Under ‘Web History’ I found searches going all the way back to May 17th 2006 – nearly 4 years and over 8600 web searches. What even got me is you have the option to extend this beyond mere searches and incorporate the functionality into the Google toolbar.

For further analysis, here is the result of how much Google knew about me before I started clearing things out

Google Web History - 8638 searches since May 17th 2006

Google Mail – 8000 conversations since May 15th 2006

Picasa – 124 photos

Google Reader - 46 subscriptions following 21 people (and I’ve never even used the service!)

Google Tasks - 47 items

Google Contacts – 151 (everyone I’ve ever mailed/recieved mail from or synced with my iPhone over Google Sync)

Google Docs – 33 documents/spreadsheets

Google Calendars – 7 different ones (each of which I rely on, once again using Google Sync)

Google Buzz - 250 posts (mostly from Twitter)

Blogger – 10 entries over 4 blogs (I haven’t used these for nearly 3 years now!)

Google Analytics - 2 sites (ScorchOS and this site you’re reading now)

iGoogle – 13 installed Gadgets

Not to mention of course Google Talk, Google Latitude, Google Maps (with saved places), Google Bookmarks, Google groups, Google sites and a myriad of other services.

So, what have I resolved to do to tackle this Google addiction? Well, ultimately I hold no prejudice against Google. They produce great products and enhance everyone’s experience of the web. But I will clear most of this old and unnecessary data, and see how competing products match up to the Google equivalent. Where Google clearly has a superior product I will stick with it, but there’s no reason not to break interoperability and use competing products if they are better technically.

Applications

The first major overhaul for me is package management. It’s the bane of the Linux world, and is often heckled for not being standardized, different from distro to distro and installing everything in different places across the system. In short, it’s messy and needs a more elegant solution.

My idea is to do combat this issue with the following:

• Software ‘Packs’
  • This allows users to immediately customize a distro to suit their needs depending on what they use it for.
  • Examples could include ‘Enterprise’ and ‘Home’ packs, possibly with the user being able to select which is to be installed
• Software Selection Windows
  • Initially the distro will only have the minimum amount of software required to run the system
  • On double-clicking a file, a Window will pop up offering packages to run it which then install
  • This ensures we don’t wind up with duplicate functionality, and users don’t wind up with applications on their system they don’t use/know about
• Right-Click builds for source packages
  • In many cases it is trivial to unzip an archive, configure and build. Automating the process would make life easier
• Right-Click ‘Run as Root’ and double-click support
  • For binaries and shell scripts, this would save the user having to open a terminal they could just double-click them or right-click > Run as Root…
• Revamed Installer
  • Double-clicking RPMs or DEBs should provide one consistent inteface, even if we need alien for the former to run in the background
• System directories clarified
  • Using symlinks to maintain compatibility, it makes sense to reorder the Linux file system to something more intuitive
  • This also ensures that system files and application files are much easier to find
  • Also keep ‘Application Data’ in a particular directory, rather than a load of hidden folders in /home/user
• Split of Reliability/Cutting Edge
  • As this distro will be based on Ubuntu, it makes sense that the Ubuntu security updates repository remains enabled (along with PPA support) even if the Software Center sees a revamp/omission
  • A main channel should be provided by default for completely stable software (with as many dependencies stripped as possible)
  • An additional channel should be provided (whether hosted by us or Ubuntu) that provides more bleeding-edge solutions to be enabled manually
• Restricted Drivers/Codecs
  • I’ll cover the full-extent of this in a moment, but restricted drivers should be installed automatically when the system requires it
  • Codecs should be installed as needed, and via double-clicking the file

The Installer

The plan here is to have a ‘Universal’ installer. Essentially the user runs a platform on a Live CD that uses a minimal subset of the x86 instruction set. This platform should detect the processor architecture, and then launch either a 32-bit or 64-bit installer automatically (using the latter by default where it is supported and if there’s sufficient RAM). ARM and IBM PowerPC could have equivalent versions. The reason these multiple copies could fit on one CD is because so much software would have been stripped out

The Little Things

These seem like pretty radical changes, but there should also be work to cut out various Linux annoyances.

• All updates will run in the background automatically. Anything requiring a restart can notify the user, but not force the issue
• In dual-boot situations, once two restarts have been initiated after a kernel installation the previous option is removed (and for those two restarts, the old kernel is branded as such)
• Ensure that the system’s display manager is used ahead of those in drivers (like ATI Catalyst), and possibly expose these options within the display manager itself
• The terminal won’t be available from the Applications menu because Guake will be running by default. Press F12 and it drops down
• Gnome 3.0 (with Gnome Shell) will be installed by default
• Qt applications should be more in-keeping with the Gnome environment
• Consider how the top of maximized windows could be integrated into the Gnome top-bar
• OpenOffice.org (when installed!) will have the JRE disabled by default (along with additional speed and interface tweaks)

This will take quite some time to implement. I imagine Lucid Lynx will have been out for quite some time, and we’ll be talking about the Ubuntu release after that. But this is the kind of thing I’m aiming for.

And finally, this distro has a name. It’s called ‘Sense’, so it has a lot to live up to. This article simply shows ideas at the moment, I will post later in the summer when there is something of substance.

Imagine for instance that you’ve bought a new Toshiba laptop. You got it on offer for £650 and it does what you need it to. It sends emails, it browses the web, plays flash games, edits office documents and quickly renders vector graphics. However, your friend tells you that a limitation of your device is that the screen looks a little washed-out, and Toshiba itself have unethical business practises (they don’t as far as I’m aware, but indulge me for a moment). You agree that these are limitations, but because the laptop does what you need it to and don’t want the hassle or expense of replacing your laptop which does what you want it to do you accept these issues and continue using it.

However, the next day your friend comes back and points out these limitations again. And the next day, and the day after that. You have no defence against these limitations because you agree they’re limitations, and because of this you feel you need to justify your purchase. This is not because you feel the product’s limitations are any less, but because you feel your own buying decision is being attacked. The reason you bought it was that it did what you wanted it to, but you now feel under pressure to replace your laptop.

After a couple of weeks of the same thing, you finally cave in. You sell your Toshiba laptop to a friend for £400, and you go out and buy a Sony for £700. The moment your friend clasps eyes on it he immediately tells you you’ve bought the wrong brand. As far as the reviews, hardware specs and everything else goes it is vastly superior to your old Toshiba model. But your friend now dislikes your laptop because the disc drive makes a wierd noise and they had a Sony in the past they didn’t get on with. You see where I’m going with this?

So, if that’s not enough your friend then brings along a new Fujitsu-Siemens laptop. He boasts it is superior in every way to your Sony laptop and can’t understand why you bought it. You once again feel you have to justify your own purchasing decision, and you don’t feel you can challenge them on their Fujitsu-Siemens because you can’t respond to the convienient retort, “Well, it’s better than your Sony”. This is despite the fact there are also clear limitations with the Fujitsu-Siemens, but he’s either already written off your Sony or has friends who agree, and feels a certain moral high-ground for owning the Fujitsu-Siemens as they pay their workers £500 a month more (again, indulge me here…).

The Point of the Above

So, what does my long analogy mean? It is simply that advocating open source and free software is a great thing to do. But keep things 100% objective. Don’t become that git with the Fujitsu-Siemens – always be ready to accept criticism for your preferred solutions. For the poor friend who’s strung along that initial solution did exactly what they wanted it to, even if it didn’t use your pet technology or had a raft of obvious limitations. Make suggestions, but don’t attack people for solutions they’re comfortable with and that work – You don’t own the money in their wallets or their bank accounts, so by extension you have no right to say how they spend it. Without freedom of choice, we are no better as a community than the marketing departments behind the proprietary alternatives.

With me so far? Ok – onto Apple Macs. This is set up in a very similar way to Windows – you just see a new veneer, on top of a kernel called ‘UNIX’. This is 40 years old and is the most secure and stable operating system of all time (and used by many other companies). Unfortunately (like Microsoft) Apple will charge you for this software, but they go one further and restrict you to only ever using it on Apple hardware. But before you break down and cry that the only way out of Windows is Mac OS, there is an alternative:

This kernel is called ‘Linux’, and it is the equivalent of ‘NT’ and ‘UNIX’ but can be copied, passed on, installed on any machine you like and even sold completely legally because it is known as ‘free software’. This means that it costs nothing to download from the net and doesn’t restrict you in any way, shape or form. It is maintained by a multitude of well-known tech companies (such as Intel, IBM and Google)  and a huge community of volunteers around the world. You will find what are known as ‘distributions’ such as ‘Ubuntu’, ‘Fedora’, ‘Linux Mint’, ‘Mandriva’ and ‘openSUSE’ which sit on top of Linux and provide all the software you might need free of charge.

For more information, simply check out the YouTube video here or you could Google for ‘Linux’ or ‘Ubuntu’ to give it a try without affecting your existing Windows setup.

The new Facebook UI with left-side panel

Every so often the Facebook developers feels the need to provide a brand new interface to us all, and today is no exception. For those who haven’t seen it, you can see more details here. So, what does this new interface offer us all?

• The bug-bar (the bar on the bottom of your screen that frequently crashes, logs out of IM or produces a notification drop-down that goes beyond the top of your screen obscuring the most recent notifications) is finally meeting the great disk-shredder in the sky.
• You’ll now receive these notifications from your top-bar
• All content will be accessible via a left-hand bar

This does mean that the interface should be easy enough for most people to use. You simply click a link in the left-hand pane and manipulate stuff in the main window. It almost reminds me of the bad-old days of framesets (though Facebook I’m sure uses some quaint mix of PHP and CSS to achieve a similar effect).

However, there is one big elephant in the room – Facebook Applications. People were getting irritated with boxes, so Facebook offered users the option to disable them or place them into their own ‘Boxes’ tab, but now you will be able to access these applications by clicking on your left-hand bar (which will tell you and your friends when you last accessed them), and a separate ‘Games’ link for Facebook Applications associated with that side.

Therein lies the issue. The reality of Facebook Applications is that there are just two types – one that collects your personal information and sells it on to fraudsters and market research companies without your consent (hence the reason you should ALWAYS check what permissions you are granting an application you want to use), and the other type that spams your friends with invites and random notifications about what you’ve been doing on Mafia Wars or Farm Town. Really they should change ‘Applications’ and ‘Games’ to ‘Sell my info’ and ‘Spam my friends’. Perhaps it is just cynicism, but until I start seeing applications akin to Google Docs or Flickr I fail to see any point in Facebook apps other than for those two purposes, and is that something we really want to be doing with our free time?

Rant over on the applications, but my main bone of contention is this – is the new interface really that much easier than the last one? You click ‘Home’ and you see what people are doing, you click ‘Profile’ you see what you’re doing, and if you click on a friend’s name you see what they’re doing. Essentially they are trying to make their new lists feature for friends (which I use extensively for permission setting) easier for people to find, and to help people waste more of their time using Facebook applications. Have they really made it simpler, or have they simply created a cluttered left-hand pane that will confuse the hell out of anyone that sees it?

As Azhar (who's rather popular on Google Images!) shows, Facebook Lite is a very simple and easy to use interface

Put simply, I like that Facebook is trying to make life easier for people. But I just don’t think this new interface makes an awful lot of difference. In fact, Facebook already has an interface that fits the bill perfectly. If you haven’t tried Facebook Lite, you should. Originally designed for Facebook users in developing countries, it is an absolute dream to work with. It is blisteringly fast because you don’t have to load up side bars, applications, bug-bars, notifications, events, etc. because it’s designed for low-bandwidth connections. It is also amazingly stable because of its simplicity. It will event pop-out Facebook Chat in it’s own window, so you will no longer be resigned to breaking a conversation for the next 5 minutes each time you load a new Facebook page. And rather than tabs that take forever to load, you simply load up a profile and click links to quickly see what people are fans of, their pictures, etc. and all in a much larger size than the ‘full version’.

Are there any downsides to Facebook Lite? Well, the first thing you may notice is the lack of ‘Live Feed’, meaning you will be pressing F5 every two minutes to check out what your friends’ high scores on Bejewelled are. Also, unless you’ve subscribed to be emailed notifications, you won’t be bothered any (though friend, group and event requests will generally appear at the top of your home screen). But if you can live without being told if someone has replied to your post (it is probably quicker to check manually anyway!) then Facebook Lite could be a very usable alternative. And if you decide that you can’t live without your beloved Facebook quiz apps you can easily set up a top-bar to allow you to quickly toggle between the lite version and the main site.

With Facebook Lite you can pop-out chat windows

So, conclusions? Facebook applications are rubbish. If you’re a developer I implore you to write something useful (I would if I had time and I thought people would actually use it!). Also, the new interface doesn’t make life simpler, but it is a refreshing change. If you want a simpler, quicker and more stable Facebook experience, you’re better off with Facebook Lite.

Content On Demand

This year has seen an explosion of on-demand streaming services making use of new high-speed broadband connections. Missed your favorite show? Simply head to BBC iPlayer, ITV Player or 4OD (or Hulu if you’re from across the pond) . Need to listen to that brand new track your friend is raving about? Simply fire up your client for Spotify or last.fm. For the first time people can pick and choose when they want to listen to or view their media, freeing the consumer from the whims of  TV Executives and Radio Producers.

HD and 3D Content

Well-known services such as YouTube and major broadcasters such as Sky and the BBC started offering content in high-definition both online and streamed live. 3D content has also started to make an entrance into modern cinema, with Avatar 3D attracting rave reviews. High Definition is here – and as soon as next year we could be buying 3D sets.

The Dawn of the Microblog

2009 saw an explosion for a service called Twitter, a service offering users to post whatever they liked within 140 characters and enjoy the exposure of the entire globe. Some users tell us what they had for breakfast, others use it for spam. However, Twitter found a huge niche for spreading news fast, as was shown by the fact users of the service knew about the death of Michael Jackson long before any major news stations reacted.

The service has also led to plenty of spin-offs thanks to its comprehensive API, leading to more sophisticated clients that allow users to share links, photos and other content with each other instantly. It’s integration into more established social networking sites such as Facebook and the adoption of the service by major news corporations and celebrities saw it reach critical mass, and it looks set to continue into the next decade providing up-to-the-second information for all who use it.

App Explosion

If 2009 will be remembered for just one thing, it will almost certainly be remembered for Apple‘s decision to create an App Store for it’s flagship product, the Apple iPhone. In under a year over a billion ‘apps’ have been downloaded both for free and for cash. These ranged from games, maps, guides, dictionaries to even musical instruments, mosquitos and toolkits!  Anything you can name – there’s an app for it. Yes – even that!

This could herald a huge beginning for the adoption of the kinds of smartphones that Blackberry and Palm have been trying to find a market for for years. HTC and Motorola already have Android phones set to gather market share, Nokia is now using the Maemo platform for the N900 and Microsoft is rewriting Windows Mobile to keep up the pace on Apple‘s highly successful product, so 2010 could be an exciting year for a highly diverse and competitive market, with potential for Linux-based platforms to make real gains on commercial equivalents.

Netbooks Continue to Climb

If 2008 was the dawn of the netbook (which surprised everyone – even Asus, and they created the concept in the first place!) then 2009 was the year they started to appear more and more frequently in cafes, trains, buses and schools. Phone companies were giving them away free with cheap mobile broadband deals (a truly 2008 technology!). Microsoft stirred up considerable controversy by claiming that over 90% of netbooks were running Windows. The present assumption is that this may be the case over in the US, but here in Europe it’s more a 60-40 split. Linus hasn’t lost the war for netbooks yet, and with the emerging technologies based on Moblin and Ubuntu NBR Linux may yet make a resurgance back into this market.

GPS Goes Mainstream

This year saw phones coming with GPS as standard, and 2010 promises to herald in GPS chips for netbooks and laptops. We will have to see whether this comes with fruition, but from personal experience being able to quickly check where I am on Google Maps using the iPhone‘s GPS chip has saved my skin on more than one occasion! It’s a subtle technology that could soon see services such as Google Latitude seeing a larger user base.

Open Source Becomes Big News

Over the past year the world of open source and free software has seen more exposure than ever before. With doubts over Windows 7 before it was launched Ubuntu in particular benefitted from heavy publicity. Whether it was some cool new technology such as Ulteo or a forum bust-up between Gnome and GNU it received plenty of publicity. Big companies such as Intel, Nokia and Motorola started to take Linux seriously and incorporate it into their products. 2009 may not have been the year of everyone switching to a Linux desktop, but it could herald the march of low-powered Linux-based devices in the coming decade.

In Summary…

In summary this year has brought information truly to people’s finger-tips. Searches are in real-time, and information is up-to-the-minute, short-and-sweet. Media is something you can enjoy anywhere and at any time, and there are rumours that the Tablet PC concept Bill Gates always used to go on about might just come to fruition. 2009 was a big year for technology, but we’ll soon see the coming of 3D content, Project Natal, Cloud-based (or oriented) operating systems, the unending march of open source and the continued explosion of smartphones and low-powered embedded technologies. On this basis I can’t help feeling optimistic about what the next 10 years will bring.

I’m sure you’ve seen the numerous blog-posts dotted around the net about the fact most university students these days seem to have a Macbook of some description (I can testify for instance in my flat that 3 out of the 7 students own one), and in that respect this is no different.

What this article is about however are my concerns about this situation. Macbooks are costly to upgrade  (meaning they’re not overly future-proof) and most of the people I’ve met with Macbooks haven’t the faintest idea how to use them. The usual situation is that they’ve been bought one by their parents and have no idea what to do with it (and are stunned to discover that OpenOffice.org is a much cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office for Macs!).

Perhaps it’s just jealousy (or the fact I’m writing this at 5:30 in the morning because I can’t sleep!), but this is a prime example that Apple’s reputation for reliability, security and good-looks clearly over-ride the clear concept that OS X isn’t Windows (‘bootcamp’ and ‘Parallels Desktop’ mean nothing to these people!). I’m not saying the OS X interface is unintuitive (because it isn’t!), but this has already lead to a whole host of problems which the on hand IT technician (i.e. me!) has had to try to solve.

To give you an example, once of my flat mates had brought a new Epson printer (the box and CD claimed compatibility with OS X, though she hadn’t asked Staples staff specifically whether it would work or not). After trying to install using the CD and downloading a driver off the net (it was a team effort as the machine was setup in Spanish so the flat mate in question needed to be on-hand as a translator!) the printer was still behaving oddly – it dragged paper down, reversed it back up, then printed the page in a very blotchy way (and yes, I’ve checked various forums and tried their solutions to no avail!). In the end the simplest solution was to burn a copy of Ubuntu and leave it in the drive. All her files are online, so all she has to do is press and hold ‘C’ during boot to boot from CD, then just use the live Linux distro to download the relevant document and print a perfect page (the Linux driver is well supported for this particular model!). It would have been great to have had access to her native HFS+ partition, but the Linux kernel developers in their infinite wisdom have removed the driver from the mainline kernel (it is possible to recover, but it’s long-winded and involves recompiling the kernel/respinning the Ubuntu live CD which I have neither the time or patience to deal with!).

A further issue another flatmate had was trying to set up iMail and iCal to use his Google account. The instructions Google provided were for an earlier version, so after plenty of trial-and-error things did eventually work. Also, Aperture recognized his photos perfectly when shot and saved as a jpeg image on his card reader, but the moment he tried to view raw files the application crashed with no explanation at all (simply a cryptic message about being unable to view the file system on the SD Card).

But this article isn’t here to slag off macbooks in a fit of jealousy as there is a point to all this! In my opinion, if Apple is going to be affecting this much of a population and wants to gain market share with students (who, let’s face it, are going to be earning the kind of income to buy a mac once they graduate) they need to make life as easy as humanly possible to avoid alienating their market. I can already see the looks of frustration of my sample of 3 students and it reminds me a lot of the same look my parents give when they try to use my Ubuntu machine. It isn’t Windows, and they don’t like it because Microsoft has gained such dominance that it is seen as ‘the’ way to do everything, and it is this kind of thing that prevents further adoption of Linux and OS X.

But it shouldn’t have to be this way! With the printer problem, even Windows 7 will automatically locate the relevant driver for most printer models (Linux does this for most cases, unless you’re using a Lexmark!). This would be a major boost to an otherwise seamless experience with OS X. Aperture (or OS X itself) could give a much friendlier response to the fact it can’t cope with RAW files (Ubuntu has it’s ’100 papercuts’ project addressing similar usability issues). Simple little things could make the experience so much better!

Anyway, rant over. I’ll get back to whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing as a student… coding a project in Visual Studio while supping on Ubuntu cola (Linux has to be in there somewhere!) joining my ‘unfortunate’  house mates  who are drowning their sorrows after tearing clumps of hair out getting OS X to do things their old Windows machine used to without so much fuss…

But in claiming proprietary software is bad are we selling Linux and open source software from the right angle? If this is the route the community has chosen, then in my opinion free software as a proposition is never going to get past it’s 1% share. Why? Because we are essentially telling users they’re bad people for choosing one product over another without any objective criticism. This negative path of thinking can only lead to a backlash from those we campaign to convince. After all, the nearest equivalent to what we’re doing is simply telling someone they’re evil for using full-fat rather than semi-skimmed milk – you haven’t objectively stated why this is the case, simply that semi-skimmed is the better option! It’s little wonder we’re attacked so vehemently by Windows and Mac users for being short-sighted and claiming some false ‘moral high-ground’.

If we really want Linux to hit the masses, for people to use open alternatives such as OpenOffice.org, Scribus and the GIMP in production environments and for the rest of the IT industry to take these products much more seriously we MUST shed this image of a community filled with arrogant, self-righteous computer nerds. I can’t say precisely how we could do this (that’s a whole debate in itself), but we certainly aren’t doing ourselves any favours if we support the kind of antics from the FSF of late.

I believe that on an individual level, when we’re asked about open source solutions by non technical users we need to objectively weigh up the pros and cons of proprietary against open solutions in a particular user’s situation. If the open alternative is genuinely better then it deserves advocacy – and you should spend your time explaining how it will provide a much more effective solution.  If it isn’t quite up to scratch then suggest ideas to the relevant communities and help develop their products. It takes many individuals to effect change in a community, so maybe if enough individuals consider this a worthy pursuit perhaps we might help destroy the self-destructive pysche I’ve already described.

So, in summary: I believe that telling people they’re wrong won’t convince them to switch, and neither will telling them that free software will ‘release them’ from the shackles of closed-source software (because it’s the unfortunate reality that non-technical users really don’t care so long as a solution works!). But by showing them how open products could provide a more cost-effective and efficient way of solving a problem they will at least consider the open-source options and we can effect real change. If we as a community can become more objective and less fanatical, then we can finally break out of our small niche and start to mould an anti-competitive and anti-consumer industry into a hive of competitive innovation and community collaboration.

Printers

I experienced a whole new world yesterday when I attempted to connect a Lexmark Z235 to a laptop running 64-bit Ubuntu (and another PC running 32-bit PCLinuxOS) – no drivers currently exist for it in the Linux world. I tried using various other Lexmark-related drivers (with the result the paper was threaded through the printer very slowly without anything actually printing on it before jamming mid-way through), and I also scoured the internet for a driver.

The closest I found was a rather buggy effort on Sourceforge to reverse-engineer a Z200 driver (the idea of using ndiswrapper to run a Windows driver isn’t one I’m willing to contemplate). I found this slightly bizarre as I had previously used a Lexmark all-in-one laser printer (C series I think…) and everything worked out of the box – even scanning and faxing. Thankfully I had a spare HP Deskjet F1000 that just plugs in and works, but this will be much more costly for ink when I head to university in two weeks. But why is it so difficult to get every printer working in Linux as seamlessly as HP? After all, Lexmark produces the best printers on the market. For instance, HP confess that the heads jam if you leave your printer unattended for a few months, yet if you leave a Lexmark for that time it will still print a perfect page.

But the real let down is driver support. Lexmark ensure the cheaper models only have Windows drivers available (for reduced overhead presumably), meaning Linux and Mac OS X users have to pay a premium (or buy elsewhere). This makes no sense – Lexmark don’t earn any revenue from drivers anyway, so why not open things up a little and let the Linux community build their own drivers? At least other printer manufacturers are starting to see sense in this area.

TV Tuners

I purchased a Hauppage WinTV Nova-T USB Stick with the full assurance from the Linux community it would work flawlessly. This couldn’t have been more wrong. In 32-bit Ubuntu I found myself manually installing DVB drivers and then crashing the xserver every time I tried to watch Live TV using Kaffeine (MythTV refused to acknowledge it existed). The only way around it was to install 64-bit Ubuntu and follow the relevant tutorials, then use MythTV. The only distro that installed and worked with my TV tuner out-of-the-box was Mythbuntu 9.04 64-bit, though this was mostly down to the developers doing all the monkey-work I’d just been doing in Ubuntu.

Playing Blu Ray Movies

I have a Blu Ray drive on my laptop and a handy Ubuntu guide to running Blu Ray discs. Unfortunately I need to run Windows XP in a VM to use the relevant software to decode the discs (which is legally questionable at best) and then manually configure MPlayer to acknowledge that I’m trying to play some high definition content through it (and do this for each subsequent Blu ray movie I choose to watch). Don’t even get me started on having to install libdvdcss2 before I can even consider watching standard DVDs…

Conclusion

Despite these annoyances, I will very much remain a Linux user. My Sony VAIO VGN-FW21L is currently running Ubuntu 9.04 64-bit in solo-boot and that’s how things will stay. But in terms of the latest technology Linux has some way to go, and until then I’m still going to have to keep WINE and Sun Virtualbox around just in case…