AMD Radeon's Proprietary Driver vs OpenSource Driver

When it comes to creating a software driver which enables the proper communication between the actual hardware and the operating system, it's important that the programmers have the proper "knowledge" about the core foundation about the hardware.

This however does not consist (not necessarily) of how the chip or the hardware is designed into depths such as how close the transistors are aligned, what materials are being used to manufacture them, how the direct communication between transistors take place, etc. As far as I know, all the programmer needs to know to design a optimized software driver has nothing to be with the physical attributes but as long as they how to communicate with the BIOS of the hardware, that "maybe" enough.

That's because it's the BIOS that talks directly with its hardware and is sort of the gate keeper thus the job of the OS (or the driver in this instance) to speak with the BIOS and tell him the needs and the rest should be taken care of. So in that sense, the manufacture is, in a way, is somewhat "protected".

Hmm yeah, about that ...

As everyone would agree, Praise and Fame are two powerful substances that define most of our lives thus keeping "the" secret is a "must" in some situations otherwise you'll mean nothing to others. Because rather than revealing the truth, in a way, pretension has its power over us.

It helps to create a sense of a self, adds a "meaning" to ones life which ultimately motivates to "do something" with their lives. As Adam Smith had said: "In competition, individual ambition serves the common good.", a big equation that's trying to balance itself out, perhaps.

Image via: Deviantart...

However this is not a philosophy that I'm quite fond of yet the more I deal with the "world' the more apparent it is. In that sense I do have sympathy for me and others: such as the hardware manufactures in this instance.

Anyhow, let me come back to the story. Before and after AMD purchased ATI graphics the company refused to give advanced technical details into the hands of the software driver developers which would/should reveal some, not necessarily all but some of their secrets as mentioned in the 2nd paragraph.

This is also the case with other major GPU manufactures such as Nvidia and Intel (although Intel is a bit open but some of their GPU do have some "lacking" of serious documentations according to developers) who're also scared give certain information about their hardware "details". Anyhow concerning AMD, now we have main two versions of their GPU drivers.

One is the Proprietary driver (which was known as fglrx which was then re-named as "AMD Catalyst Linux") and the other is the opensource driver. They're both initiated and lead by AMD and today I was reading an interesting article on Phonoix concerning their performance comparison.

They've run some performance tests using the Phoronix Test Suite (a benchmark utility) below are few of the images containing the results (running games under GNU/Linux and used Ubuntu 11.04 and 8.04 versions).

Now I will not go into details since you can read it from this Phoronix page (including the hardware of the PC used and OS versions, etc) but to wrap things up Michael has concluded that in some tests (games) the opensource driver actually out performed the proprietary one!.

But in most situations it was the Proprietary one that won the "battle" at the end (Also worth mentioning that the GPU's being used are actually a bit older ones in today's standards). 

This is a no surprise since it consists of both opensource and proprietary portions and the proprietary portions means deeper hardware integration + the proprietary section of the AMD seems to have a bit more man-power than the opensource section at the moment. So, if you're looking for the best possible 2D and 3D (OpenGL rendering, Compiz, I hate you! :P) acceleration under GNU/Linux then you should be better of with the secretive AMD Catalyst Linux driver ;-).

Interestingly though that usually the OpenSource driver is a bit slowish (running about 60-75% speed of the proprietary one) and in Michael's own words...

"It is worth noting that AMD is not looking to achieve the same level of performance with their open-source driver as what is found with Catalyst. The 80~90% performance of Catalyst that we are commonly seeing for this older hardware is in line with what AMD's John Bridgman and others have been after. Additional performance can be squeezed out of the open-source code, but it is a matter of whether such investment is worthwhile..."

So I think that as time goes assuming the GNU/Linux will not just grow in numbers but in a rate that forces AMD (including other vendors) invest more time and money into developing a better optimized opensource driver (also supposing we'll be seeing a lot of popular games re-designed into GNU/Linux too) which should resulting an optimized completely (let's hope, anyone wanna prove "Adam Smith" is wrong? :D) open-sourced driver, finally.

Although according to Richard Stallman OpenSource does not represents the true subtle meaning of the idea of freedom (yikes!) ... but hey!, it's better than nothing! (not all hope is lost for GNU/Linux nonetheless). What do you think?.

Apple Will be Launching a "Launchpad" with the Upcoming Mac OSX Lion (Wait, Isn't that... yep!)

I actually haven't used an Apple Mac OS (X) computer, so I have no idea why I hear nothing but praises from those who use the Apple's operating system. Although MS Windows is certainly not behind much but I guess that when looking at the features and videos made by others :/... I guess it's about intuition and Apple is extremely good at it without a doubt.

As I've said before, a lot of core/key GNU/Linux developers (both Gnome and Qt/KDE, etc) are quite the admirers of the Apple's way of doing things. Although I won't be going into details since you can read all about from their OS X Lion page, but with the introduction of this latest version of their OS which brings some interesting features compared to the older versions.

One particular feature took my attention, in fact because of its name, I think anyone who's familiar with Ubuntu cannot go pass by without noticing it.

*Welcome to The Ubuntu/Apple "Twin Paradox" ;-)*


Apple's "Launchpad"

Apple's "version"...

Yep... with the OSX Lion a new feature is named as "Launchpad" will be added!. For those of you who haven't heard, Launchpad is actually "invented" by Canonical to make the installation and hosting of software (both pre-builds and source codes) packages for the Ubuntu Linux OS much more easier to perform.

The Unity's (whatever you call it)... which was implemented before Apple...

There's an interesting Ubuntu Forum page going on concerning the whole issue. But before briefing, both Apple's and Canonical's "Launchpad"s are totally different. What Apple calls a "Launchpad" is actually a new feature which basically lets the users see a full list of running applications rather than the application folder.

This actually is something that we already see in the Unity desktop module (both 3D and 2D) which is implemented by Ubuntu/Canonical developers.

But before "blaming" Apple ... well both Unity and Gnome desktops in general do inherit a lot of features that were already implemented by Apple longtime ago (Nautilus file manager, Unity and Gnome desktop GUI in general, etc) but I never heard Apple complaining about any of those. But that's not to say that Canonical should ignore this whole "Launchpad" issue since it seems that the word "Launchpad" is actually a trademark which was invented and owned by Canonical, as far as I know.

In fact it's actually clearly stated in the Launchpad legal-help page by Canonical, saying that...

Trademark

“Launchpad” is a registered trademark of Canonical Ltd

which I think is the standard legal procedure of denoting the ownership of a trademark. Anyhow, according to this Launchpad bug page (Canonical's one... see, now I've got to keep saying who's "...pad" I'm talking about :P) Canonical legal team is aware of this issue seems to be "working on it" at the moment.

It's really hard to say that Apple wasn't aware of this "name" issue which is highly unlikely but I hope they resolve the whole issue in a friendly manner because GNU/Linux do have its fare share of Mac OS in general :).

"We're Done With Linux", Says Nokia

Nokia the mobile phone giant is having some troubles at the moment (well it's been a while now for them, and many "others" included) without a doubt. It's said that this year along (so far) Nokia's stock price is reduced by more than 40%! which obviously raises concerns, which is apparent.

Anyway, in a recent interview with Helsingin Sanomat (magazine), Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop said that ...

"I have talked a lot about how we increase our staff’s accountability, our empathy to listen to our clients and each other, and our aim to avoid being arrogant..."

The above quote is the answer for Nokia letting go of the MeeGo mobile platform (Linux based) as a result we won't see any Nokia phones with Linux in general (at least not in the near future).
 
We'll, if the numbers are correct and what he's saying is true then this is a desperate attempt to save Nokia from losing her clients. And according to Elop, some of the investors are not happy with the results, concerning the recent past (a year or maybe a bit longer), which seems to be the case.

Anyhow, what the heck does Linux has to do with it?

Well, to start with, sometime ago Nokia purchased the Qt toolkit (which is the GUI builder behind KDE desktop and thousand other application GUIs in GNU/Linux OS) and started to use it to design programs for their mobile phones. Not to worry, they didn't "touch" the license agreement (yet) thus Qt toolkit is still released in the GNU/GPL nonetheless.

What's "in-it" for Nokia?

Well, by using Qt they can create applications that can be run in their other mobile phone operating systems written using Java for instance with ease (because Qt in itself is a "framework").

So, if you have an excellent, Java written media player which was designed using Qt in a Java powered OS for instance, then you can "merge" or make it run in another Nokia mobile phone OS with ease by using Qt. This save both money and, oh well, it saves money :).

Nokia and Intel (including few other tech-giants) renamed the previously know Moblin project to MeeGo somewhere around last year in hope for finding/creating a "cost friendly" mobile operating system using the already existing MeeGo platform.

After bit of a "break" they introduced the latest Nokia smart phone powered by the MeeGo platform called N9 few days ago in Singapore and again Elop made clear the company's intentions even after praising the design, stability, look-n-feel of the N9 smart phone (the smart phone has already received a lot of positive feedback from both users and tech-experts), by saying...

"I have taken part in the conversations with the teleoperators and I have been part of the consumer test groups. The feedback has been extremely positive and I am sure that the Windows Phone system will be a great success.."

N9, the "newly-wed" ;-)...

So, even if the N9 with MeeGo is a great success/hit yet there's no turning back!. Now some say this is because of the lack of the availability of the applications (like Android market or MS Windows online store, etc) which could be true and one certainly can't ignore the power of the online application market any more.

But I highly doubt that MeeGo or Linux (it ain't really "GNU"/Linux since the license isn't fully compatible with GNU-GPL) not having a strong online applications has anything to do with it.

Because I mean come on, seriously!. As far as I know, N9 is the only smart phone that Nokia released which uses MeeGo officially (although the enthusiasts have run the OS in other Nokia phone models, etc) and they just started.

Elop himself said that even if the N9 is a "hit" there's no turning back. Why is that?. If what he meant by a "hit" was not just a success but a massive one, then where's problem?. This is not a judgement on Nokia or anyone but I think the reason is quite simple.

The real investors want better controllability which would ensure the safety of their investments which resembles their interests. But by drifting towards a Linux approach which, in its genuine sense tries to rule out the possibility of a centralised power would simply mean "unstability" from the Nokia's investors point of view because with platforms like MeeGo, does depend on the community, or so it seems.

Although not as "stretched" as Debin or other GNU/Linux OS, etc are since it's actually commercial companies funded it in the first place. Yet the visibility of not the actual users but the "free developers" can scare away the investors because unilke with the "actual users", but a with community driven developer-users, things can get a bit personal between them thus creating an environment in which making decisions can be a bit difficult. I maybe wrong here and easily be misguided but... that's what I feel.

But, I just can't help it any more but to think about, What is the purpose of GNU/Linux?. Lets forget computing, just for few seconds. But what is its real purpose. Is it going against our true nature as Mr. Mark and "others" seems to think?. Is it the reason for these "failures", you know, every time when it seems to be working-out nicely, then out of nowhere, shi* happens... I don't know.

To be honest, I'm too inexperienced to put together a reasonable answer to this. So, as an ending note, perhaps the following quote from Simon Phipp (an Open-Source expert) might help others like me, to get an insight into the matter ...

"Crocodiles are not evil; neither are they good. They are just reptiles, dealing with their hunger.To call something "a reptile" is not a value judgement; quite the opposite since reptiles are demonstrably amoral and mechanistic...

Despite their evil looks and repellant behavior, they are just being reptiles, doing what reptiles do. Working with them is not a matter of relying on their goodwill. It's all down to understanding their instincts - and learning to stand in the right place...

And that's what I mean when I say a corporation is just a reptile."

"Canonical Might Replace Firefox with Google's Chrome in the Future"

:- Says Mark Shuttleworth in a recent interview with the networkworld. But he said that this of course won't happen anytime sooner and the decision has already been made to not to replace Firefox with the upcoming Ubuntu Linux 11.10 + they won't be able to do it with the 12.04 (in the next year) since it's the long term support OS version. So we'll be seeing some more of Firefox with Ubuntu for some time :).

I don't know why people love Chrome not Firefox more.. I'm not a GUI expert nor a computer programmer, but, other than being impressed by the clean look-n-feel of Google Chrome and slightly faster web page loading times (including the browser), okay I get the picture :D.

This "move" again raises concerns for some, since Open-Source is not GNU and little by little, now largely, Ubuntu seems to not to care much whether its open-source or GNU... as long as it meets the end without having to worry about the means.

This is also highly relative since how we perceive the world depends on the paradigm that we "choose" to believe, thus anybody with the right authority can always make paradigm "shifts" without others even realizing it. But, they will only tolerate it as long as the "shift" doesn't conflict or threaten their identity because when it comes to protecting that which matters the most, only very few has the ability to let go.

Anyhow, we also have to remember that even though some call Google Chrome "open-source" which seems to be true to large portions of the browser but it's a know fact that the entire parts of the web browser is not actually licensed around "open-source" + some untrustworthy attempts by the browser should be a concern, or is it not?.

Although we can always argue that since it's open-source (most of it), we can create something secure using the existing Chrome which is true but... as said, this might raise concerns in the future. To be honest, I'm confused. What do you think?.

Chinese Prisoners Who Make £470-570 A Day Online, A Sad Story

Selling virtual "goods" online to other gaming enthusiasts is a very popular way to make some money online these days. You don't have to create any website or anything, if you know how to play a popular video game and how to win and collect points then you can sell these points to others who are so eager to "win" and willing to do anything for that (ahh, the dark side of ambition, eh, it's not funny anymore).

You don't have to be an expert, if your gaming "Kung-Fu" is powerful, then even if you're new to this.. you're good to go!. This is what has happened/happening with World of Warcraft (although not the only game where you can "do it").

Basically, there are thousands of players online all over the world, wanting to win. As with any game, you can collect points, etc while you play it and then you can send these collected points, goods to your friends or ... you can choose to "sell" 'em...

... Liu Dali who's a 54 year old prisoner in Jixi labour camp (sent in for " illegally petitioning" for three years) says he heard the 300 prisoners who are forced to play World of Warcraft online who are making about £470-570 per day!. But the sad thing about that money is that, the prisoners don't get any of that money, not even a penny out of it!. Quoting Liu Dali himself...

"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off." Via: Guardian.

I actually don't know who's to blame for this. Is the prison bosses are more evil than the prisoners? or is it the "usual" other way around?. They say that the game developers don't have the authority to stop theses selling/activities. It's out of their control. Although they could easily disable sending "goods", but that could easily mean the end of their business.

Image Via: Saibel from Deviantart.

There is a religion in my country which says there are basically 10 things (mental conditions) that "control" us. 5 drifts us "below" or towards negativity/hell or whatever the words you're comfortable representing it. The other 5 is what takes us to higher ground, upward. Positive thoughts, love, kindness, etc.

Sometimes I just feel like we're being controlled in such as manner, by a certain kind of individuals who has some basic understanding of these "secrets" and they feed the 5 things that takes us downward. Media, newspapers, "talks", celebrities, porn movies, etc...  they/we feed this dark side of the mind thus creating such complexities until we arrive at the point of not knowing how to be happy until we "kill" all our fellow human beings, one way or the other. 

The Perfect "Con", That Which Really Drifts Me Towards "GNU/Linux"

Life's really funny. How many times have we seen the "forces" that were promised to "free" us end-up being the cause or perhaps the "fuel" that boosts the epicenter at the other end. Gnome brag about GNU philosophy and "seems" so try to look like the guardians of "light". 

But at the same time through their pride and ignorance (not quite true actually... more later) gives the exact opportunity for "others" to easily disappoint people. For instance, I don't know about other and I have nothing against KDE but I've been a bit "close" to Gnome desktop rather than KDE.

To this day I don't have the faintest idea for the exact reason for that, sometimes I suspect that it may have nothing to do with Gnome being close GNU but maybe, just maybe, it could be because it was actually Gnome which was my first "taste" of GNU/Linux!.

I think ;)...

It was with Redhat and before that I've never used Linux. And interestingly to this day, I'm drawn to RedHat related distros (Fedora Core for instance). Anyway all I'm trying to say is, it's not that easy to get around your past and the authority it carries till the very end of your life ;).

The reason I loved Ubuntu when she was still very young is because for some reason, the OS felt solid compared with other distros thus even after using it for few minutes, Ubuntu was able perceive me the idea of confidence. Even after being disappointed with the darn UGLY theme it used to come with, yet I loved it. And the other the most important one, was due to the fact that Ubuntu being a "Gnome based" distribution!. Although I put it secondly but it is actually most prominent factor, for me.

It's/was also very interesting how I "define/d" the idea of confidence or willing to see it others. It actually doesn't matter how solidly the OS is built. For me, the idea/emotion of being comfortable/confidence was always triggered by the OS's ability to "represent" it's familiarity with Gnome.

For instance, in the past I've used many solid Linux distributions such as OpenSuse, Mandriva, Slackware, etc. But none of those great (I meant it :D) distros were able to make me comfortable. I never stick with KDE based distributions (not even with Kubuntu) for that long.

But every time I use Fedora Core which is not the best OS if you're really new to GNU/Linux because unlike Ubuntu or many others, FC also behaves in a very similar pattern to Gnome developers. For example, by default Fedora Core does not allow you to read-write NTFS partitions nor they let you easily install multimedia codes (.bmp image extensions are un-readable, etc) either. Even after such disappointments, yet every time I use FC, I feel comfortable. But that's my personal dilemma. Can we really trust the sense of comfort as a way of measuring "freedom". For instance...

...this is the reason that I loved Ubuntu from the beginning. I came across GNU/Linux, because like everyone else, I also hated the idea of even thinking someone else being in control of my life. But then again, interestingly most of my friends don't give shi* about what's the "idea" behind the OS and how "open" it is etc. They just use it. And heck, some people are seems to be really comfortable around some certain types of "authority" figures :P. Why is that?. Is it because they don't care about some else being in control of their lives???.

I guess that, it depends on the way we define ourselves. For instance, if you're an engineer, then you might be okay with accepting "opinions" from someone else as long as he's anything but who you are. This is the basic idea behind the illusory idea of "community" or "team-work" (also in relationships, I maybe wrong on that one, perhaps).

As long as the individuals in a team belongs to different types in nature, you'll maintain its balance. Problems will rise as long as you start adding more than one type to the group (a second Java developers for instance).

You won't feel threatened as long as you're the only Java developer in your little "group", but when Sam from US arrives :P who's also happened to be a Java expert... things start to get interesting. I sometimes feel like this could be the reason for a lot others not to care much about the "philosophy" behind the operating system that they're using. Because they don't "identify" themselves as "computer related", if you know what I mean.

As said this also helps to maintain a false sense of "harmony". Because this serves the purpose of giving everyone what they want... for some it gives the idea of superiority. For instance, you could open a business, say about computer software. Then you can easily dominate the market by giving what "others want" and in your way you can make small adjustments of your "own" which helps to drift those people your idea of reality which serves the purpose of being right.

But most of the time you being able to "control" that community depends on their interests. The recent Gnome-Canonical clash is an excellent example. The failure of Mark Shuttleworth being unable to "convince" Gnome team to accept his "proposal" is due to the fact that Gnome team consists of individuals who's identity heavily depends on being a computer hacker, which is their idea of not being scared of "life" (I didn't put it in a bad way guys, I'm no better, where do you think these "ideas" come from :P). He threatened them, their identity, thus he WILL not succeed with them. But...

... he as with Microsoft, may succeed with the other-kind of people who are "not closely related to computers", because for those people, computers are just tools... not an identity. This method of deceiving ourselves ignorantly serves the common purpose for both sides. People at one side think they're so advanced and mature because they "control" the people at the other end. But the people at the other side don't give a damn about being "controlled", because as far as they're concerned, they're not.
 

It's like when everyone involved gets just what they wanted (the sense of comfort, at last :P), hah... the perfect con of life.

So in the end, which side is really free??.

Just because I feel comfortable doesn't mean I'm really free. That's pretty much wrap things up for me. Maybe the geeky "Tux" has conned me after all :).

Is this What Canonical/Mark Wants Us to "Choose"?

Have a look at the below screenshot and don't think, just try to feel it! :P.

If you think that this is actually the newly introduced Ubuntu 11.04 Natty, actually it is not. This is KDE4 plasma desktop that was showed-off in the Ubuntu developer's summit (still happening as I'm writing). I may sound stupid and perhaps I maybe wrong, but this shows us how close Unity and KDE (Qt to be precise) actually is. I think this is the end that Canonical (actually Mark Shuttleworth) tries to drag the users into.

As a start they've create an exact replica of Unity's 3D shell that is called Unity 2D and it does not use Compiz but interestingly, it's written in Qt!. Although I'm not quite sure how the default Unity-Shell is designed (C++ of that I know, GTK?? perhaps), but when considering few things, I think at the end/future we'll/maybe see Ubuntu drifting towards KDE-Qt rather than GTK based OS.

Earlier this year Mark Shuttleworth said that Ubuntu will be supporting Qt toolkit more by giving his reason (quoting his own words)

"...it’s the values which are important, and the toolkit is only a means to that end. We should evaluate apps on the basis of how well they meet the requirement, not prejudice them on the basis of technical choices made by the developer."

We'll Gnome is the exact opposite (including the whole GNU philosophy, I'd say). And to be honest, I don't have the mental capacity to say who's right or whose wrong but letting go of the "weight" that means "hold" for their end... well, as long as you/we can see past beyond our choices, that's just fine. But as the history tells us, these types of mental attitudes are a breading ground for tyranny (excellent "title" for another post, :P). 

Anyway, Canonical would've done this with the beginning of Unity by designing the default 3D Unity-Shell using the Qt which they did not. But I think anyone could see the apparent difficulty in that "path. Unity is so new and it will be huge mistake to do something that naughty, 'cause it's too early. 

Initially, slowly Canonical will be moving towards Qt and if they do so, they could easily use the Unity-Shell as the means to their end. For instance, now very little "customizations" are "available" in Unity. Canonical would easily come up with a "story" that would suggest that if they were to give users a better computing experience, then their better off with Qt rather than GTK. Because if they aren't cunning, this could easily destroy a lot of their faithful users (we're already seeing few developers "taking off" from Canonical). 

Anyhow, personally, I don't feel comfortable of being around people who has the believe that Mark seems to quite fond of, I don't like it not because I don't see any value in it, it has its uses. But in a very subtle sense, those types of words "define" a mind that is drifted towards negativity (highly relative though) which leads to chaos because ultimately a mind which operates in those type of states, the only way it "knows" how to calm or satisfy itself (if it's ever going to happen) is through the idea of superiority/power which is like fire...

...as long as we keep the proper distance, it's just fine, but things can just go wrong pretty easily, after all we're all just scared human beings, one way or the other (or is it just me... shi* :P).

Treading On Water, An Important Life Saving Technique! (Swimming)

Let me start with a little story (a true one). For a long time I thought I could swim. I mean seriously, for a long time I was fooled by the fake confidence that I had about the very popular swimming Technique called "Freestyle". I used to think, I had figured it out all.

The thing was, once you started swimming in freestyle, you could just go forward and as long as you do the strokes, your body ... it would just float.

It's never too late to learn ...

Out of my fear, I never gave myself the chance to stop in the middle of the deep water (no pools dude... I'm talking about rivers... I'm a wild one me-self :P) and see what happens. This gave me the foolish assumption that I could float on water all the time thus will always be able to save my life if something bad happened that put me into a River or something ;-).

Anyway, one day I went for swimming, to a nearby River with few of my friends. There was a boat and you know, we just took it :) and went to the middle of the River. Now these weren't rainy days, so the current wasn't that strong yet, the water was deep enough to drown even a taller person, easily. Two of the dudes were expert swimmers (mariners actually). So they jumped out of the boat and started swimming.

Being a human being I observed this "phenomenon" in a way which gave me the notion of suddenly out of nowhere, they started "appearing" so much superior to me :P. So out of my my frustration, without thinking twice I too jumped in and "joined" them. Now I had no fear of the water because I really believed I could swim, until I hit the water that was.

As soon as I hit the water, I started my "freestyle" (the only thing I knew, partially, yuk) and after like 20-30 seconds I felt tired and though I'd stop for a moment and would "float" a little. And then as soon as I stopped "my freestyle", just a like a rock that fell on water, suddenly I was, drowning.

Then naturally I tried to start my "freestyle", but because I didn't actually knew even how to do that properly + because of the position of the body (vertical, ready to be drowned, wasn't funny actually, one of the most scared moments of my life) I couldn't do it, I simply couldn't get my body in a horizontal position so I could do my "freestyle" thing..

Luckily one of my friends were near me and at the third time I went down and came up, he grabbed me (I was actually a bit nearer to the boat as well) and helped me grab the boat. Forget about my fears... I felt so humiliated (oh we men are wretched creatures) but I couldn't do anything about it... heck, it was my fault who gotten into this "situation" because I wanted to prove that I was "something especial"... in a way, I was glad actually because this helped me learn a lesson otherwise I could easily end up trying to prove myself over others always for the rest of my life... a human life ... totally wasted, it would've been.

Little guys and gals ... they "just know" how to swim!. How come "growing up" destroys our intuitive senses?? 

And I'll always be grateful for my buddy who saved me too. Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is that, just because you think you know how to swim... you simply may not. You can easily misguided by your pride as being confident and trust me you certainly don't want to end up like me to find out that you actually were wrong!.

So treading on water or the technique/s that can be used to help us float on water is a must learned lesson for everyone, because you never know what's coming next (not always true, but most of the time it is).

So please watch the below videos that I found on Youtube, sometime ago after the "incident". And remember, do not start "practicing" them in deep water. Find a pool that simply don't have the depth to drown you and practice in it first.

1. 



2. The Eggbeater Kick (below video).

This seems to be a very popular technique + in comparison with other techniques... this makes it easier to folat on water and doesn't need you to use your hands at all either.




Here's a closer look at the "Eggbeater Kick"... with slow motion.



If you could have an expert around, it's the best possible way. But still I think for most of us, we can learn how to float on water easily by using this technique, even without the help of a professional... and follow the advice of these trainers carefully. 

Not just treading on water, also learn about other swimming techniques that takes you forward such as "Freestyle" or Breaststroke, etc... because who wants to "float" on water without being able to reach ashore, especially under strong currents.

Also have a look at this swimsmooth.com web site where you'll find not just human beings but 3D graphical illustrations that shows advanced information about how you should move your arms, legs, etc... very informative.

As mentioned before, at first never use these techniques nor "try" them in deep water until you're confident about it. If you can find a swimming training school near you, then it is the best possible way. Be safe, and good luck.

Do You Like the "Left" Dock in Ubuntu Unity Desktop?

Although he's not the only one but in a recent post written by David Sugar.. it is an interesting read though. Anyhow, he goes on to various aspects of the desktop but the one that kinda got me interested was about the location of the dock.

Left or Right?...

Now in the recent past some users requested to the users change the location of the dock according to their preference. But Canonical refused this by saying it's not possible because it'll jeopardize the whole OS because they'll have to make certain change to the whole OS as result.

Anyway, as I was saying, David pointed out the fact that if you're a right-handed person + as most of us are "trained", we read text from the upper left to the right thus having a dock at the left side of the screen (unmovable) is a bit frustrating, sometimes.

Not just because it takes a "valuable" space from the left side but also again for right-handed individuals when it comes to launching and accessing apps in the Dock.. it is so much easier if it was to the right rather than to the left. And also concerning the fact that most of the never Laptops and Touchscreen based devices (tablets etc) come with smaller screens (16:9 aspect-ratio) that has lesser heights... maybe, just maybe if Canonical could move it to the bottom like with the Apple... What do you think?.

But I don't think that they'll ever put it at the bottom like in Apple Mac OS/X because then Unity could be called a cheap replica of Mac which would destroy all of their hard work or the reputation in that matter. And most importantly even if you're a left-handed person, I think it would be better to let the users the ability to change the location of the Dock rather than making it unmovable.

What are your opinions on the subject??.

libappindicator, The "Curse" That Destroyed Canonical-Gnome "Relationship"?

It was inevitable, if you asked me. It wasn't unexpected either, although not the whole "issue", but in general if you look carefully at the history of the two "parties" and their "characteristics", again, it just had to happen!.

If you're a bit new to this...

In that case, very recently... Canonical decided to throw away the Gnome Desktop module from their OS Ubuntu, Gnome was one of the basic foundations behind Ubuntu (in a way)... the OS was basically optimized for Gnome (GTK+) from the start of Ubuntu Linux.

But due to certain confusions that took place recently between Canonical and Gnome, concerning a software module called "libappindicator" (explanation below), Canonical decided to completely remove Gnome from their OS (no official support for Gnome from now on) thus decided to use their own desktop module called the "Unity".

So, basically this is the story behind the birth of the Unity Desktop (in my point of view, so others may have different opinions on the subject) which is going to be introduced for the first time with the upcoming Ubuntu Linux 11.04 Natty Narwhal within the next couple of days.

Back to the story...

But before going into all those details, first let me give you a basic understanding of what this "libappindicator" is all about and a little history lesson :P... is in a briefing manner. Yes, I promise not to let you fall asleep.

What the....

What the heck is this "libappindicator" anyway?

To put it into simple terms, application indicators (another name for what "libappindicator" stands for) in general,

... they are protocols that enable users to easily access various "options" of applications via their icons stored/minimized in the notification area (in the panels of the desktop screen) or a way of accessing their basic "menus/options" easily, in general terms.

Example of an application indicator, picture-from: Ubuntu

For instance, what happens these days with applications that does not support "indicator protocols" which are dock-ed in the notification area of the panels, if you want to access their main options such as "play, pause," or "cancel", "preference" type standard features, then you have to right-click or bring them to front and then go to the menus, etc... so, currently it is a long - painful process.

But as you can see with application indicators, you can simply left-click on an app that supports these protocols and can easily access their basic options as shown in the above screenshot. This helps to give the end users a better computing experience in general. This is the future... or so it seems anyway.

So what I'm trying to say is that, by trying to create an application indicator, Canonical did the right thing. Application indicators, however is not something new, they've been there as long as with the beginning of these desktops, "libappindicator" is simply an advanced one, other than that, the idea is simply, not new.

But remember that the "libappindicator" was started by using another a bit primitive indicator library called "KNotificationItem" which as can be seen in the name, is a KDE based library. Although they've added so many new things thus the "libappindicator" is almost a totally different one in technical attributes, yet from the emotional point of view, even from the start, it is reasonable if Gnome team felt a bit "threatened" by it. Why?


They are not friendly!

You keep the distance... you... TwO :(

That's the simple answer. Although both Gnome and KDE share the same GNU license and other than competing against each other, they seems like friends in the free-software who believes in the same "thing", yet when they're measured using the past... the sad truth is, they simply belong to two entire different "groups". Nope, they are not friendly.

For instance, even from the beginning Gnome decided to stick with the GNU Philosophy which was born out of Richard Stallman's brain in 1983 (earlier actually, it was officially introduced at that time, anyway).

Mr. Richard Stallman...

But in less technicality and in a more emotional level... GNU/Linux was born because the Young Richard Stallman felt jealous and angry (just like any of us would) towards the system admin where he worked as a programmer (if I remember correctly) who one day came to him and said... "Oi!, I removed your administrative privileges!, you're just a normal |user-account| in OUR computer system from now on". Well not in that language but.. something similar ;-).

So, as anyone else would feel... he felt a bit disrespected, etc and decided to come-up with a philosophy that would help to "free" individuals, importantly not everyone.. but certain types of people who had similar characteristics thus hand a natural tendency towards their idealistic value-system, in my opinion.

I don't judge Mr. Richard... in fact he's one of the most respected individuals in my list actually. But that's not to say that he or his way of life are perfect. I've seen him protesting or protecting certain criticisms concerning GNU and I don't think us as outsiders will find it easy to point out certain "errors" and get them fixed. Again, he is a remarkable human being. After all, most of the time, its our ideas that define us and sometimes you have to defend them anyway.

However, what I'm trying to say is that, I've seen this mentality, of being "very hard to be heard" others "voices" type scenario with Gnome hackers as well. For instance, how long and how many have criticized their oversimplified GUI of the Gnome desktop yet, despite all those efforts, that desktop still comes with the most ridicules right-click ever!.

So basically, Gnome is very close with GNU, in fact, Gnome is actually part of the GNU project thus GNU philosophy being what defines them... Mark Shuttleworth being a person from the other side (you know... every hackers nightmare... those CEO or business individuals who love giving orders - "kind") it is quite natural he finds Gnome annoying. 

KDE however is totally different. Heck they started designing their desktop's GUI in a way that Gnome community wouldn't even dream of!. It was started around 1996 and the GUI was designed a tool-kit called "Qt" which was owned by a company called Trolltech.

And at that time, the tool-kit, forget about the GNU philosophy, it wasn't even an opensource app, it was simply a closed-source (like Microsoft). But to most surprise, KDE seemed to have decided to put aside all those "nonsense" that philosophies bring and create something that is "usable".

From the start KDE showed a lot of promises with their desktop. It was and still is the total opposite of Gnome. In a way to me, KDE feels like the direct result of Gnome's arrogant behavior that didn't give users a more feature-rich desktop thus some developers had decided to create a desktop of their own, because again, Gnome wouldn't listen. But of course KDE was started before Gnome but I'm just saying, they are just "different".

Anyway, as I was saying... as KDE gained more momentum and around 1998 when it was obvious that it's gonna be a major desktop in GNU/Linux world and to avoid future criticisms or to accept their desktop to major distributions such as Red-Hat (now Fedora) etc they asked from Trolltech to release the Qt toolkit in GNU or the lesser GNU-GPL (which is also supported by GNU foundation). But the dudes at Troltech refused!. Anyhow, around 2005 Trolltech finally decided to release Qt under GPL!.

This again shows the basic difference between KDE and Gnome. When Gnome is famous for being less "polite" in their approach, KDE on the other hand is pretty easy to get along, I think. For instance, if you decided to add a new option in Gnome desktop, a feature/s that would break the idea of being "simple-&-useful" in Gnome's point of view... then your life as an official Gnome developer is simply over buddy!.

But with KDE, you can design a program and add as more features as you like ... still there's not guarantee that your app would be taken into the official KDE project, not because you've added so many features thus it will scare away the newborn computer user as Gnome thinks.

So back to the Qt story... now what KDE had done was something that Gnome would never do!. That seems like their main difference actually. Gnome viciously fights against an enemy/idea that already has a natural advantage over its core idealistic value/s (or so it seems on the outside) which is resulting a drift towards, more likely a business module (in this case) that has to operate within a controlled environment where KDE is also headed.

And when observed from this angle it should be apparent why Gnome developers would feel threatened when the "proposal" was first introduced.

A little about Mark Shuttleworth...

Mr. Mark Shuttleworth, the man who loves "Space..."

Even though both Richard and Mark are one of the most active members in opensource (well Richard hates it, so he's an active GNU member to be precise) world, but again they both represents totally different idealistic values. But they are both remarkable human beings in my very humble opinion when considering their lives.

Mark first enters the Debian community which is one of the oldest GNU/Linux distributions and I think to this day he is quite a powerful figure (heck yea he is... Debian -> Canonical -> Ubuntu :D). But the point is when considering Mark's choices as a software developer, I think it's pretty safe to say that he is an admire of KDE who doesn't like Gnome that much.

Why?, well the highest position/authority a person can hold in the world of KDE is called "First Patron" (cool name btw) and like many know, Mark Shuttleworth was named as the first patron of KDE in 2006.

So this brings us to the point that, he seems to be quite fond of KDE. And I find this to be quite natural actually. Because if you want to run a business, there has to be someone in "control". Someone, not necessarily eager to prove himself which is usually a sign of a mind that is drifted towards insecurity and fear, but someone wise and kind (someone willing to bear the humiliation, perhaps). Not talking about Mr. Mark or anyone else here... because I don't know who he or they really are.

But I'm just saying, if you want to "lead others", if you must, then you should have the power to make certain decisions which also require a controlled environment - like a business for instance. You just can't achieve it through "something" that is operated by certain individuals who don't like you much for who you are.

In that sense, if you want to run a business, Gnome is your worst nightmare!, it should be actually. Because that's their/its purpose as far as I understand. To quote...

    "You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul."
    -Mahatma Gandhi (taken from Richard Stallman's personal website).

Then it's quite interesting why Mark Shuttleworth decided to use Gnome as the basic foundation (until this incident came alone of course) of Ubuntu by saying that Ubuntu by default is optimized for Gnome.

Although I will not go into all the details into the conversation that took place between Mark and the Gnome board member Dave Neary but when having a look at one of his blog post that he wrote including the heading, "competition", if you read that post you'll see certain types of words arise again and again.

For instance, "leadership", "competition" and "challenge" + in an interview that took place in 2008 he said that...

'Linux is a platform for people, not just specialists'

Question: Do you think that GNU/Linux will ever become a significant force on the desktop?

MS Answer: "I think that depends on how people define a desktop. If people continue to define a desktop as the thing that they run Microsoft Word on, then Windows will retain its position. My sense, though, is that people are increasingly defining the desktop as the thing that they get access to the internet from. In that case, there's a real possibility that we're able to shift people onto different platforms." 

Dave Neary in his response to some of Mark's criticism sums up Gnome for what it really is by saying that (I urge you to read the full blog post to get the whole idea and I'm pretty sure there are lots of light-minded people in Gnome without a doubt)...

It’s made even more difficult because a number of key contributors in the projects in question have a reputation of being hard to work with. In GNOME we have our share of people who, to use a phrase Jon Corbet uses to describe kernel hackers, are “not always concerned with showing a high degree of politeness”.

The answer lies in the question "Why?" (concerning the both "sides"), which is actually the purpose that I tried to achieve through this humble (a little word to cool things down ;-)) blog post .

I'm not going to say anything about this matter anymore because I've said what I wanted to say and I feel that there should be limitations to the extents that you can criticize others. It's unfair, inhuman. But..

... as a closing note - "Little" conversations like these are like lightnings that arise in the sky at night... they're there for thousandth of a second... yet their light is so bright, makes everything visible, for a moment, at last. Just like that, these little incidents sometimes let you see through the human "conditioning", right to its core.

As Leo Tolstoy famously put it his book, Anna Karenina...

"The struggle for Existence and Hatred is the one thing that holds us together"

The truth interests no one. It's boring, pretty much straightforward and does not serve the purpose of creating happiness in a "world" which is dualistic in its nature. You can be a software engineer, a mathematician, a scientist, a hacker, a leader and so on.

But at the end of the day, when traced back, it's just that... it's just... it's just all about this need to create "that look" on "their" faces. So is that it?, are we nothing but slaves?, I dunno, but I'd fight the heck out of it to find an escape ... wait!, is that pride? shi*, I'm stuck, again ...

The Story Behind Fluendo MP3-Plugin In Ubuntu Installer

When you install Ubuntu, now users are given the chance to "choose" whether they want the non-"free" (non GNU actually) MP3 plugin offered by Fluendo, which enables for various players that use the Gstreamer framework to play proprietary mp3 files. This option is presented to users at the near beginning of the installation process.

This is what it's all about, don't you think?...

But, the check-box is not check-ed by default. Although someone suggested that the box should be enabled by default, which was undone by voting against it in an Ubuntu public meeting which was started by Jono Bacon, who is a Canonical employee and the community manager of Ubuntu explained his reasons by saying that,

In my mind this is not as simple as just changing a default – my take was that if the check-box was ticked by default it would be a definitive change in policy for the Ubuntu project – it would include non-free components by default (even if a user could un-check it to not have this components installed).

I personally like this move by Jono because after observing some of the decisions that took place in recent times concerning Canonical and Gnome, which got most of us worried about Ubuntu's "theme" which says "Linux for Human beings". Although things like this may seem childish to some, such as building an argument over such a small issue but, it's those "small issues" which usually end up being viciously harder to undone in the future if neglected in the present by following apathy, which sometimes seems like the root of all evil, :). 

He also stated that,

Thus we face the classic tale of Freedom vs. Functionality in the Open Source community. How do we deliver a great user experience, but one that maintains our commitment to freedom, particularly in those cases where no free solution exists?

What he says is quite true to which I fully agree, but that's just me. Although I'm not looking down on others, but real free software will always be there only for those who are willing to pay the price at the end. To be honest, this does not sound like real freedom to me, but still it is better than following your insecurity and having negative thoughts/ideas towards life (others) which create disharmony. 

So let's hope that, even though some of the movements from Canonical does contradict or create some skepticism within the GNU Linux community, but still if people like Jono can make their voices be heard, then who knows, we might be able to "save" Ubuntu which seems starting to take a bit different "path" in my opinion. What do you think?.