was started by Mark Shuttleworth, who sold his company Thawte to VeriSign in December 1999 for $575 million. After a short vacation in space, he founded Canonical Ltd. and started work on Ubuntu. Shuttleworth's <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2004-October/000003.html">announcement</a> of the very first Ubuntu release, defines the fledgeling project as a "new Linux distribution that brings together the extraordinary breadth of Debian with a fast and easy install, regular releases... (and) a tight selection of excellent packages."</p> +<p>Those goals -- fast and easy to install, regular releases with support, and a wide range of applications available -- are indeed the basis of what powered Ubuntu to the top of the Linux charts.</p> +<p>Perhaps the most significant of these three goals though, especially in terms of Ubuntu's focus on new, beginning Linux users is the first one -- making Linux easy to install.</p> +<p>By 2004 Debian wasn't difficult to install if you had prior experience with Linux. But for someone accustomed to the installation process offered by Windows XP or Mac OS X, it was, at the very least, intimidating.</p> +<p>Ubuntu on the other hand was just as easy to install as Windows or OS X. You inserted the CD, it booted and you double-clicked the installer.</p> +<p>When prominent Apple supporter Mark Pilgrim switched to Linux he chose Ubuntu, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060707010812/http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/27/diveintomark-show">joking</a> that it was the African word for "can't install Debian."</p> +<p>The focus on newcomers also meant that Ubuntu valued tools experienced Linux users did not, namely graphical installers, well-polished themes and design details like font rendering. Indeed Ubuntu's designers sweated details about anti-aliasing that had previously (seemingly) never been considered in the Linux desktop world.</p> +<p>Ubuntu also distinguished itself by something that was all too uncommon in the free software world of 2004 -- humor. While Shuttleworth's announcement of the initial release is clearly very serious about Ubuntu's goals, don't forget that the nickname for the first version of Ubuntu was "Warty Warthog", a playful reference to the rough edges that any brand new release will likely have.</p> +<p>The cheeky, silly and often awkward naming convention continues to this day (the latest release is nicknamed Utopic Unicorn).</p> +<p>The humor also extended to the famous bug number one. The first bug ever filed for Ubuntu was "<a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1">Microsoft has a majority market share</a>". The tongue in cheek reference to Windows dominance was a nod to the broader Linux community too, which was then drawn together at least as much by what it opposed as what it supported. These days that's not really a concern for Linux. Indeed when he closed it in 2013, Shuttleworth wrote that it was "better for us to focus our intent on excellence in our own right, rather than our impact on someone else's product."</p> +<p>In many ways the closing of bug number one marks Ubuntu's transition from yet another Linux distro to something else, something that the Linux world has never really seen before.</p> +<h2 id="dapper-drake-rising-to-the-top">Dapper Drake: Rising to the top</h2> +[image="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Dapper_with_apps.jpg" caption="The default desktop of Ubuntu 6.06, Dapper Drake, the only release to miss the April release date."] +<p>Ubuntu stuck to its every six months plan, churning out progressively more polished releases from 2004 on. In ten years it has only missed a release deadline once. By 2008 Ubuntu had established itself as the distro of choice for "switchers" moving away from Windows or OS X or even other distros lacking the ease of use Ubuntu offered.</p> +<p>Ubuntu put a friendly face on the otherwise cryptic world of desktop Linux. It offered a simple installation process, the promise of easy updates and great selection of applications all available at the click of a button in the Ubuntu Software Center.</p> +<p>In short Ubuntu achieved its goals.</p> +<p>Even those who don't like Ubuntu's take on the Linux desktop benefited from it over the years as many of its defining characteristics, particularly the installation process and focus on well designed desktop experience, became a priority in other projects. The result of Ubuntu's design efforts rippled out through the wider Linux world.</p> +<p>Then came the GNOME 3 fork in the road. GNOME, which had been Ubuntu's default desktop since it launched, decided to redesign its desktop interface. The new GNOME Shell interface was not what Ubuntu wanted. Instead the company decided to write its own shell and desktop interface.</p> +<p>End users wouldn't actually see the results of Ubuntu's decision for some time, but the project's decision to move away from GNOME started a trickle of criticism that would continue to build until Ubuntu's Unity desktop was revealed in 11.04.</p> +<h2 id="intrepid-ibex-its-lonely-at-the-top">Intrepid Ibex: It's lonely at the top</h2> +[image="intrepid-ibex.png" caption="The default desktop of Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex"] +<p>The move away from GNOME did not hurt Ubuntu's adoption rate. It remains the most popular Linux distro by a wide margin, which makes it, among other things, the most popular target for critics. Linux, like every other tightly knit subculture on the internet, seems to hate a runaway success, especially one that violates so many of the subculture's taboos.</p> +<p>Violating unwritten Linux taboos became something of an Ubuntu sport over the years. And the critics were there at every turn, even right at the start.</p> +<p>As part of its initial launch, Canonical also unveiled the Launchpad project hosting platform, but did not release it under an open source license for another four years which angered some who saw Canonical as saying one thing and doing another.</p> +<p>Then there were gripes about Ubuntu developers not contributing to the kernel. And then there was the brown theme. Then the purple theme. Then the window buttons moved to the left of the window. The changes got smaller, the nits got pickier, but no quieter or less vehement. There's always someone very vocally unhappy about what Ubuntu is doing.</p> +<p>For many though it all culminated in Unity, which first debuted in 11.04 or Natty Narwhal (technically it debuted in the netbook remix of 10.10, but that was not widely used). Unity began life as an alternative shell for GNOME 3, but wasn't all that different than GNOME 3. Each successive release though has used fewer and fewer underlying GNOME and GTK tools. Whether you love Unity or hate it, it is very clearly Ubuntu's own thing at this point. GNOME is still there under the hood (it needs to be for all the third-party GNOME-based apps that ship with Ubuntu), but Unity relies on it less and less.</p> +<p>Unity was, at least initially, a bit rough around the edges, but what seemed to irk most angry users was simply that it was different. It was not the Ubuntu they had come to know and love.</p> +<p>But Ubuntu has rarely backed down due to criticism. And when it has reversed course it's usually been a result of feedback from its actual community of users rather than outside critics. Instead, Ubuntu just keeps on pushing ahead with its vision of Linux which, increasingly, bears little resemblance to the rest of the Linux community.</p> +<p>These days Ubuntu is less a traditional Linux distro and more somewhat like OS X is to BSD. That is, Ubuntu still runs atop a Debian GNU/Linux base and it still uses a Linux kernel, just as somewhere underneath the OS X paint job lies BSD. But much of what the desktop user experiences and interacts with on a daily basis in Ubuntu is a wholly Ubuntu creation.</p> +<p>This chasm between Ubuntu and the rest of the Linux world will be widening in the next few years as Ubuntu builds its own Mir display server and moves into the mobile space with Ubuntu Touch running on phones and tablets.</p> +<p>No matter how that ends up there's one very safe prediction: Ubuntu will continue to blaze its own path through the Linux woods.</p> +<p>It's also a safe bet to assume the critics will continue as well. Critics hate utopias. If there's nothing wrong there's nothing to scream about. This seems especially true of Linux reviewers (myself included at times). That's not, however, to say that all criticisms leveled at Ubuntu are without merit.</p> +<p>The lack of contributions to the kernel project relative to other distros is worrying for anyone interested in the overall health of the Linux ecosystem. If the most popular Linux distro in the world has nothing to contribute, well, that doesn't bode well for the future.</p> +<p>For every storm brewed in the Ubuntu teacup there is another worth talking about. Ubuntu is far from perfect, but it is one of the distros most willing to experiment and, perhaps most importantly, admit when it's wrong.</p> +<h2 id="utopic-unicorn-imagining-utopia">Utopic Unicorn: Imagining Utopia</h2> +[image="utopic-unicorn.png" caption="The default desktop of Ubuntu 14.10, Utopic Unicorn"] +<p>There's almost nothing new in the latest version of Ubuntu, 14.10, which arrives alongside the ten year anniversary of the project. There's a kernel update, a few application updates, but nothing major from Ubuntu itself.</p> +<p>There is one bit of good news in the daily builds though, Ubuntu has started work on a major change that will fix the perhaps the biggest tarnishing marks in Ubuntu's history -- removing the privacy-invading online search features.</p> +<p>One of the best parts of Unity is the Dash, a single search interface that will find apps, documents, music, images and all sorts of other data on your machine. It's the cornerstone of the Unity interface. The first few releases of Unity focused on local search, but in 12.04 Ubuntu added a feature that enabled online searches as well.</p> +<p>Some users found this incredibly useful. Others, myself included, found it incredibly invasive and the fact that Ubuntu suddenly started shipping with a <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/privacy-policy/third-parties">privacy policy</a> sent many a privacy conscious user scurrying to less "innovative" distros.</p> +<p>What has always been most troubling about the search features in Unity Dash is that they are enabled by default. Given that very few users change default settings, especially new Linux users, which is Ubuntu's target audience, it effectively means that users may not even be aware that their data is being transmitted to Canonical's servers and then routed on to Amazon and elsewhere.</p> +<p>Free software icon Richard Stallman branded Ubuntu 12.04 "<a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do">spyware</a>". Even the more restrained Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks">asked</a> Canonical to turn off the Amazon Lens by default and devoted a series of how-tos on securing Ubuntu.</p> +<p>For two years Canonical has not backed down on the Amazon search lens, though it did eventually make sure that Amazon responses were served over HTTPS, making it somewhat more secure for users.</p> +<p>It wasn't simply the Amazon controversy that bothered many users though, it was Canonical and specifically Shuttleworth's response to the criticism that riled many.</p> +<p>When asked about it Shuttleworth defended the search tools <a href="http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182">writing</a>, "We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don't trust us? Erm, we have root." While technically correct in the sense that you have to trust someone, there's a huge difference between trusting FLOSS software updates with published source code and trusting Canonical to keep your private data secure. The former requires trust, the latter asks for blind faith.</p> +<p>Canonical further fanned the flames of the privacy fire by <a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/canonical-abused-trademark-law-to-target-a-site-critical-of-ubuntu-privacy/">sending a DMCA takedown notice</a> to an EFF staffer who created a site fixubuntu.com, which was critical of Unity's search tools. The DMCA notice protested the use of Canonical trademarks, but, as the EFF put it in a response, "your request is not supported by trademark law and interferes with protected speech." While fixubuntu ended up complying, the move felt heavy-handed. (It's worth noting that fixubuntu was recently forked to create <a href="https://fix-macosx.com/">fix-macosx.com</a>, which addresses a similar on-by-default search tool in OS X Yosemite).</p> +<p>No matter what their intentions may have been, Canonical and Shuttleworth came across like bullies, claiming to have root access to your machine and unafraid to twist trademark law to silence critics. That's about what you'd expect from Microsoft, but this kind of bullying is less common in the free software world.</p> +<p>It's worth looking at the rest of what what Shuttleworth wrote in that post though. "You do trust us with your data already," he continues. "You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update. You trust Debian, and you trust a large swathe of the open source community. And most importantly, you trust us to address it when, being human, we err."</p> +<p>That last bit is especially relevant in this case, and it matters for two reasons. First, Shuttleworth <a href="http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1299">apologized for the DMCA takedown notice</a> and it has never happened again.</p> +<p>More importantly, Ubuntu is reversing course on the Amazon search lens. Sally Radwan, Product Marketing Manager at Canonical, tells Ars that, "the opt-in by default is not set to land in 14.10... [but] it is in the development pipeline for 15.04." That is, Amazon and the rest of the online search features will soon be opt-in (if you update from an existing install it will still be there, but it's disabled for fresh installs of the latest daily builds). In short, Ubuntu is fixing its mistake, though it has taken a little while.</p> +<p>Still, better late than never. Because you do have to trust someone. Like it or not Ubuntu or whatever your OS of choice is does have root access to your machine. Not literally of course, but effectively given that their code is running with root privileges on your machine and chances are you haven't reviewed it lately. You trust your distro to make sure that code is secure, stable and acting in your best interests and you trust them to update it when something goes wrong.</p> +<p>You could look at Ubuntu's privacy fiasco pessimistically, as proof that Ubuntu is out to get you. Or, you could take the more optimistic view that Ubuntu is willing to fix things when it makes bad decisions.</p> +<p>Ubuntu rebranded itself on 2010 and dropped the "Linux for human beings" slogan. It's not as catchy, but Ubuntu might do well to bring back its old slogan with slight update: Linux for human beings who make mistakes, but try to fix them.</p> +<h2 id="vivid-vervet-the-mobile-future">Vivid Vervet: The Mobile Future</h2> +<p>Ubuntu recently announced that next year's 15.04 release will be named Vivid Vervet. While Shuttleworth tends to focus on the animal names in his announcement, looking back over Ubuntu's history reveals that the word accompanying the animal is often the more defining element. From "Warty", which was a warts and all release, to Lucid, when Ubuntu seems to have developed a more distinct sense of visual and UI direction, to Vivid, which envisions a bright future.</p> +<p>I mentioned earlier that there is almost nothing new from Canonical in Ubuntu 14.10. The reason for that is that the project has had all available hands working on its Unity 8 mobile interface. The Ubuntu Phone is coming and for now the desktop is taking a back seat.</p> +<p>Eventually the two will, to use Shuttleworth's word, converge. Convergence for Ubuntu isn't just a marketing term, it also seems to be the development strategy. That is, Unity 8 is taking shape on mobile devices and eventually that work will be extended to embrace the desktop as well. There's already a "flavor" known as Ubuntu Next if you'd like to preview Unity 8 today.</p> +<p>The only problem for Ubuntu is, well, what if it builds a Linux phone and no one comes?</p> +<p>The proposed Ubuntu Edge phone already has the vivid distinction of being the largest and most <a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/ubuntu-edge-is-dead-long-live-ubuntu-phones/">spectacularly failed campaign</a> in crowdfunding history.</p> +<p>Ubuntu missed its grandiose $32 million dollar goal by nearly $19 million in last year's effort to raise money from Linux enthusiasts directly. Seen from a more optimistic angle, the $12 million it did raise makes the Edge the biggest ever fixed crowdfunding campaign.</p> +<p>Canonical is having better luck on the software front. It's not something most people would want to use yet, but Ubuntu Touch exists and will <a href="http://developer.ubuntu.com/start/ubuntu-for-devices/devices/">run on a variety of Nexus devices</a>. Devices with Ubuntu Touch preloaded are rumored to be in coming any day now.</p> +<h2 id="warty-warthog-the-sequel">Warty Warthog, The Sequel</h2> +<p>Any numbers surrounding the use of Linux are suspect simply because it's very hard to track by distro, but, that said, Canonical tells Ars that the company estimates there are "around 25 million Ubuntu desktop users in over 240 countries."</p> +<p>Those numbers make Ubuntu the world’s third most popular PC OS, and Canonical claims to have around 90 percent of the Linux market.</p> +<p>While this retrospective focused on the desktop, Ubuntu is no slouch in the server market these days. It now accounts for over <a href="http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1373">55% of all OpenStack deployments</a> and around, according to the company, 70 percent of guest OSes "on major global public cloud environments."</p> +<p>Even if Ubuntu Touch tanks and Ubuntu goes crawling home with its tail between its legs it will have an impressive home to return to.</p> +<p>It's hasn't been a perfect ten years, but it's difficult to imagine where Linux would be today without Ubuntu. When it debuted in 2004 the most popular desktop was KDE 3.5, the default theme of which looked like a sad clone of Windows 95.</p> +<p>Ten years later Linux is everywhere you look and most often it's Ubuntu Linux that you see.</p> +<p>Ubuntu has become the friendly public face of Linux. But, As Shuttleworth <a href="http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/517">wrote on his blog</a> several years ago, "free software is bigger than any one project. It's bigger than the Linux kernel, it's bigger than GNU, it's bigger than GNOME and KDE, it's bigger than Ubuntu and Fedora and Debian. Each of those projects plays a role, but it is the whole which is really changing the world."</p> diff --git a/published/ubuntu-anniversary.txt b/published/ubuntu-anniversary.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b969074 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu-anniversary.txt @@ -0,0 +1,157 @@ +In October of 2004 a new Linux distro appeared on the scene with the curious name, Ubuntu. + +There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different Linux distros available, and a new one isn't particularly unusual. Indeed, for some time after its quiet preview announcement Ubuntu went largely unnoticed. It was yet another Debian derivative. It wasn't long, however, before that changed. + +Today, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, estimates that there are 25 million Ubuntu users worldwide. Now Ubuntu is poised to launch a mobile version that may well send that number skyrocketing again. + +This month marks the tenth anniversary of Ubuntu, here's a look back at the distro through the years, its major ups and downs and a finally a look at the mobile future. + +## Warty Warthog: What's an Ubuntu? + +[image="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Ubuntu-desktop-2-410-20080706.png" caption="The default desktop of Ubuntu 4.10, Warty Warthog"] + +From its launch in 2004, Ubuntu took a different approach to Linux, one that was perhaps best defined by its slogan at the time: "Linux for human beings". The word Ubuntu also recalls the same idea, coming from South African philosophy where it means, literally, "humanness", or, more broadly translated, "humanity toward others". + +This distinction is more than simple semantics. It is what makes Ubuntu unique in the annals of Linux history. + +The name, combined with the slogan, "Linux for human beings", set Ubuntu apart from other Linux distros of the day, which tended to focus more narrowly on what developers and enterprise users wanted, rather than what "ordinary" desktop users might need. Fedora, for example, takes a very different approach, aiming for users who are also developers and will [contribute back to open source](http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2010052601135RVRHRL). + +The focus on "Linux for human beings" set the tone and direction of the Ubuntu project from the beginning. Ubuntu never chased developers. It also did not seem interested in the server market. Instead it was aimed squarely at desktop users (of whom there were significantly fewer in October 2004) and Linux newcomers. The idea was to win over "ordinary" users from Windows. + +Ubuntu was started by Mark Shuttleworth, who sold his company Thawte to VeriSign in December 1999 for $575 million. After a short vacation in space, he founded Canonical Ltd. and started work on Ubuntu. Shuttleworth's [announcement](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2004-October/000003.html) of the very first Ubuntu release, defines the fledgeling project as a "new Linux distribution that brings together the extraordinary breadth of Debian with a fast and easy install, regular releases... (and) a tight selection of excellent packages." + +Those goals -- fast and easy to install, regular releases with support, and a wide range of applications available -- are indeed the basis of what powered Ubuntu to the top of the Linux charts. + +Perhaps the most significant of these three goals though, especially in terms of Ubuntu's focus on new, beginning Linux users is the first one -- making Linux easy to install. + +By 2004 Debian wasn't difficult to install if you had prior experience with Linux. But for someone accustomed to the installation process offered by Windows XP or Mac OS X, it was, at the very least, intimidating. + +Ubuntu on the other hand was just as easy to install as Windows or OS X. You inserted the CD, it booted and you double-clicked the installer. + +When prominent Apple supporter Mark Pilgrim switched to Linux he chose Ubuntu, [joking](https://web.archive.org/web/20060707010812/http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/27/diveintomark-show) that it was the African word for "can't install Debian." + +The focus on newcomers also meant that Ubuntu valued tools experienced Linux users did not, namely graphical installers, well-polished themes and design details like font rendering. Indeed Ubuntu's designers sweated details about anti-aliasing that had previously (seemingly) never been considered in the Linux desktop world. + +Ubuntu also distinguished itself by something that was all too uncommon in the free software world of 2004 -- humor. While Shuttleworth's announcement of the initial release is clearly very serious about Ubuntu's goals, don't forget that the nickname for the first version of Ubuntu was "Warty Warthog", a playful reference to the rough edges that any brand new release will likely have. + +The cheeky, silly and often awkward naming convention continues to this day (the latest release is nicknamed Utopic Unicorn). + +The humor also extended to the famous bug number one. The first bug ever filed for Ubuntu was "[Microsoft has a majority market share](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1)". The tongue in cheek reference to Windows dominance was a nod to the broader Linux community too, which was then drawn together at least as much by what it opposed as what it supported. These days that's not really a concern for Linux. Indeed when he closed it in 2013, Shuttleworth wrote that it was "better for us to focus our intent on excellence in our own right, rather than our impact on someone else's product." + +In many ways the closing of bug number one marks Ubuntu's transition from yet another Linux distro to something else, something that the Linux world has never really seen before. Something which [no longer uses the word Linux](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=linux%20site%3Aubuntu.com) anywhere on its main website. + +## Dapper Drake: Rising to the top + +[image="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Dapper_with_apps.jpg" caption="The default desktop of Ubuntu 6.06, Dapper Drake, the only release to miss the April release date."] + +Ubuntu stuck to its every six months plan, churning out progressively more polished releases from 2004 on. In ten years it has only missed a release deadline once. By 2008 Ubuntu had established itself as the distro of choice for "switchers" moving away from Windows or OS X or even other distros lacking the ease of use Ubuntu offered. + +Ubuntu put a friendly face on the otherwise cryptic world of desktop Linux. It offered a simple installation process, the promise of easy updates and great selection of applications all available at the click of a button in the Ubuntu Software Center. + +In short Ubuntu achieved its goals. + +Even those who don't like Ubuntu's take on the Linux desktop benefited from it over the years as many of its defining characteristics, particularly the installation process and focus on well designed desktop experience, became a priority in other projects. The result of Ubuntu's design efforts rippled out through the wider Linux world. + +Then came the GNOME 3 fork in the road. GNOME, which had been Ubuntu's default desktop since it launched, decided to redesign its desktop interface. The new GNOME Shell interface was not what Ubuntu wanted. Instead the company decided to write its own shell and desktop interface. + +End users wouldn't actually see the results of Ubuntu's decision for some time, but the project's decision to move away from GNOME started a trickle of criticism that would continue to build until Ubuntu's Unity desktop was revealed in 11.04. + +## Intrepid Ibex: It's lonely at the top + +[image="intrepid-ibex.png" caption="The default desktop of Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex"] + +The move away from GNOME did not hurt Ubuntu's adoption rate. It remains the most popular Linux distro by a wide margin, which makes it, among other things, the most popular target for critics. Linux, like every other tightly knit subculture on the internet, seems to hate a runaway success, especially one that violates so many of the subculture's taboos. + +Violating unwritten Linux taboos became something of an Ubuntu sport over the years. And the critics were there at every turn, even right at the start. + +As part of its initial launch, Canonical also unveiled the Launchpad project hosting platform, but did not release it under an open source license for another four years which angered some who saw Canonical as saying one thing and doing another. + +Then there were gripes about Ubuntu developers not contributing to the kernel. And then there was the brown theme. Then the purple theme. Then the window buttons moved to the left of the window. The changes got smaller, the nits got pickier, but no quieter or less vehement. There's always someone very vocally unhappy about what Ubuntu is doing. + +For many though it all culminated in Unity, which first debuted in 11.04 or Natty Narwhal (technically it debuted in the netbook remix of 10.10, but that was not widely used). Unity began life as an alternative shell for GNOME 3, but wasn't all that different than GNOME 3. Each successive release though has used fewer and fewer underlying GNOME and GTK tools. Whether you love Unity or hate it, it is very clearly Ubuntu's own thing at this point. GNOME is still there under the hood (it needs to be for all the third-party GNOME-based apps that ship with Ubuntu), but Unity relies on it less and less. + +Unity was, at least initially, a bit rough around the edges, but what seemed to irk most angry users was simply that it was different. It was not the Ubuntu they had come to know and love. + +But Ubuntu has rarely backed down due to criticism. And when it has reversed course it's usually been a result of feedback from its actual community of users rather than outside critics. Instead, Ubuntu just keeps on pushing ahead with its vision of Linux which, increasingly, bears little resemblance to the rest of the Linux community. + +These days Ubuntu is less a traditional Linux distro and more somewhat like OS X is to BSD. That is, Ubuntu still runs atop a Debian GNU/Linux base and it still uses a Linux kernel, just as somewhere underneath the OS X paint job lies BSD. But much of what the desktop user experiences and interacts with on a daily basis in Ubuntu is a wholly Ubuntu creation. + +This chasm between Ubuntu and the rest of the Linux world will be widening in the next few years as Ubuntu builds its own Mir display server and moves into the mobile space with Ubuntu Touch running on phones and tablets. + +No matter how that ends up there's one very safe prediction: Ubuntu will continue to blaze its own path through the Linux woods. + +It's also a safe bet to assume the critics will continue as well. Critics hate utopias. If there's nothing wrong there's nothing to scream about. This seems especially true of Linux reviewers (myself included at times). That's not, however, to say that all criticisms leveled at Ubuntu are without merit. + +The lack of contributions to the kernel project relative to other distros is worrying for anyone interested in the overall health of the Linux ecosystem. If the most popular Linux distro in the world has nothing to contribute, well, that doesn't bode well for the future. + +For every storm brewed in the Ubuntu teacup there is another worth talking about. Ubuntu is far from perfect, but it is one of the distros most willing to experiment and, perhaps most importantly, admit when it's wrong. + +## Utopic Unicorn: Imagining Utopia + +[image="utopic-unicorn.png" caption="The default desktop of Ubuntu 14.10, Utopic Unicorn"] + +There's almost nothing new in the latest version of Ubuntu, 14.10, which arrives alongside the ten year anniversary of the project. There's a kernel update, a few application updates, but nothing major from Ubuntu itself. + +There is one bit of good news in the daily builds though, Ubuntu has started work on a major change that will fix the perhaps the biggest tarnishing marks in Ubuntu's history -- removing the privacy-invading online search features. + +One of the best parts of Unity is the Dash, a single search interface that will find apps, documents, music, images and all sorts of other data on your machine. It's the cornerstone of the Unity interface. The first few releases of Unity focused on local search, but in 12.04 Ubuntu added a feature that enabled online searches as well. + +Some users found this incredibly useful. Others, myself included, found it incredibly invasive and the fact that Ubuntu suddenly started shipping with a [privacy policy](http://www.ubuntu.com/privacy-policy/third-parties) sent many a privacy conscious user scurrying to less "innovative" distros. + +What has always been most troubling about the search features in Unity Dash is that they are enabled by default. Given that very few users change default settings, especially new Linux users, which is Ubuntu's target audience, it effectively means that users may not even be aware that their data is being transmitted to Canonical's servers and then routed on to Amazon and elsewhere. + +Free software icon Richard Stallman branded Ubuntu 12.04 "[spyware](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do)". Even the more restrained Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) [asked](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks) Canonical to turn off the Amazon Lens by default and devoted a series of how-tos on securing Ubuntu. + +For two years Canonical has not backed down on the Amazon search lens, though it did eventually make sure that Amazon responses were served over HTTPS, making it somewhat more secure for users. + +It wasn't simply the Amazon controversy that bothered many users though, it was Canonical and specifically Shuttleworth's response to the criticism that riled many. + +When asked about it Shuttleworth defended the search tools [writing](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182), "We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don't trust us? Erm, we have root." While technically correct in the sense that you have to trust someone, there's a huge difference between trusting FLOSS software updates with published source code and trusting Canonical to keep your private data secure. The former requires trust, the latter asks for blind faith. + +Canonical further fanned the flames of the privacy fire by [sending a DMCA takedown notice](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/canonical-abused-trademark-law-to-target-a-site-critical-of-ubuntu-privacy/) to an EFF staffer who created a site fixubuntu.com, which was critical of Unity's search tools. The DMCA notice protested the use of Canonical trademarks, but, as the EFF put it in a response, "your request is not supported by trademark law and interferes with protected speech." While fixubuntu ended up complying, the move felt heavy-handed. (It's worth noting that fixubuntu was recently forked to create [fix-macosx.com](https://fix-macosx.com/), which addresses a similar on-by-default search tool in OS X Yosemite). + +No matter what their intentions may have been, Canonical and Shuttleworth came across like bullies, claiming to have root access to your machine and unafraid to twist trademark law to silence critics. That's about what you'd expect from Microsoft, but this kind of bullying is less common in the free software world. + +It's worth looking at the rest of what what Shuttleworth wrote in that post though. "You do trust us with your data already," he continues. "You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update. You trust Debian, and you trust a large swathe of the open source community. And most importantly, you trust us to address it when, being human, we err." + +That last bit is especially relevant in this case, and it matters for two reasons. First, Shuttleworth [apologized for the DMCA takedown notice](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1299) and it has never happened again. + +More importantly, Ubuntu is reversing course on the Amazon search lens. Sally Radwan, Product Marketing Manager at Canonical, tells Ars that, "the opt-in by default is not set to land in 14.10... [but] it is in the development pipeline for 15.04." That is, Amazon and the rest of the online search features will soon be opt-in (if you update from an existing install it will still be there, but it's disabled for fresh installs of the latest daily builds). In short, Ubuntu is fixing its mistake, though it has taken a little while. + +Still, better late than never. Because you do have to trust someone. Like it or not Ubuntu or whatever your OS of choice is does have root access to your machine. Not literally of course, but effectively given that their code is running with root privileges on your machine and chances are you haven't reviewed it lately. You trust your distro to make sure that code is secure, stable and acting in your best interests and you trust them to update it when something goes wrong. + +You could look at Ubuntu's privacy fiasco pessimistically, as proof that Ubuntu is out to get you. Or, you could take the more optimistic view that Ubuntu is willing to fix things when it makes bad decisions. + +Ubuntu rebranded itself on 2010 and dropped the "Linux for human beings" slogan. It's not as catchy, but Ubuntu might do well to bring back its old slogan with slight update: Linux for human beings who make mistakes, but try to fix them. + +## Vivid Vervet: The Mobile Future + +Ubuntu recently announced that next year's 15.04 release will be named Vivid Vervet. While Shuttleworth tends to focus on the animal names in his announcement, looking back over Ubuntu's history reveals that the word accompanying the animal is often the more defining element. From "Warty", which was a warts and all release, to Lucid, when Ubuntu seems to have developed a more distinct sense of visual and UI direction, to Vivid, which envisions a bright future. + +I mentioned earlier that there is almost nothing new from Canonical in Ubuntu 14.10. The reason for that is that the project has had all available hands working on its Unity 8 mobile interface. The Ubuntu Phone is coming and for now the desktop is taking a back seat. + +Eventually the two will, to use Shuttleworth's word, converge. Convergence for Ubuntu isn't just a marketing term, it also seems to be the development strategy. That is, Unity 8 is taking shape on mobile devices and eventually that work will be extended to embrace the desktop as well. There's already a "flavor" known as Ubuntu Next if you'd like to preview Unity 8 today. + +The only problem for Ubuntu is, well, what if it builds a Linux phone and no one comes? + +The proposed Ubuntu Edge phone already has the vivid distinction of being the largest and most [spectacularly failed campaign](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/ubuntu-edge-is-dead-long-live-ubuntu-phones/) in crowdfunding history. + +Ubuntu missed its grandiose $32 million dollar goal by $19 million in last year's effort to raise money from Linux enthusiasts directly. Seen from a more optimistic angle, the $12 million it did raise makes the Edge the biggest ever fixed crowdfunding campaign. + +Canonical is having better luck on the software front. It's not something most people would want to use yet, but Ubuntu Touch exists and will [run on a variety of Nexus devices](http://developer.ubuntu.com/start/ubuntu-for-devices/devices/). Devices with Ubuntu Touch preloaded are rumored to be in coming any day now. + +## Warty Warthog, The Sequel + +Any numbers surrounding the use of Linux are suspect simply because it's very hard to track by distro, but, that said, Canonical tells Ars that the company estimates there are "around 25 million Ubuntu desktop users in over 240 countries." + +Those numbers make Ubuntu the world’s third most popular PC OS, and Canonical claims to have around 90 percent of the Linux market. + +While this retrospective focused on the desktop, Ubuntu is no slouch in the server market these days. It now accounts for over [55% of all OpenStack deployments](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1373) and around, according to the company, 70 percent of guest OSes "on major global public cloud environments." + +Even if Ubuntu Touch tanks and Ubuntu goes crawling home with its tail between its legs it will have an impressive home to return to. + +It's hasn't been a perfect ten years, but it's difficult to imagine where Linux would be today without Ubuntu. When it debuted in 2004 the most popular desktop was KDE 3.5, the default theme of which looked like a sad clone of Windows 95. + +Ten years later Linux is everywhere you look and most often it's Ubuntu Linux that you see. + +Ubuntu has become the friendly public face of Linux. But, As Shuttleworth [wrote on his blog](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/517) several years ago, "free software is bigger than any one project. It's bigger than the Linux kernel, it's bigger than GNU, it's bigger than GNOME and KDE, it's bigger than Ubuntu and Fedora and Debian. Each of those projects plays a role, but it is the whole which is really changing the world." diff --git a/published/ubuntu1404/arsubuntureview.html b/published/ubuntu1404/arsubuntureview.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..91054db --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1404/arsubuntureview.html @@ -0,0 +1,109 @@ +<p>Canonical pushed out Ubuntu 14.04 last week. This release is the first Ubuntu Long Term Support release in two years and will be supported for five years.</p> +<p>It feels like, for Canonical at least, this Long Term Support release couldn't have come at a worse time. The company is caught in a transitional phase as it moves from a desktop operating system to a platform that spans devices.</p> +<p>The problem for Canonical is that it's only about 90 percent of the way to platform spanning OS, but it just so happens that the company's release schedule calls for a Long Term Support release now.</p> +<p>Long Term Support releases are typically more conservative releases that focus on stability and long term maintenance rather than experimental or flashy new features. Things 90 percent done don't make it into LTS releases. And, unfortunately for Canonical, most of its huge foundation shaking changes for the future of Ubuntu are currently only about 90 percent done and thus not part of this release.</p> +<p>The two biggest changes on the horizon are the Mir graphics stack and Unity 8, neither of which are part of 14.04.</p> +<p>Mir just isn't ready for prime time yet and even the half-way step of xMir (which falls back to the X display server when it needs to) isn't ready enough to land in an LTS release. Were this <em>not</em> an LTS release it seems likely xMir at least would be included. As it stands, the graphics stack in 14.04 is -- aside from incremental upgrades -- the same as it was in last year's 13.10.</p> +<p>Likewise, Unity 8 will not make its debut in this release. The next version of Ubuntu's flagship UI isn't quite there yet, at least on the desktop. This puts Canonical in the unfortunate position of needing to now support Unity 7 on the desktop for 5 years going forward.</p> +<p>Ubuntu is planning to ship its first mobile devices later this year -- which will use Unity 8, since the mobile version is much further along than the desktop. Thus when Ubuntu Mobile launches Canonical will find itself having to maintain two separate platforms, both Unity 7 and 8, with Unity 7 desktops hanging around for a minimum of five years.</p> +<p>While Ubuntu 14.04 might be most notable for what it is not -- namely the next-generation version of the Ubuntu desktop -- it is nevertheless an important update because for those users sticking with LTS releases it represents the first major change in two years. And a lot has happened in Ubuntu land in the time since 12.04 was released.</p> +<p>There have been major leaps forward in the form of upstream kernel updates, application updates and several major user interface changes in Unity.</p> +<p>It's also the first time LTS users will have to deal with the Amazon Search Lens and Ubuntu's new privacy policy.</p> +<h2 id="the-kernel">The Kernel</h2> +<p>At the core of Ubuntu 14.04 is the Linux kernel 3.13.0-24.</p> +<p>The previous release, Ubuntu 13.10, used the 3.11 kernel, and the last LTS release, 12.04.4, currently ships with 3.8. A lot has changed since 3.8, primarily in the form of better hardware support, but there are some welcome improvements in this latest kernel release even for those already running 3.11 in Ubuntu 13.10.</p> +<p>How much the kernel update impacts your Ubuntu experience will depend a little bit on your hardware. For example, if you've got dual GPU hardware that uses Nvidia Optimus to switch between GPUs -- one optimized for performance and the other for conserving power -- the move from 12.04 to 14.04 will be huge. As of the 3.12 kernel there's now low-level support of GPU switching (which should happen automatically).</p> +<p>Users with SSD-based machines should see better performance in this release, partly because of some improvements in the kernel, but also because Ubuntu now ships with TRIM features enabled by default. There are some horror stories about TRIM support in Linux floating around the web, but those issues have largely been solved.</p> +<p>That means you can delete those cron jobs running the fstrim command and stop worrying about adding "discard" to all your fstab entries. Ubuntu 14.04 will handle this automatically right out of the box. If you're running Ubuntu on an SSD you will likely notice a speed improvement, particularly in anything that requires a lot of data being written to disk.</p> +<p>Another of the headline-worthy changes in the 3.13 kernel is the addition of support for <a href="http://netfilter.org/projects/nftables/">nftables</a>, which will eventually replace the iptables firewall tool. Nftables is more than just a replacement for iptables, it's a complete reworking of the way the kernel handles packet filtering. Right now nftables is not quite ready for prime time, and the command line tool nft is not installed by default. But when the 3.15 kernel rolls around (which will be well within the lifespan of Ubuntu 14.04) nftables can replace your iptables-based firewall.</p> +<h2 id="battery-life-improvements">Battery Life Improvements</h2> +<p>Power management remains one of the weak points in Linux, with battery life lagging far behind what you'll find in Windows and OS X running on the same hardware.</p> +<p>The good news for laptop users is that several recent kernel updates related to power management have dramatically improved battery life and these are all part of Ubuntu 14.04.</p> +<p>I started using 14.04 when the final beta was released in March and immediately noticed a huge difference in battery life on my primary machine, an early-2013 Retina Macbook Pro. It's hard to say whether these improvements come from the kernel updates or perhaps some Unity-level improvements, but whichever is responsible it's a big improvement over Ubuntu 12.04.</p> +<p>I typically use only a handful of apps, primarily a web browser -- Chromium with anywhere 20-80 tabs -- and a Terminal session with several Tmux sessions running inside it which I attach and detach depending on what I'm doing (for development and writing I run zsh, python, ruby, vim, mutt, cmus). None of that should produce a huge battery drain. I also occasionally use Darktable and Gimp for image editing, which of course shortens the battery life. I should note that I use a <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg?hl=en">Chromium add-on</a> which suspends background tabs and significantly reduces Chromium's overall system footprint even with the large number of tabs I typically keep open.</p> +<p>This setup, which is pretty minimalist in terms of battery draining apps, would in Ubuntu 12.04 still manage to drain the battery in under 4 hours, sometimes not lasting much more than 3 hours. I switched to running Ubuntu in VMWare (using OS X as the base system) and battery life improved somewhat, consistently lasting about 4 hours, but that's still not very good.</p> +<p>In 14.04 with the same workload on the same machine the battery lasts just over 4.5 hours on average. That's actually a pretty significant improvement and would be worthy of praise did it not still lag far behind OS X (6.5 hrs) and the minimalist Crunchbang Waldorf (currently my primary OS), which lasts nearly as long as OS X itself -- well over 6 hrs. Crunchbang and Ubuntu share the same Debian core and Linux kernel, which most likely makes Ubuntu's Unity interface the primary source of the additional battery drain.</p> +<p>That's been my experience with battery life thus far in 14.04, but remember that real-world battery stats are highly subjective. Hardware, system setup and the details of what you do make it nearly impossible to guarantee anything. That said, based on my experience with 14.04 on three different laptops you'll likely see at least some improvement over 13.10 and even moreso if you're upgrading from 12.04.</p> +<h2 id="the-unity-desktop">The Unity Desktop</h2> +<p>While Canonical is playing it safe with most things in this release, given the LTS nature of 14.04, there are some surprising and very welcome changes to the Unity interface. The biggest news on the Unity front is that Canonical has done an about face on a number of long-requested features previously rejected by the Ubuntu development team.</p> +<h3 id="menu-in-windows">Menu in Windows</h3> +<p>The first and most notable change in Unity is a new option to turn off the global menu bar and put application menus back in the window.</p> + +[image="screenshot1.png" caption="Menus in application window.] + +<p>Part of the rationale behind the decision to move the window menus out of the window and up into the global position was to save space. This made sense back with Unity was an interface for netbooks and other small screen devices, but it doesn't hold water on a 27in HD monitor.</p> +<p>There are other arguments for global menus, notably [Fitts's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law) which, among other things, says that it's easier to throw your mouse to the top of the screen then it is to try to hit any target within the screen. That's true and countless studies have confirmed it, but there's a counter argument to be made that it's equally difficult to get all the way back to where your cursor was before you went to the global menu with that flick of the mouse.</p> +<p>It would seem that there are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches and which is best depends on how you work; it would be disingenuous to try to categorically say one is better than the other.</p> +<p>Ubuntu is one of the few Linux distros that uses something like a global menu and, until this release, that was the only option. Now though you can opt to go back to window-level menus if you prefer that approach.</p> +<p>It's a nice option to have because Ubuntu's global menu is, frankly, a mess.</p> +<p>The most notable global menu in a desktop OS is undoubtedly the Mac OS, which has used a global menu since it debuted in 1984. But the reason OS X's menu works so well isn't just because Fitts's law is followed, it's also that the menus and the items in them are standardized across the OS.</p> +<p>For example, preferences are always in the application menu and always accessed with the keyboard shortcut cmd-,. That consistency makes for a simpler, more unified user experience. The user never has to think, now where are the preferences in this new app I just installed? Likewise they don't have to look to see what the keyboard shortcut is to open the app's preferences window, they just hit cmd-, and the preferences window opens.</p> +<p>Ubuntu, for reasons beyond its control, will never be able to achieve this level of OS interface consistency, which makes its global menu next to useless.</p> +<p>In fact the Unity global menu is not a global menu at all, it's a window-specific menu that got kicked up to the top bar for reasons only known to Ubuntu developers.</p> + +[image="screenshot2.png" caption="Ubuntu's global menu being less than global."] + +<p>No matter what kind of window is open in the application, the global menu in OS X remains the same. In Unity, however, as Ryan Paul noted in his <a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/precision-and-purpose-ubuntu-12-04-and-the-unity-hud-reviewed/">review of Ubuntu 12.04</a>, "despite displaying the menu contents outside of the window, the menus are still window-specific. By design, the global menu bar displays the menu of the focused window. This proves awkward in some applications with dialogs and multiple windows."</p> +<p>It's not just awkward, it's potentially crazy-making as it means your menu items (which you can't see until you drag the cursor up to the top of the window) may or may not actually be there depending on the type of window you have in the foreground right now.</p> +<p>Say you're browsing the web with Firefox and you decide you want to edit a bookmark. You click the Firefox menu item "show all bookmarks", which opens a new window with Firefox's bookmark manager. But of course this window does not have a window-level menu, which means your "global" menu at the top of the screen is now unavailable. That also means your keyboard shortcuts won't work, a curious bit of consistency I suppose. So in this window when you hit control-Q (Quit) nothing happens. Do the same when a regular browser window is at the forefront and Firefox will happily quit.</p> +<p>This isn't a problem limited to browsers. The same situation arises in the Nautilus file manager. Just open a Property inspector window and see what the "global" application menu does (hint: there suddenly isn't one). If you create a file or even just a open a new window with a keyboard shortcut you'll need to first make sure that a "normal" Nautilus window has focus.</p> +<p>Nothing in Ubuntu 14.04 fixes the half-implemented nature of Ubuntu's "global" menu. In fact, nothing has changed at all in the default installation of 14.04. You'll have to go hunting in the system settings to find the new option to put menus back in the windows (it's tucked away under the Behavior tab in the Appearances panel), but at least it's now an option.</p> +<p>Naturally Ubuntu has put it's own spin on what window-level menus look like. Unlike other operating systems, which typically put window-based menus in a row under the window title bar, Ubuntu has opted to put them in the actual title bar. The window level menu is, as with the global menu, hidden away until you hover your mouse over the window.</p> +<p>One nice touch is that the menu items in the title bar manage to never get in the way of click-and-drag operations on the window. Canonical's developers deserve much credit for making sure that this potentially disastrous UI decision actually works without a hitch.</p> +<p>As a former OS X user I would prefer to see Canonical try to make a true global menu that works as well as Apple's, but in lieu of that I can at least have the consistency of menus in the window.</p> +<h3 id="minimize-to-launcher">Minimize to Launcher</h3> +<p>The second much-requested feature wish Canonical has finally granted is an option to minimize windows to the launcher by clicking the icon in the launcher.</p> +<p>The default behavior remains the same, when you click an icon in the Unity launcher the application launches. If the application is already running then it is brought to the foreground. If you click it again (when it's already the frontmost application) nothing happens.</p> +<p>There's been a long-standing request to change this last behavior to mirror what you'll find in several other desktops, namely that clicking the icon of the frontmost application will minimize that window.</p> +<p>To enable this behavior in Ubuntu 14.04 you'll need to install and open the Compiz Settings Manager and click the Unity plugin, where you'll see an option that says "Minimize Single Window Applications (Unsupported)".</p> +<p>Despite the name, you can minimize multiple windows. If you have two or more windows open and you click once the icon in the launcher the application will be brought to the front if it isn't already. Click again and it will move to the Unity window spread/switcher mode with the windows arrayed on a grid. Click the launcher icon again and all windows will be minimized. Click a 4th time and the window that had focus when all the windows were minimized will be brought back to the front while any other windows remain hidden.</p> +<p>Technically this feature is considered experimental and unsupported, but in my testing there were no issues and everything worked, if not quite as the wording would lead you to expect, at least consistently.</p> +<h3 id="small-changes-that-make-unity-in-14.04-more-usable">Small Changes that Make Unity in 14.04 More Usable</h3> +<p>To animate resizing a window in previous releases Ubuntu used a yellow rectangle to show the size of the window. The yellow rectangle is still used with window snapping, but resizing now uses live window animation. The live window resizing was an option in 13.10, but this is the first time it has been enabled by default.</p> +<p>There's another useful new feature half-hidden in the application window spread view, that is, the view you get when you click the Unity Launcher icon for an app with multiple open windows.</p> +<p>In 14.04 if you just start typing in the spread view (there's no text entry box, which is why it qualifies as half-hidden) and Ubuntu will filter your windows and highlight the one that matches your search. If you keep dozens of windows open in a single app and frequently lose track of what's where, this makes a quick way to find what you're after. This feature becomes even handier if you add a keyboard shortcut to toggle the window spread view (by default there isn't one, but you can set one in the Compiz Settings Manager >> Window Management >> Scale and then click the Binding Tab).</p> + +[image="screenshot3.png" caption="Searching for windows"] + +<p>With a keyboard shortcut you can activate the window spread view, type to find the window you want and switch to it without ever taking your hands off the keyboard.This would be a fantastic tool if it could spread out tabs within an application --particularly web browsers -- but it doesn't, it's only a window-level feature.</p> +<h3 id="the-unity-dash">The Unity Dash</h3> +<p>If you upgrade to every new Ubuntu release there's nothing new to see in Dash of 14.04. If you stick with LTS releases though, the Dash has some very big changes you may have heard about -- namely that, starting with 12.10, by default the Unity Dash will forward your search terms on to Canonical's servers which then query all manner of web services, including Amazon.com.</p> +<p>There two things annoying about this. First it clutters your search results with (often NSFW) junk when all you want is to find a file. The second and the far more serious problem is that it gives Canonical a massive amount of data about you.</p> + +[image="screenshot4.png" caption="Do you want to open the Ubuntu Software Center or buy some music? That's something <strike>only</strike> you and Canonical get to know."] + +<p>When it debuted in 12.10 the online search tools caused a privacy uproar with FSF and the EFF calling for Canonical to remove what in many users' eyes amounts to spyware.</p> +<p>Nothing has changed on this front since 12.10 was released. By default your searches are still sent to Canonical and on to, well, who knows really? Which is why we suggest disabling this feature by completely uninstalling it in the Ubuntu Software Center.</p> +<p>There has been some talk of Ubuntu offering more fine-grained controls over how and where your data is sent, but as of this release that hasn't happened. The privacy controls are still more or less the same -- a single on or off switch controls all your online search tools (not to be confused with the online accounts privacy controls, which do offer more fine-grained control over which apps can access your accounts).</p> + +[image="screenshot5.png" caption="Search privacy options, or lack thereof"] + +<p>The good news is that it looks like Canonical is finally going to make the online search components of Ubuntu opt-in, though not -- some might argue conveniently not -- in time for this LTS release. If you're just one person upgrading turning off these feature isn't that big of a deal, the EFF has some <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks">instructions on how to do it</a>. A couple clicks and you're done.</p> +<p>If you're upgrading an enterprise-level deployment of Ubuntu with thousands of machines to upgrade, disabling the online search features in each one is going to be a pain. Enough of a pain that you just might want to skip this release and wait for the next LTS in two years (or move to another distro). After all Ubuntu 12.04 won't reach the end of its LTS lifespan until April 2017.</p> +<h2 id="whats-missing">What's Missing</h2> +<p>Mir and Unity 8 did not make the cut, but they will be coming eventually (14.10 looks pretty likely to see at least xMir enabled by default). There are some other features though that have disappeared and will not be returning, the most notable being Canonical's Ubuntu One file storage and synchronization tool.</p> +<p>Canonical has wisely elected to <a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/ubuntu-one-storage-and-music-service-shut-down-by-canonical/">pull out of the race to the bottom that is cloud storage and synchronization services</a>, which means that as of this release Ubuntu One is no longer a part of Ubuntu. The Unity Launcher item is gone and if you were using Ubuntu One you should have received an email from Canonical with instructions on how to get your data out before it disappears forever on July 31.</p> +<p>The other noticeably missing feature in the release is also web-app related, namely the browser behind Ubuntu's web apps has changed. Ubuntu 12.10 first introduced the ability to add web apps for certain sites to the Unity Launcher, giving them first class citizen status alongside desktop apps (a full list of supported sites can be <a href="https://launchpad.net/webapps">seen on Launchpad</a>).</p> +<p>That part hasn't changed. Ubuntu 14.04 still ships with an Amazon web app in the Launcher (the Ubuntu One web app is gone) and it's also still easy to create these apps for supported sites like Gmail or Twitter.</p> +<p>What's different is the web browser behind these apps. It's no longer Firefox or Chromium powering your web apps, but Ubuntu's own QML-based web browser. The change means that Ubuntu on the desktop uses the same browser as Ubuntu Mobile for all your web apps, which would fine if the Ubuntu browser were anywhere near as stable as, well, any other browser on the platform. Sadly, it isn't. It crashes frequently and I still haven't figured out a way to reliably get desktop notifications working with web apps. It also doesn't seem to have access to the Flash plugin even if it's installed system wide and works in every other browser (perhaps this is because Flash won't be supported on Ubuntu Mobile).</p> +<p>Fortunately, you can use the features in your favorite web browser to create web apps and then add those to the Unity Launcher to get the same sort of web-app-as-desktop-app feel, but with a reliable browser behind it.</p> +<p>For instance Chromium has an option to "Create application shortcuts" (under the Tools menu) which will offer to add a shortcut to the Launcher. It will lack the nice icon you get with the Unity-integrated web apps, but you can add your own icon by editing the .desktop file (you can also create sandboxes to sequester cookies and history, which means you can be logged in to multiple accounts in multiple web apps). This method, while more cumbersome to set up, is considerably nicer than trying to use a browser that's liable to crash at any given moment, may or may not actually notify you that a critical message has arrived in your inbox and won't let you watch the video of your kids that your spouse just posted to Facebook.</p> + +[image="screenshot6.png" caption="The Gmail web is Unity's doing, the Twitter app uis mine. They look identical, but one has a real web browser behind it."] + +<h2 id="where-ubuntu-14.04-fails">Where Ubuntu 14.04 Fails</h2> +<p>The one bright side to the bugginess of the web apps feature in Ubuntu 14.04 is that it serves as a reminder of just how stable the rest of the system is -- it wasn't all that long ago that any review of desktop Linux was more or less a rundown of bugs and workarounds, which is thankfully no longer the case.</p> +<p>Ubuntu 14.04 is incredibly stable and all the basic features you could hope for in a desktop system "just work". If you're a seasoned Ubuntu user, Ubuntu 14.04 is a minor, but welcome upgrade.</p> +<p>While all that is true, Ubuntu clearly wants to be not just the best of the Linux desktops, but capable of holding its own next to Windows and, probably more so, OS X.</p> +<p>To do this Ubuntu sweats the details like few other Linux distros out there and this release is no exception. Two details worth noting in 14.04 are some improvements to the rounded window corners which now feature much smoother anti-aliasing and the new borderless windows, which give windows a cleaner edge and make the overall appearance look sharper (particularly if you use a lighter theme like Radiance).</p> + +[image="screenshot7.png" caption="Smoother corners (old version on the right)"] + +<p>The problem is that details and small touches like this don't hide the larger usability issues that still exist in Unity.</p> +<p>As I mentioned above the global menu remains an inconsistent mess and it's not the only problem Unity has. The precise behavior of the search lens in the Unity search field seems to change with every release and applications move in and out of fullscreen mode in inconsistent ways (most do just fine but Terminal and some other, non-Unity optimized apps don't remember window size and position).</p> +<p>What makes these things frustrating is that they aren't new. These inconsistencies and half-implemented ideas have been around since at least 11.04. If these are the pain points that have had you itching to upgrade from 12.04 LTS, 14.04 is going to disappoint.</p> +<p>Ubuntu apologists dismiss such criticisms by arguing that these applications aren't Ubuntu's applications. That's certainly true. Nautilus and Terminal come from the Gnome project, Firefox from Mozilla. In fact nearly all the default Ubuntu apps are not built by Canonical developers, most come from GNOME. But if that's the defense, then what is Ubuntu? A Compiz plugin with a HUD/launcher and a "global" menu bar? If that's all it gets credit for what does it say that it still can't make menus behave consistently?</p> +<p>Ubuntu is one of the most polished desktops around, certainly the most polished in the Linux world, but in many ways that polish is increasingly skin deep at the expense of some larger usability issues which continue go unaddressed release after release.</p> +<p>None of these annoyances are deal-breaking problems for users familiar with Ubuntu or Linux. And they certainly won't stop enthusiastic Ubuntu users from updating. Nor should they, in the world of Linux desktops this amounts to splitting hairs.</p> +<p>But in the world of building usable interfaces these are glaring failures atop which smoother rounding for window corners and borderless windows are mere lipstick on a pig.</p> +<p>These UI failing also don't bode well for the future of Ubuntu Mobile. Perhaps part of the reason the desktop remains seemingly half done is that the development effort is focused on Ubuntu Mobile at the moment. That's part of the reason Mir and Unity 8 aren't part of this release and it might be a plausible excuse for other failings. Unity wouldn't be the first desktop to languish while developers worked feverishly on a mobile OS.</p> diff --git a/published/ubuntu1404/arsubuntureview.txt b/published/ubuntu1404/arsubuntureview.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e5b9fb --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1404/arsubuntureview.txt @@ -0,0 +1,182 @@ +Canonical pushed out Ubuntu 14.04 last week. This release is the first Ubuntu Long Term Support release in two years and will be supported for five years. + +It feels like, for Canonical at least, this Long Term Support release couldn't have come at a worse time. The company is caught in a transitional phase as it moves from a desktop operating system to a platform that spans devices. + +The problem for Canonical is that it's only about 90 percent of the way to platform spanning OS, but it just so happens that the company's release schedule calls for a Long Term Support release now. + +Long Term Support releases are typically more conservative releases that focus on stability and long term maintenance rather than experimental or flashy new features. Things 90 percent done don't make it into LTS releases. And, unfortunately for Canonical, most of its huge foundation shaking changes for the future of Ubuntu are currently only about 90 percent done and thus not part of this release. + +The two biggest changes on the horizon are the Mir graphics stack and Unity 8, neither of which are part of 14.04. + +Mir just isn't ready for prime time yet and even the half-way step of xMir (which falls back to the X display server when it needs to) isn't ready enough to land in an LTS release. Were this *not* an LTS release it seems likely xMir at least would be included. As it stands, the graphics stack in 14.04 is -- aside from incremental upgrades -- the same as it was in last year's 13.10. + +Likewise, Unity 8 will not make its debut in this release. The next version of Ubuntu's flagship UI isn't quite there yet, at least on the desktop. This puts Canonical in the unfortunate position of needing to now support Unity 7 on the desktop for 5 years going forward. + +Ubuntu is planning to ship its first mobile devices later this year -- which will use Unity 8, since the mobile version is much further along than the desktop. Thus when Ubuntu Mobile launches Canonical will find itself having to maintain two separate platforms, both Unity 7 and 8, with Unity 7 desktops hanging around for a minimum of five years. + +## What Ubuntu 14.04 Is + +While Ubuntu 14.04 might be most notable for what it is not -- namely the next-generation version of the Ubuntu desktop -- it is nevertheless an important update because for those users sticking with LTS releases it represents the first major change in two years. And a lot has happened in Ubuntu land in the time since 12.04 was released. + +There have been major leaps forward in the form of upstream kernel updates, application updates and several major user interface changes in Unity. + +It's also the first time LTS users will have to deal with the Amazon Search Lens and Ubuntu's new privacy policy. + +## The Kernel + +At the core of Ubuntu 14.04 is the Linux kernel 3.13.0-24. + +The previous release, Ubuntu 13.10, used the 3.11 kernel, and the last LTS release, 12.04.4, currently ships with 3.8. A lot has changed since 3.8, primarily in the form of better hardware support, but there are some welcome improvements in this latest kernel release even for those already running 3.11 in Ubuntu 13.10. + +How much the kernel update impacts your Ubuntu experience will depend a little bit on your hardware. For example, if you've got dual GPU hardware that uses Nvidia Optimus to switch between GPUs -- one optimized for performance and the other for conserving power -- the move from 12.04 to 14.04 will be huge. As of the 3.12 kernel there's now low-level support of GPU switching (which should happen automatically). + +Users with SSD-based machines should see better performance in this release, partly because of some improvements in the kernel, but also because Ubuntu now ships with TRIM features enabled by default. There are some horror stories about TRIM support in Linux floating around the web, but those issues have largely been solved. + +That means you can delete those cron jobs running the fstrim command and stop worrying about adding "discard" to all your fstab entries. Ubuntu 14.04 will handle this automatically right out of the box. If you're running Ubuntu on an SSD you will likely notice a speed improvement, particularly in anything that requires a lot of data being written to disk. + +Another of the headline-worthy changes in the 3.13 kernel is the addition of support for [nftables](http://netfilter.org/projects/nftables/), which will eventually replace the iptables firewall tool. Nftables is more than just a replacement for iptables, it's a complete reworking of the way the kernel handles packet filtering. Right now nftables is not quite ready for prime time, and the command line tool nft is not installed by default. But when the 3.15 kernel rolls around (which will be well within the lifespan of Ubuntu 14.04) nftables can replace your iptables-based firewall. + +## Battery Life Improvements + +Power management remains one of the weak points in Linux, with battery life lagging far behind what you'll find in Windows and OS X running on the same hardware. + +The good news for laptop users is that several recent kernel updates related to power management have dramatically improved battery life and these are all part of Ubuntu 14.04. + +I started using 14.04 when the final beta was released in March and immediately noticed a huge difference in battery life on my primary machine, an early-2013 Retina Macbook Pro. It's hard to say whether these improvements come from the kernel updates or perhaps some Unity-level improvements, but whichever is responsible it's a big improvement over Ubuntu 12.04. + +I typically use only a handful of apps, primarily a web browser -- Chromium with anywhere 20-80 tabs -- and a Terminal session with several Tmux sessions running inside it which I attach and detach depending on what I'm doing (for development and writing I run zsh, python, ruby, vim, mutt, cmus). None of that should produce a huge battery drain. I also occasionally use Darktable and Gimp for image editing, which of course shortens the battery life. I should note that I use a [Chromium add-on](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg?hl=en) which suspends background tabs and significantly reduces Chromium's overall system footprint even with the large number of tabs I typically keep open. + +This setup, which is pretty minimalist in terms of battery draining apps, would in Ubuntu 12.04 still manage to drain the battery in under 4 hours, sometimes not lasting much more than 3 hours. I switched to running Ubuntu in VMWare (using OS X as the base system) and battery life improved somewhat, consistently lasting about 4 hours, but that's still not very good. + +In 14.04 with the same workload on the same machine the battery lasts just over 4.5 hours on average. That's actually a pretty significant improvement and would be worthy of praise did it not still lag far behind OS X (6.5 hrs) and the minimalist Crunchbang Waldorf (currently my primary OS), which lasts nearly as long as OS X itself -- well over 6 hrs. Crunchbang and Ubuntu share the same Debian core and Linux kernel, which most likely makes Ubuntu's Unity interface the primary source of the additional battery drain. + +That's been my experience with battery life thus far in 14.04, but remember that real-world battery stats are highly subjective. Hardware, system setup and the details of what you do make it nearly impossible to guarantee anything. That said, based on my experience with 14.04 on three different laptops you'll likely see at least some improvement over 13.10 and even moreso if you're upgrading from 12.04. + +## The Unity Desktop + +While Canonical is playing it safe with most things in this release, given the LTS nature of 14.04, there are some surprising and very welcome changes to the Unity interface. The biggest news on the Unity front is that Canonical has done an about face on a number of long-requested features previously rejected by the Ubuntu development team. + +### Menu in Windows + +The first and most notable change in Unity is a new option to turn off the global menu bar and put application menus back in the window. + +[image="screenshot1.png" caption=""] + +Part of the rationale behind the decision to move the window menus out of the window and up into the global position was to save space. This made sense back with Unity was an interface for netbooks and other small screen devices, but it doesn't hold water on a 27in HD monitor. + +There are other arguments for global menus, notably [Fitts's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law) which, among other things, says that it's easier to throw your mouse to the top of the screen then it is to try to hit any target within the screen. That's true and countless studies have confirmed it, but there's a counter argument to be made that it's equally difficult to get all the way back to where your cursor was before you went to the global menu with that flick of the mouse. + +It would seem that there are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches and which is best depends on how you work; it would be disingenuous to try to categorically say one is better than the other. + +Ubuntu is one of the few Linux distros that uses something like a global menu and, until this release, that was the only option. Now though you can opt to go back to window-level menus if you prefer that approach. + +It's a nice option to have because Ubuntu's global menu is, frankly, a mess. + +The most notable global menu in a desktop OS is undoubtedly the Mac OS, which has used a global menu since it debuted in 1984. But the reason OS X's menu works so well isn't just because Fitts's law is followed, it's also that the menus and the items in them are standardized across the OS. + +For example, preferences are always in the application menu and always accessed with the keyboard shortcut cmd-,. That consistency makes for a simpler, more unified user experience. The user never has to think, now where are the preferences in this new app I just installed? Likewise they don't have to look to see what the keyboard shortcut is to open the app's preferences window, they just hit cmd-, and the preferences window opens. + +Ubuntu, for reasons beyond its control, will never be able to achieve this level of OS interface consistency, which makes its global menu next to useless. + +In fact the Unity global menu is not a global menu at all, it's a window-specific menu that got kicked up to the top bar for reasons only known to Ubuntu developers. + +No matter what kind of window is open in the application, the global menu in OS X remains the same. In Unity, however, as Ryan Paul noted in his [review of Ubuntu 12.04](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/precision-and-purpose-ubuntu-12-04-and-the-unity-hud-reviewed/), "despite displaying the menu contents outside of the window, the menus are still window-specific. By design, the global menu bar displays the menu of the focused window. This proves awkward in some applications with dialogs and multiple windows." + +It's not just awkward, it's potentially crazy-making as it means your menu items (which you can't see until you drag the cursor up to the top of the window) may or may not actually be there depending on the type of window you have in the foreground right now. + +Say you're browsing the web with Firefox and you decide you want to edit a bookmark. You click the Firefox menu item "show all bookmarks", which opens a new window with Firefox's bookmark manager. But of course this window does not have a window-level menu, which means your "global" menu at the top of the screen is now unavailable. That also means your keyboard shortcuts won't work, a curious bit of consistency I suppose. So in this window when you hit control-Q (Quit) nothing happens. Do the same when a regular browser window is at the forefront and Firefox will happily quit. + +This isn't a problem limited to browsers. The same situation arises in the Nautilus file manager. Just open a Property inspector window and see what the "global" application menu does (hint: there suddenly isn't one). If you create a file or even just a open a new window with a keyboard shortcut you'll need to first make sure that a "normal" Nautilus window has focus. + +Nothing in Ubuntu 14.04 fixes the half-implemented nature of Ubuntu's "global" menu. In fact, nothing has changed at all in the default installation of 14.04. You'll have to go hunting in the system settings to find the new option to put menus back in the windows (it's tucked away under the Behavior tab in the Appearances panel), but at least it's now an option. + +Naturally Ubuntu has put it's own spin on what window-level menus look like. Unlike other operating systems, which typically put window-based menus in a row under the window title bar, Ubuntu has opted to put them in the actual title bar. The window level menu is, as with the global menu, hidden away until you hover your mouse over the window. + +One nice touch is that the menu items in the title bar manage to never get in the way of click-and-drag operations on the window. Canonical's developers deserve much credit for making sure that this potentially disastrous UI decision actually works without a hitch. + +As a former OS X user I would prefer to see Canonical try to make a true global menu that works as well as Apple's, but in lieu of that I can at least have the consistency of menus in the window. + +### Minimize to Launcher + +The second much-requested feature wish Canonical has finally granted is an option to minimize windows to the launcher by clicking the icon in the launcher. + +The default behavior remains the same, when you click an icon in the Unity launcher the application launches. If the application is already running then it is brought to the foreground. If you click it again (when it's already the frontmost application) nothing happens. + +There's been a long-standing request to change this last behavior to mirror what you'll find in several other desktops, namely that clicking the icon of the frontmost application will minimize that window. + +To enable this behavior in Ubuntu 14.04 you'll need to install and open the Compiz Settings Manager and click the Unity plugin, where you'll see an option that says "Minimize Single Window Applications (Unsupported)". + +Despite the name, you can minimize multiple windows. If you have two or more windows open and you click once the icon in the launcher the application will be brought to the front if it isn't already. Click again and it will move to the Unity window spread/switcher mode with the windows arrayed on a grid. Click the launcher icon again and all windows will be minimized. Click a 4th time and the window that had focus when all the windows were minimized will be brought back to the front while any other windows remain hidden. + +Technically this feature is considered experimental and unsupported, but in my testing there were no issues and everything worked, if not quite as the wording would lead you to expect, at least consistently. + +### Small Changes that Make Unity in 14.04 More Usable + +To animate resizing a window in previous releases Ubuntu used a yellow rectangle to show the size of the window. The yellow rectangle is still used with window snapping, but resizing now uses live window animation. The live window resizing was an option in 13.10, but this is the first time it has been enabled by default. + +There's another useful new feature half-hidden in the application window spread view, that is, the view you get when you click the Unity Launcher icon for an app with multiple open windows. + +In 14.04 if you just start typing in the spread view (there's no text entry box, which is why it qualifies as half-hidden) and Ubuntu will filter your windows and highlight the one that matches your search. If you keep dozens of windows open in a single app and frequently lose track of what's where, this makes a quick way to find what you're after. This feature becomes even handier if you add a keyboard shortcut to toggle the window spread view (by default there isn't one, but you can set one in the Compiz Settings Manager >> Window Management >> Scale and then click the Binding Tab). + +With a keyboard shortcut you can activate the window spread view, type to find the window you want and switch to it without ever taking your hands off the keyboard.This would be a fantastic tool if it could spread out tabs within an application --particularly web browsers -- but it doesn't, it's only a window-level feature. + +### The Unity Dash + +If you upgrade to every new Ubuntu release there's nothing new to see in Dash of 14.04. If you stick with LTS releases though, the Dash has some very big changes you may have heard about -- namely that, starting with 12.10, by default the Unity Dash will forward your search terms on to Canonical's servers which then query all manner of web services, including Amazon.com. + +There two things annoying about this. First it clutters your search results with (often NSFW) junk when all you want is to find a file. The second and the far more serious problem is that it gives Canonical a massive amount of data about you. + +When it debuted in 12.10 the online search tools caused a privacy uproar with FSF and the EFF calling for Canonical to remove what in many users' eyes amounts to spyware. + +Nothing has changed on this front since 12.10 was released. By default your searches are still sent to Canonical and on to, well, who knows really? Which is why we suggest disabling this feature by completely uninstalling it in the Ubuntu Software Center. + +There has been some talk of Ubuntu offering more fine-grained controls over how and where your data is sent, but as of this release that hasn't happened. The privacy controls are still more or less the same -- a single on or off switch controls all your online search tools (not to be confused with the online accounts privacy controls, which do offer more fine-grained control over which apps can access your accounts). + +The good news is that it looks like Canonical is finally going to make the online search components of Ubuntu opt-in, though not -- some might argue conveniently not -- in time for this LTS release. If you're just one person upgrading turning off these feature isn't that big of a deal, the EFF has some [instructions on how to do it](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks). A couple clicks and you're done. + +If you're upgrading an enterprise-level deployment of Ubuntu with thousands of machines to upgrade, disabling the online search features in each one is going to be a pain. Enough of a pain that you just might want to skip this release and wait for the next LTS in two years (or move to another distro). After all Ubuntu 12.04 won't reach the end of its LTS lifespan until April 2017. + +## What's Missing + +Mir and Unity 8 did not make the cut, but they will be coming eventually (14.10 looks pretty likely to see at least xMir enabled by default). There are some other features though that have disappeared and will not be returning, the most notable being Canonical's Ubuntu One file storage and synchronization tool. + +Canonical has wisely elected to [pull out of the race to the bottom that is cloud storage and synchronization services](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/ubuntu-one-storage-and-music-service-shut-down-by-canonical/), which means that as of this release Ubuntu One is no longer a part of Ubuntu. The Unity Launcher item is gone and if you were using Ubuntu One you should have received an email from Canonical with instructions on how to get your data out before it disappears forever on July 31. + +The other noticeably missing feature in the release is also web-app related, namely the browser behind Ubuntu's web apps has changed. Ubuntu 12.10 first introduced the ability to add web apps for certain sites to the Unity Launcher, giving them first class citizen status alongside desktop apps (a full list of supported sites can be [seen on Launchpad](https://launchpad.net/webapps)). + +That part hasn't changed. Ubuntu 14.04 still ships with an Amazon web app in the Launcher (the Ubuntu One web app is gone) and it's also still easy to create these apps for supported sites like Gmail or Twitter. + +What's different is the web browser behind these apps. It's no longer Firefox or Chromium powering your web apps, but Ubuntu's own QML-based web browser. The change means that Ubuntu on the desktop uses the same browser as Ubuntu Mobile for all your web apps, which would fine if the Ubuntu browser were anywhere near as stable as, well, any other browser on the platform. Sadly, it isn't. It crashes frequently and I still haven't figured out a way to reliably get desktop notifications working with web apps. It also doesn't seem to have access to the Flash plugin even if it's installed system wide and works in every other browser (perhaps this is because Flash won't be supported on Ubuntu Mobile). + +Fortunately, you can use the features in your favorite web browser to create web apps and then add those to the Unity Launcher to get the same sort of web-app-as-desktop-app feel, but with a reliable browser behind it. + +For instance Chromium has an option to "Create application shortcuts" (under the Tools menu) which will offer to add a shortcut to the Launcher. It will lack the nice icon you get with the Unity-integrated web apps, but you can add your own icon by editing the .desktop file (you can also create sandboxes to sequester cookies and history, which means you can be logged in to multiple accounts in multiple web apps). This method, while more cumbersome to set up, is considerably nicer than trying to use a browser that's liable to crash at any given moment, may or may not actually notify you that a critical message has arrived in your inbox and won't let you watch the video of your kids that your spouse just posted to Facebook. + + +## Where Ubuntu 14.04 Fails + +The one bright side to the bugginess of the web apps feature in Ubuntu 14.04 is that it serves as a reminder of just how stable the rest of the system is -- it wasn't all that long ago that any review of desktop Linux was more or less a rundown of bugs and workarounds, which is thankfully no longer the case. + +Ubuntu 14.04 is incredibly stable and all the basic features you could hope for in a desktop system "just work". If you're a seasoned Ubuntu user, Ubuntu 14.04 is a minor, but welcome upgrade. + +While all that is true, Ubuntu clearly wants to be not just the best of the Linux desktops, but capable of holding its own next to Windows and, probably more so, OS X. + +To do this Ubuntu sweats the details like few other Linux distros out there and this release is no exception. Two details worth noting in 14.04 are some improvements to the rounded window corners which now feature much smoother anti-aliasing and the new borderless windows, which give windows a cleaner edge and make the overall appearance look sharper (particularly if you use a lighter theme like Radiance). + +The problem is that details and small touches like this don't hide the larger usability issues that still exist in Unity. + +As I mentioned above the global menu remains an inconsistent mess and it's not the only problem Unity has. The precise behavior of the search lens in the Unity search field seems to change with every release and applications move in and out of fullscreen mode in inconsistent ways (most do just fine but Terminal and some other, non-Unity optimized apps don't remember window size and position). + +What makes these things frustrating is that they aren't new. These inconsistencies and half-implemented ideas have been around since at least 11.04. If these are the pain points that have had you itching to upgrade from 12.04 LTS, 14.04 is going to disappoint. + +Ubuntu apologists dismiss such criticisms by arguing that these applications aren't Ubuntu's applications. That's certainly true. Nautilus and Terminal come from the Gnome project, Firefox from Mozilla. In fact nearly all the default Ubuntu apps are not built by Canonical developers, most come from GNOME. But if that's the defense, then what is Ubuntu? A Compiz plugin with a HUD/launcher and a "global" menu bar? If that's all it gets credit for what does it say that it still can't make menus behave consistently? + +Ubuntu is one of the most polished desktops around, certainly the most polished in the Linux world, but in many ways that polish is increasingly skin deep at the expense of some larger usability issues which continue go unaddressed release after release. + +None of these annoyances are deal-breaking problems for users familiar with Ubuntu or Linux. And they certainly won't stop enthusiastic Ubuntu users from updating. Nor should they, in the world of Linux desktops this amounts to splitting hairs. + +But in the world of building usable interfaces these are glaring failures atop which smoother rounding for window corners and borderless windows are mere lipstick on a pig. + +These UI failing also don't bode well for the future of Ubuntu Mobile. Perhaps part of the reason the desktop remains seemingly half done is that the development effort is focused on Ubuntu Mobile at the moment. That's part of the reason Mir and Unity 8 aren't part of this release and it might be a plausible excuse for other failings. Unity wouldn't be the first desktop to languish while developers worked feverishly on a mobile OS. + + diff --git a/published/ubuntu1504-kubuntu.png b/published/ubuntu1504-kubuntu.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c824aad --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1504-kubuntu.png diff --git a/published/ubuntu1504-mate-desktop.png b/published/ubuntu1504-mate-desktop.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..18048c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1504-mate-desktop.png diff --git a/published/ubuntu1504-menus-inconsistent.png b/published/ubuntu1504-menus-inconsistent.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3a537a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1504-menus-inconsistent.png diff --git a/published/ubuntu1504-menus-top.png b/published/ubuntu1504-menus-top.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b313cd9 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1504-menus-top.png diff --git a/published/ubuntu1504-menus-win.png b/published/ubuntu1504-menus-win.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..984454f --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1504-menus-win.png diff --git a/published/ubuntu1504-unity-desktop.png b/published/ubuntu1504-unity-desktop.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5bc0fc5 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1504-unity-desktop.png diff --git a/published/ubuntu1504-xubuntu.png b/published/ubuntu1504-xubuntu.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4228112 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1504-xubuntu.png diff --git a/published/ubuntu1504review.html b/published/ubuntu1504review.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45896f4 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1504review.html @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +<p>The snow has melted and the trees are leafing out, but nothing really says spring like the arrival of a new version of Ubuntu Linux. And right on schedule Canonical has released Ubuntu 15.04, or Vivid Vervet as this release is known.</p> +<p>Ubuntu 15.04 arrived in late April and has, judging by other reviews, largely underwhelmed the tech press. The problem, goes the storyline, is there's not much new in 15.04. Of course, if there were a bunch of changes and new features in 15.04 you can bet there would be a negative reaction to them, probably from the same people calling this release boring. The top of the Linux mountain is a lonely, criticism strewn place.</p> +<p>That said, the truth is there isn't much new in 15.04, at least not in terms of visible changes to the Unity desktop, but for most users that's a good thing.</p> +<p>Change doesn't mean better and frankly, Ubuntu 15.04's Unity desktop is mature, stable and not really in need of many improvements. There are still some design inconsistencies (mostly GTK3 problems) and small problems here and there, but for the most part 15.04 delivers a great desktop experience.</p> +<p>Those clamoring for big changes will have to wait. And more than likely, when the big changes coming in Unity 8 arrive around this time next year, the same people will be reminiscing fondly about 15.04, forgetting they once found it "boring".</p> +<h2 id="unity-desktop">Unity Desktop</h2> + +[image="ubuntu1504-unity-desktop.png" caption="Ubuntu 15.04 looking a lot like Ubuntu 14.10."] + +<p>The biggest reason you might find 15.04 a bit boring is that there aren't many visual changes in the flagship Unity desktop. Unity has been bumped to version 7.3, which includes a number of bug fixes and two notable new features: Locally Integrated Menus and the ability to always show those menus rather than having them hidden and revealed when your mouse hovers them.</p> +<p>The Locally Integrated Menus feature just means that menus are back in the application window, rather than up in the main menu bar. Their position within the application windows has changed though. Menu items no longer get their own bar, but are rolled into the window title bar.</p> +<p>The ability to move menus into app windows has actually been around since last autumn's 14.10 release, but this release adds the ability to turn off the hidden-until-needed "feature". To switch the position of menus from the top bar to the application window just head to System Settings >> Appearance >> Behavior where you'll see both options.</p> + +[image="ubuntu1504-menus-top.png" caption="Application menus always visible in the top bar."] + +<p>To make the menus always visible is a little more complex. First you'll need to install dconf Editor and then head to com >> canonical >> unity where you'll see a checkbox to "always-show-menus". Check that and your disappearing menus are gone. This option is really nice if you put your menus in the application window since the application menu bar is a pretty small target to get your mouse over just to see the menus. With the menus always on you have a visual target to aim for, making for much better usability.</p> + +[image="ubuntu1504-menus-win.png" caption="Application menus always visible in the application window."] + +<p>These two small tweaks to the interface are the only visible changes that I've noticed in this release.</p> +<p>As someone who prefers boring, incremental updates that improve rather than completely rearrange my experience, I like Unity 7.3. It's not perfect by any means. There are still some outstanding design issues and inconsistencies in this release.</p> +<p>If you want proof that all the development effort is in Unity 8 rather than Unity 7, look no further than scrollbars and right click menus. Scrollbar position and appearance varies depending on which app you're in, but the most obvious problems are in Firefox, which still hasn't been themed to use the Unity style thin scrollbars with handles. Likewise the default theme will sometimes give a dark right-click menu, sometimes light. Plenty of third-party themes handle Firefox fine, but the default still doesn't.</p> + +[image="ubuntu1504-menus-inconsistent.png" caption="Unity 7 still harbors some inconsistencies and UI glitches that will likely never be fixed since Unity 8 will replace it soon anyway. On the left is the right click menu in Firefox, on the right, Nautilus"] + +<p>Most users probably won't even notice these little issues, but the fact that they remain does lend some credence to the charge that Canonical has all but abandoned Unity 7.</p> +<h2 id="whats-new-in-the-server">What's New in the Server</h2> +<p>Ubuntu 15.04 certainly isn't boring for those using it in server deployments. In fact, 15.04 has a big change in store for sysadmins -- the move to systemd instead of Upstart for the init system.</p> +<p>Changing the init system is somewhat akin to replacing your heart. It's a major change. The init system is the first process started when you boot and the last to shutdown. In the time between startup and shutdown the init system is essentially in charge of everything. It's traditionally assigned the process ID 1.</p> +<p>Canonical has been using its own homegrown init system known as Upstart for some time now. Upstart was in the running to become the default init system for Debian as well. But, after much debate, the Debian team elected to go with systemd instead.</p> +<p>Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth was at one point quite critical of systemd, but in the end, once Debian made its decision, Ubuntu and other Debian-derivatives had little choice but to adopt systemd. Ubuntu 15.04 is the first release to actually use it by default.</p> +<p>For desktop users that will mean almost nothing. Those running Ubuntu on the server though will be in for a potentially big change. I covered systemd in some detail in my <a href="tk">Debian 8 review</a>, and the same things apply here, though migrating from Upstart is a little different than migrating from SysV, which was Debian's old init system.</p> +<p>Canonical has a short <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SystemdForUpstartUsers">wiki page</a> that's designed to help you migrate from Upstart to systemd. Aside from binary log files, the biggest change from Upstart is simply syntax, your init scripts and service files will need to be migrated to systemd's syntax.</p> +<p>It's worth noting that while systemd is the default in Ubuntu 15.04, all of the Upstart packages are still there and you can in fact keep using it if you wish. If you want to switch back and forth you can use Grub and select "Advanced options for Ubuntu", where you will find an "Ubuntu, with Linux ... (upstart)" entry. If you want to permanently switch install the upstart-sysv package.</p> +<p>Other new features on the server side include the latest version of OpenStack and support for Canonical's LXD (Linux Container Daemon) hypervisor. The not-quite-a-competitor-but-sort-of competitor to Docker is a bit more bare bones than Docker at this stage, but for many use cases that's actually a plus. Suffice to say that if you're using Docker containers with Ubuntu anyway you might want to check out LXD.</p> +<h2 id="kernel">Kernel</h2> +<p>Ubuntu 15.04 ships with kernel version 3.19. The timing of feature freezes in the kernel and Ubuntu 15.04 meant that this release just missed the move to version 4.x, which features rebootless kernel upgrades among other updates. The 4.x kernel line should be part of Ubuntu 15.10 later this year.</p> +<p>For now you'll have to get by with quite a bit more hardware support, including preliminary support for Intel's "Skylake" chips, the successor to Broadwell which should start arriving by end of 2015. There's also some notable improvements for Radeon and Nvidia drivers, Btrfs support for live device replacement with RAID 5 and 6 and other hardware related improvements.</p> +<h2 id="flavors">Flavors</h2> +<p>Unity is not the only desktop available for Ubuntu. It might be the most popular and the one Canonical would have you use, but Ubuntu comes in quite a few flavors and, with this release, there's a brand new one -- Ubuntu MATE. Ubuntu MATE has been around in unofficial form for a couple of release cycles but this is its first time as an official, Canonical-blessed "flavor".</p> +<p>Ubuntu MATE is notable because the MATE desktop comes awfully close to the user experience of Ubuntu around the time of 9.10, a release that many long time Ubuntu users will recall with some fondness. If you'd like to return to the pre-Unity days -- AKA the good old days of GNOME 2.x -- Ubuntu MATE 15.04 might be your best bet.</p> +<p>The newest kid on the Ubuntu block features MATE Desktop 1.8.2, which is notable for its Compiz graphics support. With Ubuntu MATE you can have your classic, GNOME-style desktop complete with wobbly windows and all the rest of your Compiz enhancements.</p> + +[image="ubuntu1504-mate-desktop.png" caption="Ubuntu MATE, the new kid on the Ubuntu block."] + +<p>Other new features include updates for the full compliment of MATE apps, including Mate terminal, the Caja file manager and the rest. There's a nice new theme by the name of Yuyo that gives Ubuntu MATE a nice visual difference from more familiar MATE-based distros like Linux Mint. Indeed the Ubuntu MATE developers deserve credit for building out what might be the slickest MATE-based distro I've tested.</p> +<p>If Ubuntu MATE isn't for you the rest of the Ubuntu flavors have also seen some significant updates, including Ubuntu GNOME, Lubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu. The latter two see particularly big updates with Kubuntu shipping the new KDE Plasma 5.2 "Breeze" desktop and Xubuntu shipping with the equally fresh Xfce 4.12.</p> + +[image="ubuntu1504-kubuntu.png" caption="Kubuntu 15.04, featuring KDE Plasma 5."] + +<p>Kubuntu makes a great base to see what KDE is up to since the Kubuntu devs don't do much to customize the distro. In Kubuntu 15.04 you'll find KDE Plasma 5.2, though it's pretty easy to update to the latest and greatest 5.3, which, while numerically small, is in fact a huge update.</p> +<p>The new Breeze desktop with its flat, colorful, high contrast look is what KDE refers to as a modernized interface, with "reduced visual clutter throughout the workspace." For more details on what's new in Plasma 5, see our <a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/17/kde-plasma-5-for-those-linux-users-undecided-on-the-kernels-future/">earlier review</a>.</p> +<p>Xubuntu 15.04 also has a huge update in the form of Xfce 4.12, the first major Xfce update in almost two years. Xfce 4.12 has far to much to cover here, but the highlights include HiDPI support in themes -- no more jagged edges on rounded corners -- and much improved multiple monitor support.</p> + +[image="ubuntu1504-xubuntu.png" caption="Xubuntu 15.04 with the brand new Xfce 4.12."] + +<p>Xfce 4.12 also sees a huge set of theme and user interface related components that go along way to make Xfce feel less like the desktop time forgot. There's now full support for GTK3 themes and a new themable Alt+Tab dialog among other things. The Thunar file manager now supports tabs (a much requested feature) and panels are much smarter about getting out of your way when you're dragging windows around.</p> +<p>Thanks to the timing of the Xfce release and Xubuntu 15.04, Xubuntu is one of the few distros to currently ship with 4.12. If you want to see what's new, Xubuntu makes a great way to test Xfce 4.12.</p> +<p>Ubuntu MATE isn't the only new version of the Ubuntu family launching with 15.04, there's also Snappy Ubuntu Core. Snappy is Canonical's stripped-down version of Ubuntu designed for container hosts and small connected devices. Shuttleworth calls it "the smallest, safest platform for Docker deployment ever."</p> +<h2 id="phones">Phones</h2> +<p>This is also the first release of Ubuntu in which there are actual shipping phones that run Ubuntu. The Aquaris E4.5 is available and the Meizu M4 will be here later this year.</p> +<p>The mobile version of Ubuntu is significant because the reason that this release isn't as exciting as some would hope has to do with these mobile devices. Most of Canonical's efforts are currently being poured into Unity 8 and Mir, which power the interface on these phones, but most likely won't make it to the desktop until next year at the earliest.</p> +<p>Unity 8 will see Canonical's vision of "convergence" -- that is desktop and mobile OSes coming together in a single, unified code base -- coming to fruition. Or that's the plan anyway. As Ars reported last month, neither of the Ubuntu Phones we currently know about will support the very cool feature that's been demoed many times that lets you plug your phone into a monitor and have it become the desktop Unity interface.</p> +<p>Convergence it seems takes a little while longer than planned.</p> +<h2 id="should-you-upgrade">Should You Upgrade?</h2> +<p>The question for this release then is -- should you bother?</p> +<p>While there are plenty of bug fixes and small refinements that are worth having that doesn't mean you need to update. If you're on the desktop I can't think of the reason not to, though it's worth noting that the features listed here will be backported.</p> +<p>If you want systemd on the server then you should upgrade since is not likely to be backported to earlier releases.</p> +<p>Most of the new features in Unity and other associated apps will be backported to at least the last Long Term Support release, currently last year's 14.04. That means that, provided you don't mind waiting a few weeks while the new features are tested, you'll get all the new stuff without lifting a finger.</p> diff --git a/published/ubuntu1504review.txt b/published/ubuntu1504review.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..79496d4 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1504review.txt @@ -0,0 +1,110 @@ +The snow has melted and the trees are leafing out, but nothing really says spring like the arrival of a new version of Ubuntu Linux. And right on schedule Canonical has released Ubuntu 15.04, or Vivid Vervet as this release is known. + +Ubuntu 15.04 arrived in late April and has, judging by other reviews, largely underwhelmed the tech press. The problem, goes the storyline, is there's not much new in 15.04. Of course, if there were a bunch of changes and new features in 15.04 you can bet there would be a negative reaction to them, probably from the same people calling this release boring. The top of the Linux mountain is a lonely, criticism strewn place. + +That said, the truth is there isn't much new in 15.04, at least not in terms of visible changes to the Unity desktop, but for most users that's a good thing. + +Change doesn't mean better and frankly, Ubuntu 15.04's Unity desktop is mature, stable and not really in need of many improvements. There are still some design inconsistencies (mostly GTK3 problems) and small problems here and there, but for the most part 15.04 delivers a great desktop experience. + +Those clamoring for big changes will have to wait. And more than likely, when the big changes coming in Unity 8 arrive around this time next year, the same people will be reminiscing fondly about 15.04, forgetting they once found it "boring". + +## Unity Desktop + + +[image="ubuntu1504-unity-desktop.png" caption="Ubuntu 15.04 looking a lot like Ubuntu 14.10."] + +The biggest reason you might find 15.04 a bit boring is that there aren't many visual changes in the flagship Unity desktop. Unity has been bumped to version 7.3, which includes a number of bug fixes and two notable new features: Locally Integrated Menus and the ability to always show those menus rather than having them hidden and revealed when your mouse hovers them. + +The Locally Integrated Menus feature just means that menus are back in the application window, rather than up in the main menu bar. Their position within the application windows has changed though. Menu items no longer get their own bar, but are rolled into the window title bar. + +The ability to move menus into app windows has actually been around since last autumn's 14.10 release, but this release adds the ability to turn off the hidden-until-needed "feature". To switch the position of menus from the top bar to the application window just head to System Settings >> Appearance >> Behavior where you'll see both options. + +[image="ubuntu1504-menus-top.png" caption="Application menus always visible in the top bar."] + +To make the menus always visible is a little more complex. First you'll need to install dconf Editor and then head to com >> canonical >> unity where you'll see a checkbox to "always-show-menus". Check that and your disappearing menus are gone. This option is really nice if you put your menus in the application window since the application menu bar is a pretty small target to get your mouse over just to see the menus. With the menus always on you have a visual target to aim for, making for much better usability. + +[image="ubuntu1504-menus-win.png" caption="Application menus always visible in the application window."] + +These two small tweaks to the interface are the only visible changes that I've noticed in this release. + +As someone who prefers boring, incremental updates that improve rather than completely rearrange my experience, I like Unity 7.3. It's not perfect by any means. There are still some outstanding design issues and inconsistencies in this release. + +If you want proof that all the development effort is in Unity 8 rather than Unity 7, look no further than scrollbars and right click menus. Scrollbar position and appearance varies depending on which app you're in, but the most obvious problems are in Firefox, which still hasn't been themed to use the Unity style thin scrollbars with handles. Likewise the default theme will sometimes give a dark right-click menu, sometimes light. Plenty of third-party themes handle Firefox fine, but the default still doesn't. + +[image="ubuntu1504-menus-inconsistent.png" caption="Unity 7 still harbors some inconsistencies and UI glitches that will likely never be fixed since Unity 8 will replace it soon anyway. On the left is the right click menu in Firefox, on the right, Nautilus"] + +Most users probably won't even notice these little issues, but the fact that they remain does lend some credence to the charge that Canonical has all but abandoned Unity 7. + +## What's New in the Server + +Ubuntu 15.04 certainly isn't boring for those using it in server deployments. In fact, 15.04 has a big change in store for sysadmins -- the move to systemd instead of Upstart for the init system. + +Changing the init system is somewhat akin to replacing your heart. It's a major change. The init system is the first process started when you boot and the last to shutdown. In the time between startup and shutdown the init system is essentially in charge of everything. It's traditionally assigned the process ID 1. + +Canonical has been using its own homegrown init system known as Upstart for some time now. Upstart was in the running to become the default init system for Debian as well. But, after much debate, the Debian team elected to go with systemd instead. + +Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth was at one point quite critical of systemd, but in the end, once Debian made its decision, Ubuntu and other Debian-derivatives had little choice but to adopt systemd. Ubuntu 15.04 is the first release to actually use it by default. + +For desktop users that will mean almost nothing. Those running Ubuntu on the server though will be in for a potentially big change. I covered systemd in some detail in my [Debian 8 review](tk), and the same things apply here, though migrating from Upstart is a little different than migrating from SysV, which was Debian's old init system. + +Canonical has a short [wiki page](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SystemdForUpstartUsers) that's designed to help you migrate from Upstart to systemd. Aside from binary log files, the biggest change from Upstart is simply syntax, your init scripts and service files will need to be migrated to systemd's syntax. + +It's worth noting that while systemd is the default in Ubuntu 15.04, all of the Upstart packages are still there and you can in fact keep using it if you wish. If you want to switch back and forth you can use Grub and select "Advanced options for Ubuntu", where you will find an "Ubuntu, with Linux ... (upstart)" entry. If you want to permanently switch install the upstart-sysv package. + +Other new features on the server side include the latest version of OpenStack and support for Canonical's LXD (Linux Container Daemon) hypervisor. The not-quite-a-competitor-but-sort-of competitor to Docker is a bit more bare bones than Docker at this stage, but for many use cases that's actually a plus. Suffice to say that if you're using Docker containers with Ubuntu anyway you might want to check out LXD. + +## Kernel + +Ubuntu 15.04 ships with kernel version 3.19. The timing of feature freezes in the kernel and Ubuntu 15.04 meant that this release just missed the move to version 4.x, which features rebootless kernel upgrades among other updates. The 4.x kernel line should be part of Ubuntu 15.10 later this year. + +For now you'll have to get by with quite a bit more hardware support, including preliminary support for Intel's "Skylake" chips, the successor to Broadwell which should start arriving by end of 2015. There's also some notable improvements for Radeon and Nvidia drivers, Btrfs support for live device replacement with RAID 5 and 6 and other hardware related improvements. + +## Flavors + +Unity is not the only desktop available for Ubuntu. It might be the most popular and the one Canonical would have you use, but Ubuntu comes in quite a few flavors and, with this release, there's a brand new one -- Ubuntu MATE. Ubuntu MATE has been around in unofficial form for a couple of release cycles but this is its first time as an official, Canonical-blessed "flavor". + +Ubuntu MATE is notable because the MATE desktop comes awfully close to the user experience of Ubuntu around the time of 9.10, a release that many long time Ubuntu users will recall with some fondness. If you'd like to return to the pre-Unity days -- AKA the good old days of GNOME 2.x -- Ubuntu MATE 15.04 might be your best bet. + +The newest kid on the Ubuntu block features MATE Desktop 1.8.2, which is notable for its Compiz graphics support. With Ubuntu MATE you can have your classic, GNOME-style desktop complete with wobbly windows and all the rest of your Compiz enhancements. + +[image="ubuntu1504-mate-desktop.png" caption="Ubuntu MATE, the new kid on the Ubuntu block."] + +Other new features include updates for the full compliment of MATE apps, including Mate terminal, the Caja file manager and the rest. There's a nice new theme by the name of Yuyo that gives Ubuntu MATE a nice visual difference from more familiar MATE-based distros like Linux Mint. Indeed the Ubuntu MATE developers deserve credit for building out what might be the slickest MATE-based distro I've tested. + +If Ubuntu MATE isn't for you the rest of the Ubuntu flavors have also seen some significant updates, including Ubuntu GNOME, Lubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu. The latter two see particularly big updates with Kubuntu shipping the new KDE Plasma 5.2 "Breeze" desktop and Xubuntu shipping with the equally fresh Xfce 4.12. + +[image="ubuntu1504-kubuntu.png" caption="Kubuntu 15.04, featuring KDE Plasma 5."] + +Kubuntu makes a great base to see what KDE is up to since the Kubuntu devs don't do much to customize the distro. In Kubuntu 15.04 you'll find KDE Plasma 5.2, though it's pretty easy to update to the latest and greatest 5.3, which, while numerically small, is in fact a huge update. + +The new Breeze desktop with its flat, colorful, high contrast look is what KDE refers to as a modernized interface, with "reduced visual clutter throughout the workspace." For more details on what's new in Plasma 5, see our [earlier review](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/17/kde-plasma-5-for-those-linux-users-undecided-on-the-kernels-future/). + +Xubuntu 15.04 also has a huge update in the form of Xfce 4.12, the first major Xfce update in almost two years. Xfce 4.12 has far to much to cover here, but the highlights include HiDPI support in themes -- no more jagged edges on rounded corners -- and much improved multiple monitor support. + +[image="ubuntu1504-xubuntu.png" caption="Xubuntu 15.04 with the brand new Xfce 4.12."] + +Xfce 4.12 also sees a huge set of theme and user interface related components that go along way to make Xfce feel less like the desktop time forgot. There's now full support for GTK3 themes and a new themable Alt+Tab dialog among other things. The Thunar file manager now supports tabs (a much requested feature) and panels are much smarter about getting out of your way when you're dragging windows around. + +Thanks to the timing of the Xfce release and Xubuntu 15.04, Xubuntu is one of the few distros to currently ship with 4.12. If you want to see what's new, Xubuntu makes a great way to test Xfce 4.12. + +Ubuntu MATE isn't the only new version of the Ubuntu family launching with 15.04, there's also Snappy Ubuntu Core. Snappy is Canonical's stripped-down version of Ubuntu designed for container hosts and small connected devices. Shuttleworth calls it "the smallest, safest platform for Docker deployment ever." + +## Phones + +This is also the first release of Ubuntu in which there are actual shipping phones that run Ubuntu. The Aquaris E4.5 is available and the Meizu M4 will be here later this year. + +The mobile version of Ubuntu is significant because the reason that this release isn't as exciting as some would hope has to do with these mobile devices. Most of Canonical's efforts are currently being poured into Unity 8 and Mir, which power the interface on these phones, but most likely won't make it to the desktop until next year at the earliest. + +Unity 8 will see Canonical's vision of "convergence" -- that is desktop and mobile OSes coming together in a single, unified code base -- coming to fruition. Or that's the plan anyway. As Ars reported last month, neither of the Ubuntu Phones we currently know about will support the very cool feature that's been demoed many times that lets you plug your phone into a monitor and have it become the desktop Unity interface. + +Convergence it seems takes a little while longer than planned. + +## Should You Upgrade? + +The question for this release then is -- should you bother? + +While there are plenty of bug fixes and small refinements that are worth having that doesn't mean you need to update. If you're on the desktop I can't think of the reason not to, though it's worth noting that the features listed here will be backported. + +If you want systemd on the server then you should upgrade since is not likely to be backported to earlier releases. + +Most of the new features in Unity and other associated apps will be backported to at least the last Long Term Support release, currently last year's 14.04. That means that, provided you don't mind waiting a few weeks while the new features are tested, you'll get all the new stuff without lifting a finger. diff --git a/published/utopic-unicorn.png b/published/utopic-unicorn.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..133a185 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/utopic-unicorn.png diff --git a/published/vivaldi-new.txt b/published/vivaldi-new.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7440c0d --- /dev/null +++ b/published/vivaldi-new.txt @@ -0,0 +1,89 @@ +It's been a long time since a brand new desktop browser landed on the web. Web newcomers might even be forgiven for thinking that there have always been just four web browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. + +After the vicious early days when the world of web browsers closely resembled the ruthless world of the railroad barons a century earlier, the browser market settled down to something pretty boring: IE and Firefox. A few years later Apple introduced Safari. Several years after that Google launched Chrome. Since Chrome arrived in 2008 the web hasn't seen another major browser launch until now. + +## The Browser is Dead, Long Live the Browser + +Part of the reason hardly anyone wants to build a new browser is no doubt that it's a massive undertaking. Another part though is likely due to the rise of mobile devices, which have spawned a thousand browsers, all quietly, invisibly embedded into other applications. + +Site-specific mobile applications like the Facebook or Twitter apps push the browser into the background. When you click a link in these apps the pages just appear. Behind the scenes an embedded browser handles everything without switching to whatever dedicated browser might be installed. In fact there's little need for a dedicated web browser at all if you spend most of your time in mobile applications. + +Desktop browsers have largely followed this overall trend of slipping into the background. Every new release sees them simplifying their interfaces and removing features that their data collection tools indicate are only used by a small handful. RSS icons disappear, toolbars get hidden away, the URL bar will likely disappear soon in many browsers. + +This ends up working out well for most people, especially since, as Google [infamously demonstrated some years ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ), most people have no idea what a web browser is or even that they're using one. The simpler the interface the less the average user needs to think about anything other than what they want to see or do on the web. + +Given that success in the browser market is measured in market share this is not surprising. The less sophisticated user will always be the most plentiful and browsers will alway chase the numbers. + +That's not a bad thing. It helps to get more people online. It improves the experience for the majority. Most people reading this have long since forgotten it, but there was a time when we too had no idea what all those inscrutable icons littered around the browser windows actually did. + +There is, however, still that 5 percent that actually did use the RSS icon, liked their status bar and will most likely abandon any browser that hides away the address bar. The power users may be the minority, but they still exist. Exactly what constitutes a power user is up for debate, but looking at the recent history of web browser "advances" one thing seems clear, the power user is not the target audience. The person who wants to be in control of their experience and customize it to their liking has been left behind by most browsers. + +## Vivaldi, a New Browser for Power Users + +The power user's current solution to the simplification, arguably the infantilization, of the web browser interface is to get all those missing features back with add-ons. This works to a degree, but it introduces a ton of extra code, some of it written by programmers far less capable than those contributing to the core of Firefox or Chromium, which means, inevitably, add-ons slow things down. The problem is bad enough that a future version of Firefox will have a feature dedicated to letting you know which of your add-ons is slowing you down. + +The list of major browsers at the start of this article was actually short one browser -- Opera. Opera has never had a huge audience, but it did cater to power users. Then Opera decided to abandon its homegrown rendering engine and adopt WebKit (along with Chrome, Opera now uses the WebKit fork, Blink). The move to WebKit meant more sites rendered properly in Opera (since supporting Opera's Presto engine was a low priority for most web developers), but it also meant Opera had to leave behind some of the features that its power users relied on the most. + +Even two years later the current version of Opera still lacks most of the features targeted at power users -- tab stacks, mouse gestures, extensive keyboard shortcuts, the ability to take notes on a web page and more are all still missing. Opera today is a shadow of its last Presto-based release (Opera 12). + +Opera threw in the towel on power users. That's at least part of why [Vivaldi](https://www.vivaldi.com/) came to exist. + +Vivaldi is a brand new web browser that wants to bring back all the old features of Opera 12 and more. The Vivaldi browser bills itself as "for our friends", which would seem to mean for power users. Vivaldi boasts many features the average user is unlikely to need or even be aware of. This is indeed a power user's browser built by power users for power users. Put another way, this is the new (old) Opera. + +The team behind Vivaldi recently release a second "technical preview". It's still experimentaland a long way from finished, but you can [try out Vivaldi](https://www.vivaldi.com/) today. Vivaldi works on Windows, OS X and Linux (there are even .deb and .rpm downloads available for easy installation on Linux). + +[image="vivaldi-ars.png" caption="Vivaldi"] + +If you're a former Opera user unhappy with the direction of desktop Opera I strongly suggest you download Vivaldi. The technical preview release may be rough around the edges but it already supports tab stacking, adding notes (complete with screenshots of any page), mouse gestures and tons of keyboard shortcuts all wrapped in a user interface that's reminiscent of Opera 12. + +It's no accident that Vivaldi offers most of what Opera 12 offered. Vivaldi's CEO is Jon S. von Tetzchner, co-founder and former CEO of Opera. Von Tetzchner's primary goal for Vivaldi is to rebuild the browser that Opera once was -- the power user's browser. + +Building a new browser is not for the faint of heart, but of course this isn't the first time von Tetzchner has done it. Why do it again? The motivations behind Vivaldi are startlingly simple. As Von Tetzchner tells me, "Opera abandoned Opera... I thought, what am I going to do now? There were all these features that I was used to, that everyone else was used to and they were gone. So we thought, well there's a lot of people that want to do more with their browser, let's make a browser for them." + +In other words Vivaldi isn't interested in chasing the market share of IE, Firefox or Chrome. It's never going to get to that size user base, but it will let you do more with the web than any of the others will out of the box. + +Vivaldi also has the potential to re-shape the browser market. Opera never had anything but a tiny slice of the browser market either, but its impact on the browser market has been enormous. Just about every major feature in today's browsers started out in Opera. Tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, pioneering support for web standards and even the clustered page thumbnails when you open a new window or tab (a feature known as "speed dial") all started in Opera and were then copied by Firefox, Chrome, Safari and (sometimes) IE. + +For now Vivaldi is primarily concerned with getting its desktop offering to a stable, usable point. + +At first glance what you see when you open Vivaldi for the first time isn't all that different from any other browser you've used. Indeed it looks and behaves like any other on the surface. + +Vivaldi, like the latest versions of Opera and seemingly pretty much everything else these days, uses the WebKit rendering engine behind the scenes. That means Vivaldi renders pages just the same as Chrome or any other WebKit/Blink browser would. But Vivaldi's interface does not rely on the same code you'll find in Chrome or Opera. In fact the interface is written entirely with web technologies, primarily Javascript and CSS. JavaScript and React along with Node.js, Browserify and "a long list of NPM modules" create the Vivaldi UI. As the website puts it, "Vivaldi is the web built with the web". + +It's fitting that just under the surface Vivaldi is significantly different than its competition since the same it true of its features. Vivaldi's interface isn't cluttered, you'll have to poke around to discover the real power. Once you start to dig into the interface there's a ton of stuff you won't find elsewhere like the ability to put tabs on any side of the screen, customize keyboard shortcuts, turn off images, even render the page with monospace fonts if you want. If you remember the heady days back when Netscape was the dominant browser and user stylesheets were still an option then you'll love Vivaldi. + +[image="vivaldi-ars-no-img.png" caption="Vivaldi with images turned off."] + +Among the elements you can customize in Vivaldi are the location of the tab bar, which can be on any side of the window you like, the address bar, which can be on the top or bottom, the order in which you cycle through tabs in the tab switcher, any keyboard shortcut, the position of the sidebar panel, and the available search engines and keyboard shortcuts for each. + +There are other power user friendly tools too, like what Vivaldi calls "Quick Commands". Press F2 (that shortcut is configurable naturally) and Vivaldi will launch a small command window which allows you to search through your browsing history, open tabs, bookmarks, even settings. Between the built-in (yes, configurable) keyboard shortcuts and Quick Commands it's possible to control Vivaldi and browse the web without lifting your fingers off the keys. About the only thing that isn't easy to do is click a link (as far as I can tell you'll need to tab through every link on the page to get to the one you want). + +[image="vivaldi-ars-quick-commands.png" caption="Vivaldi's Quick Commands allow fast keyboard access to just about everything."] + +Another familiar feature for Opera refugees is the sidebar, which can show your bookmarks, contacts, downloads, notes and (not working yet) mail. The notes panel allows you to take notes on a page and even capture screenshots for later reference. Notes can be organized into folders, though currently there doesn't seem to be a way to export them. + +[image="vivaldi-notes.png" caption="Vivaldi's Notes panel with screenshots."] + +The just-released second technical preview adds a couple more welcome power user features and customization options. There's now an (optional) bookmarks menu bar. Where most browsers have a special folder for the menu bar, Vivaldi lets you make any folder in your bookmarks show up in the Bookmarks bar. + +This second release also sees some improvements to the on-demand image loading. Instead of just on or off, there's now a setting to show all, only cached images or no images at all. Although primarily aimed at those on slow or metered networks, turning off images also makes for much faster searching. I found myself turning off images (regrettably, for all the customization there is in Vivaldi, there's no keyboard shortcut for toggling images) every time I searched on Google or DuckDuckGo. That way loading those "maybe this page has what I want" results is much faster since I don't have to sit and wait while a bunch of images I don't care about load. It also makes visiting Medium.com more tolerable. + +Perhaps the most notable new feature in the second technical preview is what Vivaldi calls "spatial navigation". Instead of reaching for your mouse, spatial navigation lets you click links by pressing the shift key and the arrow keys. You'll see a blue highlight surround each link and you can quickly jump to the link you want without taking your hands off the keyboard. In practice it's just like tabbing through links, but allows you to move much faster since you don't have to go in order. + +The last item of note in the latest version is something I would not at all be surprised to see other browsers copying soon: fast-forward and rewind buttons. Fast forward and rewind take a minute to wrap your head around, but once you do they become fantastically useful, especially rewind. Rewind backs you up to the first page you visited at a particular domain. So if you come to Ars to read this review, but then clicked around, read a few other articles and then want to get back to the Vivaldi download link in this piece you would just hit rewind and you're instantly back to the first page you started on. + +Fast-forward is a little more unpredictable, but an interesting idea. It attempts to, according to the Vivaldi docs, "jump to the most natural next page". For example the second page of search results or the next page in a forum thread. + +Nice as the new features are, Vivaldi still isn't feature complete, even by its own standards. Click the mail panel in the sidebar and you'll get a "coming soon" message. + +[image="vivaldi-mail.png" caption="Vivaldi's Mail panel, coming soon."] + +The mail panel hints at Vivaldi's biggest problem right now -- it's not done. + +Vivaldi has so many great features it can be a little frustrating because it is still very much a technical preview. It's been largely stable in my testing (most of the bugs I encountered using the first release are gone in the second), but it's still missing some key features. + +Extensions still don't exist. They're in the works, but for now you'll have to get by with Vivaldi as is. That means, for example, no Ad-Block Plus or other popular extensions. It's also worth noting that thanks to extensions you could, in theory, get most of Vivaldi's features to Firefox or Chrome, something von Tetzchner acknowledges though, as he points out, too many extensions is often the reason browsers get so slow. + +Then there's syncing. In the multi-device world of today a browser without sync features is next to useless and thus far Vivaldi is missing any kind of mobile component, let alone a way to sync between desktop and mobile. Both things are already in the works according to von Tetzchner, though he declined to comment on when either might arrive. "For now," he says, "we're focused on building out the desktop version." + +At the moment Vivaldi is really too new and unfinished to use on a day to day basis, though that hasn't stopped me from doing so for the past few weeks. It hasn't always been completely smooth, but it has worked for the most part. Even if you don't jump in with both feet right now, if you miss the good old Opera -- the Opera of Opera 12 -- then Vivaldi is one to keep an eye on. Even if you never use it yourself, given their track record there's a good chance some of ideas von Tetzchner and crew come up with may well end up in your favorite browser eventually. diff --git a/published/vivaldi.txt b/published/vivaldi.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4a7e4db --- /dev/null +++ b/published/vivaldi.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ + +Indeed Firefox has a feature in the works that actually tells you which extensions are slowing your browser down. Part of the goal of Vivaldi is to give power users as higher set of built-in features so that many extensions become unnecessary. That said, everyone tends to have their pet features that are too narrow to be built in, which is where extensions come in handy. diff --git a/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-ars-no-img.png b/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-ars-no-img.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c31ebc0 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-ars-no-img.png diff --git a/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-ars.png b/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-ars.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bad8451 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-ars.png diff --git a/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-mail.png b/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-mail.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..003235c --- /dev/null +++ b/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-mail.png diff --git a/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-notes.png b/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-notes.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec6693c --- /dev/null +++ b/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-notes.png diff --git a/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-quick-commands.png b/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-quick-commands.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d9da0fe --- /dev/null +++ b/published/vivaldi/vivaldi-quick-commands.png diff --git a/published/vivaldireview-edit.html b/published/vivaldireview-edit.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2f1ed49 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/vivaldireview-edit.html @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +<p>It's been a long time since a brand new desktop browser landed on the web. Web newcomers might even be forgiven for thinking that there have always been just four web browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.</p> +<p>After the vicious early days when the world of web browsers closely resembled the ruthless world of the railroad barons a century earlier, the browser market settled down to something pretty boring: IE and Firefox. A few years later Apple introduced Safari. Several years after that Google launched Chrome. Since Chrome arrived in 2008 the web hasn't seen another major browser launch until now.</p> +<h2 id="the-browser-is-dead-long-live-the-browser">The Browser is Dead, Long Live the Browser</h2> +<p>Part of the reason hardly anyone wants to build a new browser is no doubt that it's a massive undertaking. Another part though is likely due to the rise of mobile devices, which have spawned a thousand browsers, all quietly, invisibly embedded into other applications.</p> +<p>Site-specific mobile applications like the Facebook or Twitter apps push the browser into the background. When you click a link in these apps the pages just appear. Behind the scenes an embedded browser handles everything without switching to whatever dedicated browser might be installed. In fact there's little need for a dedicated web browser at all if you spend most of your time in mobile applications.</p> +<p>Desktop browsers have largely followed this overall trend of slipping into the background. Every new release sees them simplifying their interfaces and removing features that their data collection tools indicate are only used by a small handful. RSS icons disappear, toolbars get hidden away, the URL bar will likely disappear soon in many browsers.</p> +<p>This ends up working out well for most people, especially since, as Google <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ">infamously demonstrated some years ago</a>, most people have no idea what a web browser is or even that they're using one. The simpler the interface the less the average user needs to think about anything other than what they want to see or do on the web.</p> +<p>Given that success in the browser market is measured in market share this is not surprising. The less sophisticated user will always be the most plentiful and browsers will alway chase the numbers.</p> +<p>That's not a bad thing. It helps to get more people online. It improves the experience for the majority. Most people reading this have long since forgotten it, but there was a time when we too had no idea what all those inscrutable icons littered around the browser windows actually did.</p> +<p>There is, however, still that 5 percent that actually did use the RSS icon, liked their status bar and will most likely abandon any browser that hides away the address bar. The power users may be the minority, but they still exist. Exactly what constitutes a power user is up for debate, but looking at the recent history of web browser "advances" one thing seems clear, the power user is not the target audience. The person who wants to be in control of their experience and customize it to their liking has been left behind by most browsers.</p> +<h2 id="vivaldi-a-new-browser-for-power-users">Vivaldi, a New Browser for Power Users</h2> +<p>The power user's current solution to the simplification, arguably the infantilization, of the web browser interface is to get all those missing features back with add-ons. This works to a degree, but it introduces a ton of extra code, some of it written by programmers far less capable than those contributing to the core of Firefox or Chromium, which means, inevitably, add-ons slow things down. The problem is bad enough that a future version of Firefox will have a feature dedicated to letting you know which of your add-ons is slowing you down.</p> +<p>The list of major browsers at the start of this article was actually short one browser -- Opera. Opera has never had a huge audience, but it did cater to power users. Then Opera decided to abandon its homegrown rendering engine and adopt WebKit (along with Chrome, Opera now uses the WebKit fork, Blink). The move to WebKit meant more sites rendered properly in Opera (since supporting Opera's Presto engine was a low priority for most web developers), but it also meant Opera had to leave behind some of the features that its power users relied on the most.</p> +<p>Even two years later the current version of Opera still lacks most of the features targeted at power users -- tab stacks, mouse gestures, extensive keyboard shortcuts, the ability to take notes on a web page and more are all still missing. Opera today is a shadow of its last Presto-based release (Opera 12).</p> +<p>Opera threw in the towel on power users. That's at least part of why <a href="https://www.vivaldi.com/">Vivaldi</a> came to exist.</p> +<p>Vivaldi is a brand new web browser that wants to bring back all the old features of Opera 12 and more. The Vivaldi browser bills itself as "for our friends", which would seem to mean for power users. Vivaldi boasts many features the average user is unlikely to need or even be aware of. This is indeed a power user's browser built by power users for power users. Put another way, this is the new (old) Opera.</p> +<p>The team behind Vivaldi recently release a second "technical preview". It's still experimentaland a long way from finished, but you can <a href="https://www.vivaldi.com/">try out Vivaldi</a> today. Vivaldi works on Windows, OS X and Linux (there are even .deb and .rpm downloads available for easy installation on Linux).</p> + +[image="vivaldi-ars.png" caption="Vivaldi"] + +<p>If you're a former Opera user unhappy with the direction of desktop Opera I strongly suggest you download Vivaldi. The technical preview release may be rough around the edges but it already supports tab stacking, adding notes (complete with screenshots of any page), mouse gestures and tons of keyboard shortcuts all wrapped in a user interface that's reminiscent of Opera 12.</p> +<p>It's no accident that Vivaldi offers most of what Opera 12 offered. Vivaldi's CEO is Jon S. von Tetzchner, co-founder and former CEO of Opera. Von Tetzchner's primary goal for Vivaldi is to rebuild the browser that Opera once was -- the power user's browser.</p> +<p>Building a new browser is not for the faint of heart, but of course this isn't the first time von Tetzchner has done it. Why do it again? The motivations behind Vivaldi are startlingly simple. As Von Tetzchner tells me, "Opera abandoned Opera... I thought, what am I going to do now? There were all these features that I was used to, that everyone else was used to and they were gone. So we thought, well there's a lot of people that want to do more with their browser, let's make a browser for them."</p> +<p>In other words Vivaldi isn't interested in chasing the market share of IE, Firefox or Chrome. It's never going to get to that size user base, but it will let you do more with the web than any of the others will out of the box.</p> +<p>Vivaldi also has the potential to re-shape the browser market. Opera never had anything but a tiny slice of the browser market either, but its impact on the browser market has been enormous. Just about every major feature in today's browsers started out in Opera. Tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, pioneering support for web standards and even the clustered page thumbnails when you open a new window or tab (a feature known as "speed dial") all started in Opera and were then copied by Firefox, Chrome, Safari and (sometimes) IE.</p> +<p>For now Vivaldi is primarily concerned with getting its desktop offering to a stable, usable point.</p> +<p>At first glance what you see when you open Vivaldi for the first time isn't all that different from any other browser you've used. Indeed it looks and behaves like any other on the surface.</p> +<p>Vivaldi, like the latest versions of Opera and seemingly pretty much everything else these days, uses the WebKit rendering engine behind the scenes. That means Vivaldi renders pages just the same as Chrome or any other WebKit/Blink browser would. But Vivaldi's interface does not rely on the same code you'll find in Chrome or Opera. In fact the interface is written entirely with web technologies, primarily Javascript and CSS. JavaScript and React along with Node.js, Browserify and "a long list of NPM modules" create the Vivaldi UI. As the website puts it, "Vivaldi is the web built with the web".</p> +<p>It's fitting that just under the surface Vivaldi is significantly different than its competition since the same it true of its features. Vivaldi's interface isn't cluttered, you'll have to poke around to discover the real power. Once you start to dig into the interface there's a ton of stuff you won't find elsewhere like the ability to put tabs on any side of the screen, customize keyboard shortcuts, turn off images, even render the page with monospace fonts if you want. If you remember the heady days back when Netscape was the dominant browser and user stylesheets were still an option then you'll love Vivaldi.</p> + +[image="vivaldi-ars-no-img.png" caption="Vivaldi with images turned off."] + +<p>Among the elements you can customize in Vivaldi are the location of the tab bar, which can be on any side of the window you like, the address bar, which can be on the top or bottom, the order in which you cycle through tabs in the tab switcher, any keyboard shortcut, the position of the sidebar panel, and the available search engines and keyboard shortcuts for each.</p> +<p>There are other power user friendly tools too, like what Vivaldi calls "Quick Commands". Press F2 (that shortcut is configurable naturally) and Vivaldi will launch a small command window which allows you to search through your browsing history, open tabs, bookmarks, even settings. Between the built-in (yes, configurable) keyboard shortcuts and Quick Commands it's possible to control Vivaldi and browse the web without lifting your fingers off the keys. About the only thing that isn't easy to do is click a link (as far as I can tell you'll need to tab through every link on the page to get to the one you want).</p> + +[image="vivaldi-ars-quick-commands.png" caption="Vivaldi's Quick Commands allow fast keyboard access to just about everything."] + +<p>Another familiar feature for Opera refugees is the sidebar, which can show your bookmarks, contacts, downloads, notes and (not working yet) mail. The notes panel allows you to take notes on a page and even capture screenshots for later reference. Notes can be organized into folders, though currently there doesn't seem to be a way to export them.</p> + +[image="vivaldi-notes.png" caption="Vivaldi's Notes panel with screenshots."] + +<p>The just-released second technical preview adds a couple more welcome power user features and customization options. There's now an (optional) bookmarks menu bar. Where most browsers have a special folder for the menu bar, Vivaldi lets you make any folder in your bookmarks show up in the Bookmarks bar.</p> +<p>This second release also sees some improvements to the on-demand image loading. Instead of just on or off, there's now a setting to show all, only cached images or no images at all. Although primarily aimed at those on slow or metered networks, turning off images also makes for much faster searching. I found myself turning off images (regrettably, for all the customization there is in Vivaldi, there's no keyboard shortcut for toggling images) every time I searched on Google or DuckDuckGo. That way loading those "maybe this page has what I want" results is much faster since I don't have to sit and wait while a bunch of images I don't care about load. It also makes visiting Medium.com more tolerable.</p> +<p>Perhaps the most notable new feature in the second technical preview is what Vivaldi calls "spatial navigation". Instead of reaching for your mouse, spatial navigation lets you click links by pressing the shift key and the arrow keys. You'll see a blue highlight surround each link and you can quickly jump to the link you want without taking your hands off the keyboard. In practice it's just like tabbing through links, but allows you to move much faster since you don't have to go in order.</p> +<p>The last item of note in the latest version is something I would not at all be surprised to see other browsers copying soon: fast-forward and rewind buttons. Fast forward and rewind take a minute to wrap your head around, but once you do they become fantastically useful, especially rewind. Rewind backs you up to the first page you visited at a particular domain. So if you come to Ars to read this review, but then clicked around, read a few other articles and then want to get back to the Vivaldi download link in this piece you would just hit rewind and you're instantly back to the first page you started on.</p> +<p>Fast-forward is a little more unpredictable, but an interesting idea. It attempts to, according to the Vivaldi docs, "jump to the most natural next page". For example the second page of search results or the next page in a forum thread.</p> +<p>Nice as the new features are, Vivaldi still isn't feature complete, even by its own standards. Click the mail panel in the sidebar and you'll get a "coming soon" message.</p> + +[image="vivaldi-mail.png" caption="Vivaldi's Mail panel, coming soon."] + +<p>The mail panel hints at Vivaldi's biggest problem right now -- it's not done.</p> +<p>Vivaldi has so many great features it can be a little frustrating because it is still very much a technical preview. It's been largely stable in my testing (most of the bugs I encountered using the first release are gone in the second), but it's still missing some key features.</p> +<p>Extensions still don't exist. They're in the works, but for now you'll have to get by with Vivaldi as is. That means, for example, no Ad-Block Plus or other popular extensions. It's also worth noting that thanks to extensions you could, in theory, get most of Vivaldi's features to Firefox or Chrome, something von Tetzchner acknowledges though, as he points out, too many extensions is often the reason browsers get so slow.</p> +<p>Then there's syncing. In the multi-device world of today a browser without sync features is next to useless and thus far Vivaldi is missing any kind of mobile component, let alone a way to sync between desktop and mobile. Both things are already in the works according to von Tetzchner, though he declined to comment on when either might arrive. "For now," he says, "we're focused on building out the desktop version."</p> +<p>At the moment Vivaldi is really too new and unfinished to use on a day to day basis, though that hasn't stopped me from doing so for the past few weeks. It hasn't always been completely smooth, but it has worked for the most part. Even if you don't jump in with both feet right now, if you miss the good old Opera -- the Opera of Opera 12 -- then Vivaldi is one to keep an eye on. Even if you never use it yourself, given their track record there's a good chance some of ideas von Tetzchner and crew come up with may well end up in your favorite browser eventually.</p> diff --git a/published/vivaldireview.html b/published/vivaldireview.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a70f705 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/vivaldireview.html @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +<p>It's been a long time since a brand new desktop browser landed on the web. Web newcomers might even be forgiven for thinking that there have always been just four web browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.</p> +<p>After the vicious early days when the world of web browsers closely resembled the ruthless world of the railroad barons a century earlier, the browser market settled down to something pretty boring: IE and Firefox. A few years later Apple introduced Safari. Several years after that Google launched Chrome. Since Chrome arrived in 2008 the web hasn't seen another major browser launch until now.</p> +<h2 id="the-browser-is-dead-long-live-the-browser">The Browser is Dead, Long Live the Browser</h2> +<p>Part of the reason hardly anyone wants to build a new browser is no doubt that it's a massive undertaking. Another part though is likely due to the rise of mobile devices, which have spawned a thousand browsers, all quietly, invisibly embedded into other applications.</p> +<p>Site-specific mobile applications like the Facebook or Twitter apps push the browser into the background. When you click a link in these apps the pages just appear. Behind the scenes an embedded browser handles everything without switching to whatever dedicated browser might be installed. In fact there's little need for a dedicated web browser at all if you spend most of your time in mobile applications.</p> +<p>Desktop browsers have largely followed this overall trend of slipping into the background. Every new release sees them simplifying their interfaces and removing features that their data collection tools indicate are only used by a small handful. RSS icons disappear, toolbars get hidden away, the URL bar will likely disappear soon in many browsers.</p> +<p>This ends up working out well for most people, especially since, as Google <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ">infamously demonstrated some years ago</a>, most people have no idea what a web browser is or even that they're using one. The simpler the interface the less the average user needs to think about anything other than what they want to see or do on the web.</p> +<p>Given that success in the browser market is measured in market share this is not surprising. The less sophisticated user will always be the most plentiful and browsers will alway chase the numbers.</p> +<p>That's not a bad thing. It helps to get more people online. It improves the experience for the majority. Most people reading this have long since forgotten it, but there was a time when we too had no idea what all those inscrutable icons littered around the browser windows actually did.</p> +<p>There is, however, still that 5 percent that actually did use the RSS icon, liked their status bar and will most likely abandon any browser that hides away the address bar. The power users may be the minority, but they still exist. Exactly what constitutes a power user is up for debate, but looking at the recent history of web browser "advances" one thing seems clear, the power user is not the target audience. The person who wants to be in control of their experience and customize it to their liking has been left behind by most browsers.</p> +<h2 id="vivaldi-a-new-browser-for-power-users">Vivaldi, a New Browser for Power Users</h2> +<p>The power user's current solution to the simplification, arguably the infantilization, of the web browser interface is to get all those missing features back with add-ons. This works to a degree, but it introduces a ton of extra code, some of it written by programmers far less capable than those contributing to the core of Firefox or Chromium, which means, inevitably, add-ons slow things down. The problem is bad enough that a future version of Firefox will have a feature dedicated to letting you know which of your add-ons is slowing you down.</p> +<p>The list of major browsers at the start of this article was actually short one browser -- Opera. Opera has never had a huge audience, but it did cater to power users. Then Opera decided to abandon its homegrown rendering engine and adopt WebKit (along with Chrome, Opera now uses the WebKit fork, Blink). The move to WebKit meant more sites rendered properly in Opera (since supporting Opera's Presto engine was a low priority for most web developers), but it also meant Opera had to leave behind some of the features that its power users relied on the most.</p> +<p>Even two years later the current version of Opera still lacks most of the features targeted at power users -- tab stacks, mouse gestures, extensive keyboard shortcuts, the ability to take notes on a web page and more are all still missing. Opera today is a shadow of its last Presto-based release (Opera 12).</p> +<p>Opera threw in the towel on power users. That's at least part of why <a href="https://www.vivaldi.com/">Vivaldi</a> came to exist.</p> +<p>Vivaldi is a brand new web browser that wants to bring back all the old features of Opera 12 and more. The Vivaldi browser bills itself as "for our friends", which would seem to mean for power users. Vivaldi boasts many features the average user is unlikely to need or even be aware of. This is indeed a power user's browser built by power users for power users. Put another way, this is the new (old) Opera.</p> +<p>It's highly experimental, a little bit buggy and a long way from finished, but you can <a href="https://www.vivaldi.com/">try out Vivaldi</a> today. Vivaldi works on Windows, OS X and Linux (there are even .deb and .rpm downloads available for easy installation on Linux).</p> + +[image="vivaldi-ars.png" caption="Vivaldi"] + +<p>If you're a former Opera user unhappy with the direction of desktop Opera I strongly suggest you download Vivaldi. The technical preview release may be rough around the edges but it already supports tab stacking, adding notes (complete with screenshots of any page), mouse gestures and tons of keyboard shortcuts all wrapped in a user interface that's reminiscent of Opera 12.</p> +<p>It's no accident that Vivaldi offers most of what Opera 12 offered. Vivaldi's CEO is Jon S. von Tetzchner, co-founder and former CEO of Opera. Von Tetzchner's primary goal for Vivaldi is to rebuild the browser that Opera once was -- the power user's browser.</p> +<p>Building a new browser is not for the faint of heart, but of course this isn't the first time von Tetzchner has done it. Why do it again? The motivations behind Vivaldi are startlingly simple. As Von Tetzchner tells me, "Opera abandoned Opera... I thought, what am I going to do now? There were all these features that I was used to, that everyone else was used to and they were gone. So we thought, well there's a lot of people that want to do more with their browser, let's make a browser for them."</p> +<p>In other words Vivaldi isn't interested in chasing the market share of IE, Firefox or Chrome. It's never going to get to that size user base, but it will let you do more with the web than any of the others will out of the box.</p> +<p>Vivaldi also has the potential to re-shape the browser market. Opera never had anything but a tiny slice of the browser market either, but its impact on the browser market has been enormous. Just about every major feature in today's browsers started out in Opera. Tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, pioneering support for web standards and even the clustered page thumbnails when you open a new window or tab (a feature known as "speed dial") all started in Opera and were then copied by Firefox, Chrome, Safari and (sometimes) IE.</p> +<p>For now Vivaldi is primarily concerned with getting its desktop offering to a stable, usable point.</p> +<p>At first glance what you see when you open Vivaldi for the first time isn't all that different from any other browser you've used. Indeed it looks and behaves like any other on the surface.</p> +<p>Vivaldi, like the latest versions of Opera and seemingly pretty much everything else these days, uses the WebKit rendering engine behind the scenes. That means Vivaldi renders pages just the same as Chrome or any other WebKit/Blink browser would. But Vivaldi's interface does not rely on the same code you'll find in Chrome or Opera. In fact the interface is written entirely with web technologies, primarily Javascript and CSS. JavaScript and React along with Node.js, Browserify and "a long list of NPM modules" create the Vivaldi UI. As the website puts it, "Vivaldi is the web built with the web".</p> +<p>It's fitting that just under the surface Vivaldi is significantly different than its competition since the same it true of its features. Vivaldi's interface isn't cluttered, you'll have to poke around to discover the real power. Once you start to dig into the interface there's a ton of stuff you won't find elsewhere like the ability to put tabs on any side of the screen, customize keyboard shortcuts, turn off images, even render the page with monospace fonts if you want. If you remember the heady days back when Netscape was the dominant browser and user stylesheets were still an option then you'll love Vivaldi.</p> + +[image="vivaldi-ars-no-img.png" caption="Vivaldi with images turned off."] + +<p>Among the elements you can customize in Vivaldi are the location of the tab bar, which can be on any side of the window you like, the order in which you cycle through tabs in the tab switcher, any keyboard shortcut, the position of the sidebar panel, and the available search engines and keyboard shortcuts for each.</p> +<p>There are other power user friendly tools too, like what Vivaldi calls "Quick Commands". Press F2 (that shortcut is configurable naturally) and Vivaldi will launch a small command window which allows you to search through your browsing history, open tabs, bookmarks, even settings. Between the built-in (yes, configurable) keyboard shortcuts and Quick Commands it's possible to control Vivaldi and browse the web without lifting your fingers off the keys. About the only thing that isn't easy to do is click a link (as far as I can tell you'll need to tab through every link on the page to get to the one you want).</p> + +[image="vivaldi-ars-quick-commands.png" caption="Vivaldi's Quick Commands allow fast keyboard access to just about everything."] + +<p>Another familiar feature for Opera refugees is the sidebar, which can show your bookmarks, contacts, downloads, notes and (not working yet) mail. The notes panel allows you to take notes on a page and even capture screenshots for later reference. Notes can be organized into folders, though currently there doesn't seem to be a way to export them.</p> + +[image="vivaldi-notes.png" caption="Vivaldi's Notes panel with screenshots."] + +[image="vivaldi-mail.png" caption="Vivaldi's Mail panel, coming soon."] + +<p>The mail panel hints at Vivaldi's biggest problem right now -- it's not done.</p> +<p>Vivaldi has so many great features it can be a little frustrating because it is still very much a technical preview.</p> +<p>There are bugs and even some features where it's hard to tell what's a bug and what's intended. For example, the feature to turn off images makes pages load much faster, which is great when you're, for example, searching for something, clicking a lot of links and then backing out; unless you're searching for something very visible you probably don't need to see every image on the page. This seems like the perfect place to use Vivaldi's image toggle button, but it appears to only work on the first domain you click it on, making it useless in this scenario.</p> +<p>Another sorely missing feature is extensions, which are in the works, but for now you'll have to get by with Vivaldi as is. That means, for example, no Ad-Block Plus or other popular extensions. It's also worth noting that thanks to extensions you could, in theory, get most of Vivaldi's features to Firefox or Chrome, something von Tetzchner acknowledges though, as he points out, too many extensions is often the reason browsers get so slow.</p> +<p>Then there's syncing. In the multi-device world of today a browser without sync features is next to useless and thus far Vivaldi is missing any kind of mobile component, let alone a way to sync between desktop and mobile. Both things are already in the works according to von Tetzchner, though he declined to comment on when either might arrive. "For now," he says, "we're focused on building out the desktop version."</p> +<p>At the moment Vivaldi is really too new and unfinished to use on a day to day basis, though that hasn't stopped me from doing so for the past few weeks. It hasn't always been completely smooth, but it has worked for the most part. Even if you don't jump in with both feet right now, if you miss the good old Opera -- the Opera of Opera 12 -- then Vivaldi is one to keep an eye on. Even if you never use it yourself, given their track record there's a good chance some of ideas von Tetzchner and crew come up with may well end up in your favorite browser eventually.</p> |
