The unlocked iPhone 4S would end up costing me a tad over $800 after tax and Applecare. I was also getting bored of the iOS ecosystem and its closed, silo system for apps. So instead I got myself a much cheaper unlocked Android phone – the Google/Samsung Nexus S. I’m pairing that with a $30 a month T-Mobile data and phone plan. I’m still waiting for a new SIM card to show up but till then I’m making use of the ample wifi coverage that’s a side-effect of living in a college town. For now, I’m only going to talk about my first impressions on the Nexus S itself.

Google Nexus S (via Wikipedia)

The Nexus S is Google’s previous flagship phone. Its current flagship is the Galaxy Nexus which Google is also selling unlocked. However it’s almost twice the price I paid for the Nexus S and in my opinion, isn’t sufficient of an upgrade to justify the price. Even though it’s about a year old by now (and technically running the old version of Android), I haven’t had a problem with it so far.

It looks pretty different from the iPhone and the plastic feel takes some getting used it. I also think it slips more easily, but that might just be a personal problem. The back of the phone has something of a ridge at the bottom which I guess is supposed to make it easier to hold. Though the build quality does feel inferior as compared to the iPhone, I like it and have no major complaints.

The Android sofware feels like a breath of fresh air as compared to the iPhone. It is considerably more customizable and I like the presence of both tradiiontal apps as well as “widgets” that add functionality directly to your home screens. I’ve found widgets great for quickly looking up data like the weather, Twitter mentions or what system services are currently running.

The tinkerer in me loves how customizable the Android system is. Changing the look and feel is just the beginning. There are a lot of bells and whistles and options and sometimes it can be a rather confusing. For now I’ve only stuck to the usual set of apps (Twitter, Foursquare, Camera) but I’m looking forward to trying out new and interesting apps in the future. More than that I feel like Android would be a really good platform if I decide to get into mobile dev anytime soon.

There are a few things about the Nexus S that I’m concerned with. I think the battery life is a tad too short, especially with the geolocation services on all the time. Luckily, the battery monitor widget makes it simple to turn off services with a touch so maybe some manual management might make it better. While the Google apps are really well integrated (especially Google Voice) and apps from large companies are well done, third-party apps seem to be of considerably less quality than iOS equivalents. I don’t really blame the developers given the multitude of devices but it does mean that finding good apps for simple things like RSS is more difficult than it should be.

Despite the glitches and minor annoyances I really like the Nexus S. The hardware is pretty solid and I like Android so far. Right now having a fully functional smartphone is still pretty new to me, but I’m hoping that when the novelty wears off I’ll dive into actually programming the powerful computer in my pocket.

I’m not a UI or UX designer. I’m sure there are people at Canonical who have been studying these areas for longer than I have. But I am a daily Linux user. In fact I would say that I’m a power user. I’m no neckbeard, but I think that by now I have a fair grasp of the Unix philosophy and try to follow it (my love for Emacs notwithstanding). The longer I see Ubuntu’s development the more it seems that they are shunning the Unix philosophy in the name of “user friendliness” and “zero configuration”. And they’re doing it wrong. I think that’s absolutely the wrong way to go.

It seems that Canonical is trying very hard to be Apple while not being a total ripoff. Apple is certainly a worthy competitor (and a great source to copy from) but this is a game that Ubuntu is not going to win. The thing is, you can’t be Apple. That game has been played, that ship has sailed. Apple pretty much has the market cornered when it comes to nice shiny things that just work for most people irrespective of prior computer usage. Unless somehow Canonical sprouts an entire ecosystem of products overnight they are not going to wrest that territory from Apple.

That’s not to say that Canonical shouldn’t be innovating and building good-looking interfaces. But they should play to the strengths of both Linux the system and Linux the user community instead of fighting them. Linux users are power users. In fact I think Linux has a tendency to encourage average computer users to become power users once they spend some time with it. I would love to see Ubuntu start catering to power users instead of shooing them away.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Apple does not place its developers above its customers. That’s a fine decision for them to make. It’s their business and their products and they can do whatever they like. However as a programmer and hacker I am afraid. I’m scared that we’re getting to the point where I won’t be able to install software of my choosing without Apple standing in the way. I’m not talking about just stuff like games and expensive proprietary apps, but even basic programming tools and system utilities. That’s not something that I’m prepared to accept.

Given the growing lockdown of Apple’s systems, Canoncial should be pouring resources into making Ubuntu the best damn development environment on the planet. That means that all the basics work without me tinkering with drivers and configurations (something they’ve largely accomplished). It means that there’s a large pool of ready-to-install software (which also they have) and that it’s possible (and easy) to install esoteric third-party tools and libraries. Luckily the Unix heritage means that the system is designed to allow this. Instead of trying to sugar coat and “simplify” everything there should be carefully thought-out defaults that I can easily override and customize. Programmability and flexibility grounded in well-tuned defaults should be the Ubuntu signature.

It makes even more sense for Canonical to take this angle because Apple seems to be actively abandoning it. A generation of hackers may have started with BASIC on Apple IIs, but getting a C compiler on a modern Mac is a 4GB XCode download. Ubuntu can easily ship with a default arsenal of programming tools. Last I checked the default install already includes Python. Ubuntu can be the hands-down, no-questions-asked platform of choice for today’s pros and tomorrow’s curious novices. Instead of a candy-coated, opaquely-configured Unity, give me a sleek fully programmable interface. Give me a scripting language for the GUI with first-class hooks into the environment. Made it dead simple for people to script their experience. Encourage and give them a helping hand. Hell, gamify it if you can. Apple changed the world by showing a generation the value of good, clean design. Canonical can change the world by showing the value of flexibility, programmability and freedom.

Dear Canonical, I want you to succeed, I really do. I don’t want Apple to be the only competent player in town. But I need an environment that I can bend to my will instead of having everything hidden behind bling and “simplification”. I know that being a great programming environment is at the heart of Linux. I know that you have the people and the resources to advance the state of computing for all of us. So please zig to Apple’s zag.

PS. Perhaps Ubuntu can make a dent in the tablet and netbook market, if that’s their game. But the netbook market is already dying and let’s be honest, there’s an iPad market, not a tablet market. And even if that market does open up, Android has a head start and Amazon has far greater visibility. But Ubuntu has already gone where no Linux distro has gone before. For most people I know it’s the distribution they reflexively reach for. That developer-friendliness and trust is something they should be actively leveraging.

In some ways the last decade or so has not been so interesting for desktop operating systems. Only three operating systems are still in popular use and all of them are more or less the same in terms of how they work. The differences between them from a user point of view are mostly superficial. However, each of these operating systems has a different story to tell. Windows has been pretty much stagnant from Windows XP through Vista up to Windows 7. The bold plans that were supposed to be part of Longhorn never came through. On the other hand OS X has been slowly but steadily marching ahead. OS X along with the iLife suite and the iOS devices has been gently pushing personal computing into the future. However, it’s becoming clearer that the controls that Apple places on it’s technology is here to stay and will probably only get more stringent in the years to come. Whether or not the desktop Mac gets completely locked down remains to be seen. Finally Linux on the desktop never really took off (despite some good attempts) and even with Canonical and Ubuntu doing some great work, it doesn’t seem Linux will see strong market penetration any time soon.

So where does all this leave us? I think it’s high time for a Microsoft resurgence. They have an army of really intelligent capable engineers spread throughout the world. They have some amazing projects being incubating in their Labs (and more smart people). Equally importantly, they have immense financial assets and deep, deep inroads to the corporate sector. Though they’re not in danger of losing their immense market lead anytime soon, they  haven’t done anything innovative or exciting in a long long time. And they’re also far far behind in both cloud and mobile computing. But at a time when there are doubts starting to fly about Apple’s intentions (and how they’ll play with companies like Flash and Adobe), it could be just the opportunity that MS needs to make a strong comeback. They’ll need something bold and unique, but there doesn’t seem to be much confidence in their ability to pull off what they need to do.

Being a Linux user for a good few years I think it’s represent some really technology, unfortunately it fails when it comes to getting the little things working properly. Ubuntu does a good job of making the user experience smooth, and I think it’s the best user-facing Linux distribution currently available. But there’s no Netflix for Linux, Flash still has problems and if you’re stepping out of the Ubuntu zone there’s a considerable amount of potential tinkering that you might have to get things working. I personally use Arch Linux and prefer it over Ubuntu mainly because of the bleeding edge packages, but it kinda sucks when you don’t have suspend/resume working for months on end. Once upon a time when I was just diving into the world of Linux and the mysteries of the command line, spending a few hours trying to get graphics working after an upgrade was something of an adventure. But now it gets old really quickly. I’m getting into the phase of “grown-up computing” and I want to use my computer to get stuff done as opposed to figuring out why stuff isn’t working. Should I just sue for peace and stick with Ubuntu on the desktop? Maybe, but at that point I might as well just get a Mac.

Right now, it seems to me that OS X is hands down the best desktop operating system on the market. Unless you’re tied to some particular piece of software on Windows, OS X practically runs everything you would want it to. Of course, with Apple divorcing itself from Adobe and Oracle, it’s interesting to see how long that will last. If Microsoft can’t get its act together and make a comeback, the time might be right for another player to come up. One possible answer is Google with Android or Chrome OS, but I have my doubts if it will work. For one thing, the current state of Android phones seems to suggest that just providing part of the software layer won’t be enough.

A strong entrant to the desktop computing market will need to offer a combined hardware and software combo (even if the software is leased to other players). I’m thinking Apple-level hardware with Ubuntu on top of it. The hardware control would mean fine-tuned and well-tested drivers so that things actually work. However the free software would mean that it would be an open and hackable machine. It works great when you need it to, but you can hack it if you want it to. Canonical might decide to open a hardware wing, especially since Dell seems to have stopped offering Ubuntu as an option.

I think that the lull in operating system activity is coming to an end. As we get more used to the idea of storing our data in the cloud all the time and the web slowly fuses with the desktop, we need the core technologies that power our machines to change as well. However, the change is not always for the best. Furthermore since our livelihood depends on no small part on our machines, it’s in our best interests to make sure that our operating systems do what we want them to. For that reason, as much as I admire Apple’s dedication to perfection  and can understand why they want control of the platform, the lack of a free, open and high-quality alternative does make me uncomfortable. I hope someone stands up to pick up the slack.

However, I know very little about things like databases, security or computer networks. And this makes me uncomfortable because we live in an increasingly networked world. A growing amount of user facing software is becoming networked, collaborative and social. Both computation and storage are embracing the cloud and it’s becoming more common to have our data in large or small-scale databases rather than in multiple discrete files. Since I plan on staying in the computer field for a good period of time to come, I think it would be a good idea to read up on the networked side of things.

I have a good idea of the hardware layer of networks and the basic socket system (learned all that in the operating systems class) but I have little idea of the protocols and systems built on top of them. I suppose there are enough books out there that would give me a good idea of our networked world, but I don’t just want to know about it, I want to be able to build it (at least parts of it). Luckily there’s tons of great oepn-source networking code out there.

In particular the Ruby on Rails framework and the Mongrel2 webserver are not just completely open source, they also have excellent documentation and manuals. It may not be an entirely good idea for me to start learning about networking by reading server code and documentation, but I like following a “throw myself in the deep end’ policy when I’m self-educating. My plan is to start reading up on how some good networking code works, trying to figure things out and when I can’t figure something out, go look up other resources on it. I did something similar with programming languages when I got interested in them (though not looking at implementation code) and I’ve learned a lot.

In addition to that, there are two computer networking courses being offered next semester (one from an ECE perspective and one from a CS perspective) and I plan on taking one of them. I’m hoping that I’ll have self-taught myself enough that I can use the class to clear any doubts or misconceptions I might have and gain a really solid understanding of the area.

Of course, the best way to learn is by doing and I want to write code that implements the stuff I learn about. I’ve already started this by refactoring my old operating systems project. It started out as an a simple client-server combo that sent data over a network and was a multithreaded program. I’ve slimmed it down and thrown out all the client stuff. At this point it’s a small C library that handles multithreading and establishing TCP connections that could be used for building servers. I have a simple echo server and at some point I’ll sit down and write an HTTP server for it. It’s called Litepipe and you can get it from Github.

I’m really looking forward to exploring and learning about a new area of computer technology, but with all the stuff I have on my plate, it’s probably going to be rather slow going. But that’s ok, I’m not in a rush. I’d love to hear any advice you guys might have on how to get started learning about networking.

The problem with being a undergraduate researcher is that I don’t have enough experience to know how big of a project is a good size. Again, I don’t want to think too much about this and end up limiting myself from what I can achieve. So how should I choose my project? First, I want to get my priorities straight. I’d rather do something that’s ambitious and end up with something that’s a litte incomplete than do something I can neatly finish, but is mundane and unexciting. That being said, I don’t want to do something that I have no chance of finishing. I’m not looking to prove or disprove P = NP (and I’m not a theory guy anyway) but I don’t want to write yet another Python/Ruby/Java clone.

I remember reading Paul Graham’s essay on procrastination a while ago. What stuck out to me most was his summary of Richard Hamming’s essay on research. One of the core themes on that essay is asking yourself three basic questions:

1. What are the important problems in your field?
2. Are you working on one of them?
3. Why not?

Hamming was talking to professional scientists and researchers and I’m just a wee young undergraduate working on an honors thesis, but it’s never too early to get started. So, in keeping with Hamming’s excellent advice, what are the important problems in computer science? Now that’s a tricky one. Of course, there are the classic ones. Prove or disprove P = NP, build true AI, build a working quantum computer etc. etc. Then there are the ones with been-there done-that written all over them. For example, the current software stack is a bit of a mess so let’s build a unified top-to-bottom hardware-software solution all in Lisp (along with a YouTube viewer).

But seriously, what’s a real, current problem that I can take a chunk of and have a hope of solving? For starters, there’s parallel computation. Engineers are piling the core on with no sign of stopping and we have absolutely no idea what to do with all of them. Most of our software is still inherently single threaded and keeping up with concurrency with all the ills of shared memory are a pain to keep up with. New programming languages and innovations like software transactional memory are doing a valiant effort, but they still aren’t tools that you can ship off to everday programmers and have them cranking out parallel code. I’ve been studying parallel code (mostly in terms of GPUs) for last semester and it’s definitely something I can get into. However parallel computing is still a wide area and I’d need to find something more specific. I’m working on a different sort of parallelization over the summer (MapReduce with Hadoop) so that’ll give me something more to think about.

I posted to the Arch Linux forum about just this issue and one of the replies that came up multiple times was network security. The internet is everywhere and a computer without a network computer in this age is pretty much useless. And when you connect your computer to dozens of other ones spread out all acrosss the world, there’s a good chance that one or more of them don’t want to play nice. With botnets, viruses, trojans, worms and the like being a daily reality security is important and no seems to have a solution that’s even remotely bulletproof. Unfortunately for me, security just doesn’t interest me that much. I’d rather be building interesting stuff than holding down the fort. So on to the next one.

I’m interested in the way that people interact with their machines, not really in the up-front, HCI sense, but in a more general sense. One problem that I find interesting is how we can manage all the data we have on our machines without having to explicitly name (and then remember the name of) each and every single piece. The filesystem metaphor does not scale to thousands of songs and images or to the many tiny bits of text and video that we’re continually sharing with each other. Unfortunately, none of the popular operating systems seem to be meeting this challenge head on (iLife is going in the right direction, but the ideas need to spread to the rest of the system). I’d love to come up with an implementation of a file-less, data centric user model, probably along the lines to what the Etoile project is trying to accomplish. This is certainly something that I’ll be thinking about more (and I need to come up with a more theoretical basis for an honors project).

There are probably a bunch of other things that could qualify for being among the most important problems in computer science and I could add another few thousand words to this post. But sufficeth to say that this is still something that I need to give a lot more thought to. I still have no idea what my thesis topic could be, but I know what I’ll be doing over summer. I’m not going to be solving the multicore crisis or building a completely new operating system from scratch, but I’m definitely going to be taking my best crack at it.

I hopped on the C channel at Freenode and within minutes I had not only found out why program was misbehaving, but I also got two separate suggestions on how to fix it. I may have bent the rules a little bit, but I trust my professor will understand that I actually did learn something and not just steal code of the Internet. I still don’t really know how to implement one of the suggested fixes, but I implemented the other. The fix I didn’t understand is probably the cleaner of the too and I plan on asking my professor more about it.

I repeated the experience yesterday, but with JavaScript and the canvas element (while trying to use Processing.js). I did IRC in the past, but never really to solve problems. I went on channels (mostly #archlinux and #python on Freenode) mainly to interact with the community. Whenever I had problems, I generally googled my way to a solution. In some ways, asking on IRC could be considered the easier path: instead of searching for material, you simply go ask someone who knows. While that may be true to some extent, it’s certainly not what happens all the time. When asking the C question, the other channel members made it perfectly clear to me that I needed to go read more (which I totally agree with). They also helpfully pointed me to resources. IRC channels aren’t “cheatsheets” by any stretch of the imagination. I got the feeling, on both the C and Processing.js channels, that the people on them are very well-versed in what they do. They’re willing to help you, but only if you help yourself (some make this point more forcefully than others).

IRC is a good example of a way to learn Computer science (or at least programming) in a master-apprentice fashion. It’s different from learning from a tutorial or reading the man page. I hesitate to call it “teaching” because it’s more of a free form Q&A. Instead of having someone give you the information up front (a typical classroom setting) or going out and hunting it down yourself, you get to pick the brains of people who have already internalized the knowledge that you’re after. To get to it, you have to ask the right questions and that means knowing the problem well enough to figure out what questions are worth asking. And that requires some thought.

It’s not exactly master-apprentice because you aren’t learning under the tutelage of a single master. I think a more apt analogy would be spending some time at a monastery. You don’t have a very strong connection to the people there, but you share some things in common. You can go with a purpose or without one. But you will benefit more if you do have one. There are some basic rules, mostly concerning respect and etiquette. If you break them, you will be asked to leave and in extreme circumstances, removed. The experience you have is very much up to you and could leave with a profound sense of enlightenment and a strong desire to return and learn some more.

Ok, so I’m embellishing a bit and programmers aren’t really monks (except maybe if you’re Richard Stallman). IRC certainly isn’t solution to all questions and you could easily come away being more confused than when you started, but that could happen with a book or a normal class. IRC is another resource, but it’s a good one. No matter how good search technology may be or how well-written technical docs may be, sometimes it’s good to be able to be walked through problems by a human being. And yes, I do still have questions for my professor.

As the years go by, it seems like we keep on piling layer on top of layer while the results aren’t proportional to what we have to learn to get things done. Now, I’m not proposing that we all start writing down-to-the-metal code or force everyone to become a programmer, but things are starting to look like a mess. Web programming is an interesting development, but it adds yet another layer on top of the existing kernel, operating system, libraries and GUI toolkits. Add to that the fact all browsers are still a bit different from each other and you can start to understand why I’ve yet to make a serious foray into web programming.

But even without the web and the many formats and barely interoperating systems out there, there’s enough on the desktop to get you depressed. Start with the fact that there are currently three major operating systems out there and if you want to write a program that runs on all three of them, you don’t have an easy task. You either embrace three different toolkits and programming methodologies and maintain 3 very different codebases, or you use something like Java which works on all three, but screams non-native on each one. Even though there are languages like Python that run on all of three, it really puts me off that there is still no top-notch multiplatform GUI library. wxWidgets tries pretty hard, but if you look at the screenshots you can pretty easily that they don’t look quite right. It’s not very surprising that lots of smart developers are flocking to the web, where things in comparison are a lot smoother.

There is also the fact that programming languages, like all other pieces of major software, suck more than others. I still stand by what I said in my last post, that it’s an exciting time for language enthusiasts, but I also feel that there are some lessons we really need to learn. I’m starting to have concerns that there may not be any true general purpose language, simply because there are so many different types of problems to be solved. I think we need to start creating broader categories: a set of systems languages similar to C going in the direction of D and Go. A set of hyper-optimizing VM-based languages designed for long-running, parallel server applications (the current JVM is a good example). A set of languages for writing end-user apps that are significantly high-level, but are still compiled to pretty fast native code (maybe not C or even optimized VM fast, but better than todays Python or Ruby). I’m thinking Python in its Unladen Swallow incarnation might fill this gap.

As a programmer, the state of tools that we have to use is really quite depressing. Tools like Emacs and Vi are powerful and all, but let’s face it: we could really be having much more powerful IDE technology. We should be having full blown incremental compilation with autocompletion and support for rendering documentation for every major language out there. We should also have seamless version control with granularity down to the undo level. Every change I make should be saved and I should be able to visually browse all these changes, see what they are and restore to an older state (or commit them if I want to). We have the raw computing power needed to do all this, but yet we remain stuck doing mostly batch-style edit-compile-debug cycles and mucking around in plain text. Eclipse with its incremental compiler makes things much easier, but there’s so much more we could be using our machines for.

As a user, what irritates me is the amount of manual labor we still have to do on a daily basis. We still have to carefully name and place files so that we can file them later. I have to manually hit the save button (see version control bit above). Even with the Internet collaboration is a mess with most people throwing around emails with increasingly larger attachments. Add to that the fact that most email clients are pretty dumb pieces of software. Google Wave is a step in the right direction, if enough people get around to actually using it (and if it can integrate to some extent at least with the desktop). Also I think the web and the desktop need to be brought closer together. Ideally I would be able to sit down on any computer with a live Internet connection and have my full custom work environment (or at least the most important parts of it).

I’m fully aware that none of the things I’ve mentioned are trivial. In fact, they’re probably very hard projects that will take expert teams a good few years to complete. One day I would like to seriously work on some of the programmer-related issues, especially the IDE part. I love Emacs, but there are some parts of Eclipse I really like too. For the time being I’m going to have to make do with what I have, but I’ll be sure to keep an eye for interesting things and movements in the right direction.

Google Chrome as the operating system for web apps

Though the reactions from around the web are mostly positive, there are some articles that are raising real issues. ZDNet Australia criticizes Chrome OS on the grounds that it will further fragment the Linux community (who will be contributing the kernel of the new OS) and a better solution would have been to join with Ubuntu which already has pushed Linux to new heights. A prediction from The Next Web makes the claim that Chrome OS will be “the beginning of the end for Ubuntu & co” and the real battle will be between Apple and Google, leaving everyone else in the dust. There’s also concern about the fact that Google already has a operating system for the web: Android, even though it’s only for mobile devices (though it has been ported to x86). Personally, I feel that these criticisms and fears surrounding Chrome contain the more interesting food for thought.

Microsoft isn't beat yet (image from Engadget)

Chrome OS is undoubtedly going to be interesting, both in terms of technology and in terms of the market forces that it will affect. Also certain is that Google is more clearly than ever taking a swipe at Microsoft. Even though Google may have become the most powerful player in  the web sphere, the desktop operating system stronghold was undoubtedly held by Microsoft. Even many of Google’s own applications (including Chrome) target Windows as the primary platform. Microsoft is still a force to be reckoned with. Windows 7 is shaping up well and they have a few tricks up their sleeve, including a new browser project: Gazelle and even a cloud-centered operating system called Midori in the works. They also have a powerful research wing which does some really interesting work and a very big budget (which is enough for them to sit things out for a few years while they make a better product). Whether or not they will actually do so is still questionable, but lets not write them off just yet.

And there is Apple. The last few years have seen Apple’s gradual re-rise to stardom starting with the beautiful new OS X and continuing today with it’s dominance of the online music store arena and the strength of the iPhone platform. Not many people seem interested in pitting Google against Apple, especially since Apple has stayed out of the mainstream operating system and netbook markets. However, when it comes to the internet, Apple has a considerable stake. The iPhone is as much a portable internet device as it is a phone. And though it has carefully stayed away from the low-cost netbook market, it’s unlikely that they’ll sit by while Google plays its hand in the portable computer market.

Apple may the best suited to withstand Google (from The Next Web)

However Apple’s strength in the current situation probably stems directly from the closed, proprietary nature of it’s technology. Apple has a reputation for both creating and support great desktop apps. Good design has always been a hallmark of software running on a Mac and most web apps are still far for matching the polish that Apple has  to offer. The user experience offered by the complete OS X operating system by virtue of the way it can tie together information across different apps is still something that web applications (even suites like Google Apps) have not matched to a large extent. I agree with the Next Web post that Apple probably has the most chance of retaining its user base as Google begins it’s foray into the operating system arena. With the iPhone they’ve shown that they’re still capable of market-shaking innovation and that will probably help them survive the coming OS wars.

One more important player in this market is Linux. Thanks in no small measure to Canonical, desktop Linux has gained some ground in the last few years. However, it’s still holding a very small piece of the desktop market. It’s a valid concern that Google’s entry into the market might eat into the Linux market share. Though it’s certainly possible, I’m not quite sure if this will come to pass. A lot will depend on how easy it is to get things working on Chrome OS besides the browser and web apps. What new webapps have to offer will also be influential. I personally have never been very hopeful of Linux’s position on the consumer desktop. It’s great for hacker-types like me, but I’m still not fully convinced if I would recommend it for everybody. In my opinion, most Linux desktop apps still lack some amount of external polish. That being said, I wouldn’t recommend Vista either. I do think that OS X is the best OS for most users. I don’t see Chrome as contributing to the ‘fragmentation’ of the Linux distribution scene because I expect it to be very different from traditional distros, but in this case, only time will tell.

So what can we expect in the months to come before and after Chrome OS hits the markets? Undoubtedly Google’s announcement will cause the other big players in the field to sit up and take notice. I think this move might consider other companies, especially Microsoft to push out web-centric products sooner than they otherwise would have. Google is clearly looking to shake things up in the near future and it would be folly not to plan to do something about it. However, it’s also worth keeping in mind that Chrome OS is still some time away and there is a lot of work to be done — Chromium works on Linux, but only just.

Before we make and declarations about drastic change in the OS market, it would be prudent to wait and watch and see what Chrome OS actually looks like when it releases. There is also the fact that Google will have to get people to actually use it and that may be easier said than done (considering the fact that most netbooks run Windows XP). Of course, as the iPhone has shown, there is room in the market for a sleek new product if it is made right. I will be interested in seeing how Chrome OS turns out, but I certainly won’t be giving up my Linux laptop or my Mac Mini anytime soon. I wish Chrome OS luck and hope to see some good ideas being implemented. As Yoda would say, ‘Begun the Chrome Wars have’, I’m not ready to pick sides just yet.

If you’re not someone who hasn’t used dual monitors for a while, then it can be somewhat hard to understand how much easier two monitors make your life. Two monitors provide a very natural division of information that you need on your screen. One monitor contains reference information, this is stuff that you’re always looking at, but that you’re not actively interacting with. The other monitor contains whatever things that you are actively interacting with. For me as a programmer, one monitor generally contains API references in a browser (Chrome on Windows, Firefox on everything else). The other monitor contains my editor/IDE. Unfortunately I do most of my programming in the Linux lab which are all single monitor machines or on my laptop, which I rarely hook up to an external monitor.

There are a  lot of Windows dual-monitor machines available in other labs, but the only thing I like about Windows anymore is Google Chrome. Our Windows machines aren’t locked down, so students are allowed to install software as long as it isn’t something dangerous. I was considering installing some sort of X server on some of the machines. But I generally move about machines quite a bit and so I don’t want to be installing X servers on every machine I’m on.

My next thought was carrying around a bootable Linux USB drive and running off that. I was seriously considering doing that when I came across an interesting SourceForge project via Reddit which uses virtual machine technology to let you run Ubuntu like an application right in Windows. And yes, that was the answer to my problems. Last evening I downloaded the Portable Ubuntu image to a  lab machine and gave it a test run before moving it onto my 4GB USB drive.

My experience has been mostly positive so far. The Ubuntu installation is somewhat out of date (it’s the 8.04 version of it). But that really isn’t a problem for me. In fact, as it turns out, I haven’t really been using it as a full fledged Linux distribution. For the most part I use it as an interface to my college’s powerful Linux clusters.  I have pulled my personal Git repository to it, but for the most part I think I will be working directly off my college’s machines. The greatest benefit is that I can run normal Windows apps right alongside it. This means that I can have a bunch of terminals and Emacs open while at the same time having Google Chrome and some other Windows-specific software I need. The system really comes into its own with multiple monitors. It’s useful to think of one monitor as a Linux screen and the other as a Windows screen. I’ve only been using it for a day, but I’ve already found it a natural way to work.

As a final note, I would like to put out a little disclaimer: I’ve only used this on powerful machines. The lab computers are 3GHz Core 2 Duo machines with 3.5GB of RAM. Performance is quite acceptable and whatever is happening on the linux side doesn’t seem to be affect the Windows side at all. However, on a machine that is much slower or has significantly less RAM, things might be a good deal slower. If you’re stuck using a Windows machine but would rather use Linux, this is a great way to go if you have a fast enough machine.

My school was rather behind times and so as late as 2000 we were still running really ancient machines with DOS and programming in some equally ancient version of BASIC. I can vaguely remember using a few times what I no wknow to be Windows 3.1. Yeah, we were that bad. Luckily, I don’t remember very much about those once a week computer classes. My family bought its first computer in late 2001. For some reason, we got stuck in Windows 98. I used 98 for a good few years. 98 was, well…. 98. It was buggy , hung rather often (and took everything I was doing with it), but with knowledge of anything better, I lived with it. I wasn’t the computer geek I am now and I can’t remember ever really digging under the hood. I did some superficial changes, the usual modding that any teenager does to their system, but it was never anything serious.

I never did like the way 98 looked and I thought the gray was really much too bland. It wasn’t until 2003 that I actually got my first taste of Windows XP. Of course, I knew that XP had been out for qutie a while, but it had never caught my fancy. Like I said, I wasn’t the computer geek yet. But once I did have my first taste of XP, I was hooked. Compared to 98, it looked amazing. It took quite some convincing to get my dad to let me actually install it and for a while we double booted with 98. It wasn’t until Windows 98 one day suddenly decided not to work that we moved over to XP full time.

I still think Windows XP was a really great operating system, perhaps Microsoft’s best to date. The user interface was kinda flat and somewhat gaudy by todays standards, but I think it was a good level of unobstrusive functionality. And most importantly it was actually stable for the most part. Of course, I did get bored of it for a while and then I started to try to make it look a like a Mac. My parents still run XP and they’ve kept the same install for about 3 years now. They aren’t power users by any standard, but XP is good enough for them. And that is XP’s greatest merit: in many ways it was just good enough.

I can’t say that I was really looking forward to Vista. By the time news of Vista spilled over on to the Internet, I was well on the way to becoming the open source lover that I am now. I was using linux a lot, not quite full time, but getting there. I played around with the early compositing and transparency technologies and was starting to learn more about the under-the-hood technologies that powered my machine. And I was never going to convince my parents to spend on the upgrades that would be necessary to actually run Vista.

In 2007 I moved to the US and bought my first laptop. With a dual  64-bit processor and a  gigabyte of RAM, vista was a real possibility. And there wasn’t much choice considering that’s what it came with. I did use Vista full time for about a month. But then I installed Linux and I’ve been a committed Linux user ever since. I can’t say I really like Vista, but I don’t exactly hate it. I actually do like the user interface mostly, though I do wish that it was less shiny and more opaque at times. But what I really dislike is how much of a resource hog it is. I takes a good 5 minutes to become really usable and God help you if you try launching programs before it’s finished getting its act together. There are probably ways to tweak to get it to run faster, but I just don’t like it enough to do anything about it.

It will be interesting to see the evolution of Windows 7. If I had a spare machine, I would have tried the Beta. I still don’t like all the transparency everywhere, but I hope the other improvements will be enough to outwiegh that. The integration with the web will also be something to keep an eye on. I would be really interested if they brought back some of the things that got shelved in Vista, particularly WinFS. That being said, I do really doubt that I will ever really go back to using Windows full time. Linux is my operating system of choice for any sort of programming work. For anything else, whether it be writing a paper, making a presentation or keeping my media organized, OS X meets all my needs. I might explore the new Windows when it does come out, but I don’t see much of chance for becoming a full time Windows user in the near future.