For the last six months or so I’ve used Skype to keep in touch with friends and family far away. It’s been less than excellent. Skype wastes ludicrous amounts of computing resources to do something fairly simple. On my little notebook, it drains the battery within an hour, and it uses 80% of the CPU to do what exactly? Nobody knows, because Skype is a large lump of proprietary crap. I highly doubt it needs 80% of a dual-core CPU to simply transmit low-level audio and webcam.

Skype constantly complains about things as well. My notebook is about 7 months old, so it’s not exactly sluggish. It’s connected to a very fast LAN, admittedly over 802.11G which gives it a meager 54 mbit/s but I still think that’s plenty enough. Yet still it complains about my network being slow, and pixellates video to the point where you’re unable to visually distinguish whether you’re talking to a person or a stack of Lego-blocks. It whines about your computer being “slow” and compresses audio so the person you’re talking to sounds more like a whale on downers than a human being.

Computers have come a long way. But Skype insists on wasting resources and being stupid and inefficient. And now Microsoft will pour their horseshit all over it and completely bollocks it up just like they did the MSN client years ago.

*sigh*

It’s even worse on my desktop. Quad-core, tons of RAM, but since I run Linux the client is three versions behind and is less reliable than a puppy on crack. And again, since Microsoft bought it, support for platforms other than Winblows will of course be de-prioritized more than they already are. In short, it sucks.

I need an alternative. Something that doesn’t jerk me around, consume vast resources of computing power, and works equally well on all platforms.

However, some of the third-party icon themes are among the best-looking icons I’ve ever seen, regardless of operating system. Currently I’m hearting the Faenza set, which is prettifying my desktop quite heavily.

Some examples:

They’re all of course perfectly scalable SVGs rather than ugly PNG icons, and I deeply admire the artwork and effort put into these things. They’re gorgeous!

Here’s a shot of two Thunderbird-icons on my desktop. One is the regular size, the other is scaled up to huge size.

This first one is a shot featuring the “system information” type thingy of an old IBM PS/1 of unknown specific model that we received in. It needed a new CMOS-battery (quick fix) and had an error with some kind of software. The battery was a cinch to change, but we never managed to troubleshoot the 20-yearold piece of software. Alas, we chuckled at this bit of information telling us the harddrive is a whopping 41 MB in size.

The above-featured item is by far one of the silliest things I’ve seen in a laptop. If you can guess what it is, then you’ll have correctly guessed what it is. I assure you, it’s quite silly.

Last but not least, this is an amusing picture only if you speak swedish. We were using a (otherwise quite good) piece of software to remove about a bazillion viruses and other malware from a customers infected windows-machine. The amusement consisted in the hilarity of incredibly poor translation. The application was filled with machine-translations and horribly mangled language, this was simply the most obvious one at the moment I remembered to snap a shot.

I started thinking about how Windows assumes that you’re a criminal, and it’s up to you as a user (through constant verification with Microsoft) to prove that you’re not. Unlike how most of civilized society views the legal process, where you’re innocent until proven guilty, Microsoft works the opposite way. You’re guilty until you continually prove your innocence.

And this annoys me. Because even if you’ve bought Windows, paid your hard-earned money for it, you’re still being treated as a potential criminal. Even if you’re a loyal customer to Microsoft, you’re still constantly being treated with a degree of mistrust. Even if you’ve bought and used nothing but Microsoft-produced software for all of your life, this still doesn’t qualify you to be completely trusted by them.

I find it both sad and kind of funny how many corporations today expect customers to keep buying their things, but still insist on treating them with dislike and as potential criminals. The movie and recording industry are prime examples here, but Microsoft does the same thing to a slightly lesser degree. When you run Windows, you’re not trusted. Not only are you not trusted to be running “genuine” software (whatever that means) you’re not trusted to take care of your computer. Windows will constantly treat you like a semi-retarded individual.

But, I digress. The point of this whole rant is that Windows (and by extension it’s creator, Microsoft) does not trust you. Like a greedy dragon it will lie on the golden pile, constantly watching you and constantly distrusting you.

Ubuntu, on the other hand, does trust you. It trusts you so far that you’re even allowed to peek at the source code, the magic sauce that makes it all happen – and even entrusts you with the power to modify this and share your modifications with the world. Ubuntu has no need to verify if it’s “genuine” since it’s always genuine. It’s redundant, and in the world of Ubuntu it’s as absurd as trying to sell shoes to fish.

Ubuntu does trust you, and doesn’t monitor you. It also does not treat you as a second-class individual and gives you the power. After that, it’s up to you to wield that power properly.

This is a day to remember the software that powers our world, and remember that not all software is created to empower us, but rather that much software is created to limit us in one way or another. Software created to censor us, to keep us uninformed. Proprietary software designed to sustain large corporations only interested in taking our money, and giving us the illusion of usefulness in return.

If you ask me, the best way to celebrate freedom in software is to do it by using Free Software. Ubuntu is free software. Free both as in cost (i.e. none) but also in usage and distribution – you’re free to look at the source-code and modify and improve it, provided you redistribute your improvements.

Speaking of proprietary garbage, I’ve been chuckling about how Microsoft has now admitted Vista as being a “less than good product”. I’m gonna go ahead and invoke Godwins Law, but in my ears that’s kind of like saying the holocaust was a “less than good idea”.

One of my favorite games of all time is Blade Runner from 1997. It is loosely based on a similar concept to the favorite movie (which incidentally happens to be one of my all-time favorite movies) and follows a different member of the Blade Runner-unit, a man named McCoy. When released it was considered a landmark achievement and managed to mix atmospheric visuals and audio with a well-written plot. It also had up to thirteen (!) different endings, depending on the choices the player made. I managed to get eleven of them, that I know of.

Today I remembered the game for some reason. It’s been rattling around in one of the drawers in my desk for the last six or seven years, but today I dug it out. The game was a gift to me on my birthday from my then circle of friends, and I enjoyed it a lot.

The only sad part is that somehow, somewhen, the box has suffered some minor… uuh… cat-damage. So it has a somewhat pungent smell. But the contents were blissfully unharmed.

(Speaking of which, I miss these boxes. This was back in the day when games came in proper boxes, not just a keep-case. Actual cardboard boxes. I miss it.)

The game comes on four CDs, something which was impressive at the time. I popped the first disc into my drive, and installed it using Wine. I wasn’t sure if it would run, but I had nothing to lose. Also, I had even bigger doubts about Vista (which I occasionally dual-boot for gaming) running it.

Wine installed it just fine, and when I tried running it, it worked perfectly. Absolutely beautiful, and was fully playable. Audio, video, all worked fine. I had a fun half-hour running around in the game.

The introductory scroll of the game is an exact replica of that from the movie, complete with similar music. It sets the atmosphere for the rest of the game beautifully.

Sure, it looks a little odd since you can’t change the resolution of the game, and it was released loooong before widescreen monitors were invented. But it’s completely playable, and I might just dig into it – for nostalgias sake.

Let’s just say it’s been an interesting week. And also, lets say that I’m a bit nuts for running this as my main OS since it’s significantly more prone to… err… personality defects than the last time I ran an Alpha, which was almost 1½ years ago when I ran the alpha of the then-upcoming 8.04 aka Hardy Heron.

But it’s impressive how fast it moves along. Almost daily there are improvements, and almost daily the experience of using Karmic becomes less like dancing polka in a minefield and more like using an actual operating system.

Also, I’ve finally started using Firefox 3.5. Version 3.5.2 to be precise. I gave up on the Artwiz-fonts that I’d been using as interface-fonts for more than a year. Partly because FF3.5 refuses to accept bitmapped fonts in it’s interface, but also because lately I’ve felt that the artwiz fonts while pretty to look at are increasingly difficult to read.

Windows and MacOS provides you with one environment. In Linux (yeah, I’m going to refer to this as Linux since that’s what I run) you have the choice of several different environments. These are commonly referred to as Desktop Environments (or DE, for short) and comprise the user interface. Gnome and KDE are among the more popular, but there are several other more obscure that might suit you just fine as well.

The DE consists of a large number of applications designed according to a common philosophy and using a common framework in the software. Gnome is based on GTK and follows the GUI guidelines of the Gnome-project. KDE uses QT instead and follows a different set of guidelines. Other DE’s use the same general principle, for example the XFCE-desktop is also based on GTK but follows a different philosophy when it comes to the user interface.

One this is however common among all DE’s. They’re what you use to interact with your computer.

For many, many years I’ve always preferred Gnome over KDE. Apart from a brief flirtation with KDE back in the late 90′s I have never liked the cartoony look and feel of KDE. I’ve always preferred the restrained and cleaner look and feel of the Gnome desktop. This didn’t change back in early ’07 when I made the switch fulltime to running Linux even on my desktop, and thus I chose Ubuntu for two reasons: It’s based on the rock-solid Debian distribution of Linux, and it uses Gnome as the default desktop environment.

But, just earlier today I got curious about where KDE stands.

I played a bit with it back when KDE 4.0 was released, and I was impressed. Gone was the plastic cartoony look, and instead it seemed as if KDE had matured. There were tons of new features, and the environment seemed lightyears more coherent and thought-through than the previous generations of the K Desktop Environment. It was polished, but like all point-zero releases it wasn’t really there yet. It was sluggish, it lacked a lot of applications still stuck in the 3.x series of KDE and overall wasn’t quite my cup of tea. But it showed a lot of promise.

And earlier today I punched in one command and installed the current stable KDE release. It stands at version 4.2 and it has matured even more. Now most of the applications have caught up, developers have polished the look and feel even more, and now the speed is up to par as well.

I’ve been playing around with it for the last hour or so, and I have to say I’m deeply impressed. I don’t think I’ll be making the jump to KDE within the foreseeable future – but golly geez, it’s tempting. KDE 4.2 gives both Windows and MacOS a run for it’s money in so many ways, which says even more since it’s free software. Also, since the QT toolkit now has been ported to Windows, you could run KDE under Windows as well, and leave that awful mess Microsoft calls a user interface behind.

And, it also gives Gnome a run for it’s money. Like I said, I never really cared much for previous generations of K, but 4+ is a much different beast. Unlike it’s previous iterations it’s polished, pretty and deeply usable.

Gnome developers, take heed. If you don’t get your game together I’m pretty sure KDE will be eating your lunch soon. You’d better shape up and put a lot of effort into Gnome 3, or KDE will quickly establish itself as the superior desktop – even on the desktop of a die-hard Gnome-man such as myself.

Now I’m gonna see if this thing can play Sky Shadow!

(Clicky)

SIMH is available in the Ubuntu repositories. It’s in one of the supplemental repos, multiverse or universe – I can’t remember. Installs easily. Getting the image running and understanding SIMH was a little tricky, but nothing you can’t figure out in half an hour or so provided you have some fairly advanced knowledge of computers. I managed to do it just fine with a little googling.

No, I don’t know why it says “1988″ in the screenshot.

The image isn’t completely ready. It boots in single-user mode and then you have to create a few directories that for some reason aren’t included. After that it’s bootable in multiuser-mode and runs just like on an actual PDP-11. Of course, text-mode UNIX isn’t exactly the most visually impressive operating system in the world, but it’s still quite neat.