I am very satisfied seeing MANY articles and blogs the last few months pretty much telling it like it is about Linux and the general open source software quality.

For years the Linux phenomena would endulge in its own hype and there would be very few people dare to write the truth: that’s it doesn’t have an as good user experience as XP or OSX have, that is.

But something changed the past few months. People are starting to realize the real limitations of Linux as a desktop and they cut the hype short. For the first time in years, they write the TRUTH.

Now, don’t take this blog-post the wrong way. I do use Linux from time to time and I believe it has a place on some desktop computers. And the OSNews server which uses RHEL has been mighty stable all these years too.

It’s just that I like things to be fair. And so far, most people were not fair with their readers all these years when they were hyping Linux to the heavens in an attempt to switch these readers over. For the first time we get a more accurate picture of Linux’s abilities as a desktop. And that’ a GOOD thing. Yes, that’s good even for Linux, because possible switchers won’t get dissapointed when they try it. They would know what to expect. And that can work to Linux’s advantage as much as overhyping it.

PBS has made available the full videos of “The Elegant Universe” documentary series based on math/physisist Brian Greene. Really interesting stuff and a very well-done documentary. Watch it!

It was a bit of a shock for me to see not one but THREE Greek physisists (two men, one woman) supporting and working on the M/String-theory and in fact being well-known for their work on the theory. Two of them are appearing in the documentary and they both had _terrible_ accents (that’s about the only thing I can do better than they do ;-). These are greeks who excelled in their Greek university and then they were sent to USA for further studies (for free). Usually, none of these Greek scientists ever goes back to Greece again (except for holidays that is). This is why Greece is unable to even construct an FM radio today. The remaining Greek scientists don’t have the technology, expertise, money or attention from the government to fund these kinds of things. Greece’s *good* scientists are not living in Greece anymore.

All that reminds me of the most “smart” person on Earth today (in terms of IQ measurament: 189), a Greek professor working in a French university. Can’t remember his name now, but it was shocking ot me seeing this otherwise intelligent guy writing with such huge subjectiveness about his beloved homeland. If he loves Greece so much (he is from the Thesallia province IIRC) why did he leave it for France? There surely must be something positive about France too. And yet, in his homepage we see nothing but Greek propaganda. Pathetic.

Look, I am Greek too. And I do *love* Greece. But I will never, ever, be a blind proponent of anything, even if this “anything” is my own country. I like objectiveness and truthfulness most and foremost. It drives my life. It makes me who I am and it’s what makes other people either love me or hate me. There is no in-between.

Oh, anyway. This became a rant about Greek scientints on exile. The original intention was simply to make known to everyone about the now free amazing videos about the String Theory. (sorry Brian

“Suspected Taliban guerrillas dragged a teacher from a classroom of teenagers in southern Afghanistan and killed him at the school gate after he ignored their orders to stop teaching girls, police said on Friday.

I hope the US Forces in Afghanistan do a bit more to try to restore peace, equal rights and democracy over there. US seems to only care about Iraq these days and less about Afghanistan. Very sad.

“Morgan Stanley expects iPod and Mac market share to climb and an Apple mobile phone will ship in 2006.“

You very well know that I don’t comment on stupid rumors, but I have more than 3 clues regarding such a project inside Apple. (Yes, simple clues at the moment, no direct quotes from anyone.)

My guess and some of my clues point to that they are using Symbian OS 9.1 and UIQ 3.0 (which is extremely customizable). To be honest, if this is true, it’s going to backfire back to Apple. If the phone becomes too popular –like iPods did–, Nokia won’t like it. And Nokia owns both Symbian and UIQ. This is the whole reason why Palm went with WindowsMobile for the Treo 700w and not with Symbian, according to its CEO.

IMHO, a Linux-based solution would have been more wise here (in terms of long term strategy). The problem with Linux is that it requires a LOT more work to make it as mobile-capable and battery-friendly as Symbian or PalmOS and WinMobile are. And it also requires a lot more work to re-write the graphics layer and widgets on top of the kernel, because the current ODM toolkit offering, Trolltech’s Qt, is very slow on ARM (e.g. 312 Mhz). I have Motorola’s Linux phone here (you already know that, I curse on it every day) which uses Qt Embedded, and the UI is just slow. Additionally, it would require ALL applications to be re-written from scratch, while UIQ already offers some with its package and has a popular and much used API.

In other words, Linux requires years worth of work to make it as good as Apple needs it to be on an embedded device (years that Apple as a business doesn’t have the luxury of waiting), PalmOS is dead, Windows Mobile is out of the question, Series60 is Nokia’s-only game, and so that leaves only UIQ as the only realistic solution for a *smartphone*. Sony Ericsson uses a modified UIQ too for its upcoming P990 release and their UI looks pretty good.

I completely agree with what Gnome’s Luis Villa says here. The only thing he fails to mention is that in order to make either KDE or Gnome better, it’s not just a matter of making KDE or Gnome better, but creating an *underlying infrastructure* (kernel, daemons, drivers etc) below X and its DEs that work better and work FOR the user. No matter if you make Gnome/KDE work perfectly, if Linus continues breaking binary and source drivers with each minor Linux kernel release, or he doesn’t fix ACPI or unify all Linux distros under the same package management and compatibility, it’s all going to waste: the Linux desktop will never reach huge acceptance by ‘normal’ users.

At first glance Creative’s new Zen:M mp3 player seems to be a (real this time) iPod killer: it has the same features as iPod has pretty much, plus FM radio, voice recording, nicer UI and a vastly better support for audio and video formats. It even looks good. And this comparison shows that the Creative’s screen being more contrasty and colorful than the iPod’s (however a bit dark in the corners). And many were fast to say that this is indeed an iPod killer.

Well, maybe, but until you witness this. Creative, welcome to 2003.

On other iPod news, you gotta see this short Conan O’Brien video clip. Really funny (if it crashes your firefox, reload it, it works the second time :P).

…he can only see one side of things. His.

So, apparently he doesn’t like Gnome and he says that it’s too simplistic and not flexible enough for his taste. Well duh! Linus is a geek and a super-power user. It makes SENSE to prefer KDE over Gnome, exactly because he is who he is and because KDE is what it is over Gnome (over-loaded with options and widgets - a heaven for most geeks).

The real problem is that he can’t see past his own needs. He has no CLUE about how desktops should work, how to get users to like your desktop, how to make things easy for new users. If he had the SLIGHTEST CLUE of what “usability” is (a word that he seemingly despises), he would have NEVER allowed breaking API and binary compatibility with third party Linux kernel drivers every other moon! There is a fucking good reason why Microsoft keeps driver compatibility with its OSes up to 8 years!

As Novell’s Nat Friedman very nicely replied to him on the mailing list, he also wants his mouse to not jump left and right when he is doing cpu-intensive stuff and yet Linus has not delivered this smooth usage on his Linux kernel at a day and age when both Microsoft and Apple have! And to add one from me: Mr Torvalds, where the hell is proper ACPI support (suspend-to-ram, aka “sleep”) for my laptops? I have yet to see an x86 Linux laptop that will go to sleep and come back in perfect shape in 2 seconds from the moment you open back the lid (like Windows and Mac laptops do for years now).

Keeping things fair, Gnome could and should have been better and STILL keep its usability superiority over KDE. Myself and Thom have discussed about the most needed features here. So, yeah, Gnome is still far from being “great”. But it’s way more pleasurable to use than the ever so bloated KDE UI.

I am sad.

Slashdot’s mobile ability became much worse after their switch to CSS. Rendering the page now requires lots more CPU time and phone/PDAs are *fighting* to render it. I received my Sony PSP today, and it requires up to 2 minutes to manage to render the whole thing. And when it does, it looks like ASS. No, it’s not just the amount of KBs to blame, but the heavy CSS and complex code involved too. Additionally, their mobile support is based on the browser’s ability to “understand” the media=”handheld” CSS property, which only very few browsers support. I replied to CmdrTaco’s blog a few months ago about it, nothing much happened since then.

There is one more sad thing. As you know, on Thursday I had a meeting with Nokia engineers. They showed me their latest S60 browser for Symbian, which is based on Safari’s WebCore. Well, guess what: their 312 Mhz ARM CPUs also require 1-2 minutes to render the new Slashdot (yes, the downloading speed was fast, the rendering was not). And as Netfront on the PSP, it also looks equally BAD. I wonder, don’t the Slashdot web developers have a PDA or a phone to test with?!?

And the last sad thing of the day: the previous, non-CSS, version of Slashdot was not mobile-friendly in terms of design (you had to scroll horizontally a bit), but it was RENDERABLE. The new version is just not.

Yes, I am aware of slashdot.org/palm/ btw, but thing is, very-very few slashdot users know of that URL. Slashdot does not advertise it enough. Their loss. And it kinda pisses me off, because I am a slashdot fan and I have offered my help in the past to get them proper mobile support similar to OSNews (which has the best, automatic mobile support on the net today). CmdrTaco has pretty much declined my (free) offer that others get for a fee (while Hemos was a bit more forthcoming IIRC).

Sometimes, when I think of my mountain village that I am coming from (Skiadas) and my early years there, I feel very sad that I didn’t continue the people’s legacy there. No, I don’t mean their uncanny ability to gossip about one another all day long, but their ability to survive up there without a need from the external world. They are able to have their own gardens and fields and know by heart the needs of each and every vegetable or plant or tree, how to herd, hunt and how to unskin animals to feed themselves, how to make cheese and other milk products etc etc. Every generation that gets closer to the european civilization is losing some part of that legacy. Even my parents, now at their 50s, don’t know as much stuff as my grand parents do about how to survive at to the mountains. And I know much less than they do.

The weird thing is that very often (at least once a month) I have the same dream: the world has been under a sort of attack or totalitarianism and I had to retreat with my family (without JBQ) to my mountain village, to protect ourselves. During the Nazi regime in the 1940s and previously when Greece were under the Turks for 400 years, my village has seen very little of these forces, exactly because of its difficult location to get there. No one cared to go konquer these people up on these mountains, it made no strategic or financial sense to do so. And so I have embedded in me this need, that when worse comes to worst, I will retreat up to the mountains and live there. But I will need the knowledge of how to survive there, a knowledge that I don’t have ’cause I exchanged the mountain life for the planes when I was 12 (my parents now also live in a town close to the sea) and after college I left Greece for Europe and now USA. Is it my “guilty” concience for leaving my mountain land, my home, that makes me see the same dream over and over, or something really bad is coming to the world indeed and I will have no other alternative but to go back there eventually?

“Former U.S. President Bill Clinton told a global audience of diplomats, environmentalists and others on Friday that the Bush administration is “flat wrong” in claiming that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to fight global warming would damage the U.S. economy.”

Can we please have Clinton back as a president? Pretty please?!?