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Barriers to year of linux on the desktop
Oct 31st
This post is a tribute to Linux Hater who sadly has retired. He was insightful and right about many things, although sometimes a bit too whiny.
Linux currently holds about 1% market share on the desktop. It has gained 0.5% in 2 years, whilst Mac OS X has gained 3%, and MS Windows has lost 4%. In the browser market Firefox is now nudging 20% market share. Can Linux ever achieve that?
A single ‘Year of Linux on the desktop‘ is unlikely, but it’s a popular meme, so lets to play.
It’s some number of years in the future. Ubuntu ‘Satisfied Squirrel’ has built on slow, steady growth. Linux desktop share now nudges 20%. What might this future Linux desktop be like, compared to now?
Honey I hid the dot-files
Oct 6th
Backing up my home folder this weekend, in readiness for the Ubuntu Intrepid beta I spotted some unusual path names scroll by:
~/.local/share/applications
~/.local/share/desktop-directories
~/.local/share/gnome-do
~/.local/share/mime
~/.local/share/Mono Paint
~/.local/share/Trash
~/.local/share/tracker
It turns out that the hidden folders $HOME/.local/, $HOME/.config, and $HOME/.cache are default values, specified by the Freedesktop.org Basedir specification. To override these values one may set some environment varibles:
$XDG_DATA_HOMEfor user specific application data.$XDG_CONFIG_HOMEfor user specific configuration data.$XDG_CACHE_HOMEfor user specfic ‘non-essential’ data.
The BaseDir specification has shades of the Windows user profile file structure, but in a good way. Agreeing on such cross-desktop conventions will solidify Linux as a desktop platform for ISVs, but there’s still a way to go.
Other Freedesktop.org specifications build on BaseDir, for instance the Trash specification. So now Gnome’s trash applet knows where a deleted item should be restored to.
Ubuntu Long Term Support and LugRadio Live
Jul 5th
My first ever LugRadio Live was LRL 2006, which was the perfect opportunity to pickup CDs of the then newly released Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.
My last ever LugRadio Live is LRL 2008, which will be the perfect opportunity to pickup CDs of the now newly released Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS.
See you there, July 19th – 20th.
Power consumption on Linux with the proprietary Nvidia driver
May 13th
By default the proprietary driver for Nvidia cards on Linux fires an interrupt for every frame drawn on screen, whether it needs to or not. This increases power consumption. To avoid this use version 100.14.19 or later of the driver (the nvidia-glx-new package in Ubuntu 8.04 provides 169.12) and set OnDemandVBlankInterrupts to true in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. For example:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "NoLogo" "True"
Option "OnDemandVBlankInterrupts" "True"
EndSection
This will reduce the time your CPU spends on spurious interrupts. Your laptop should run cooler and longer as a result.
The IBM compatible PC, catching the Amiga since 1992
Feb 10th
Around 1992 my second computer was an Amiga 500+, a lovely machine. It beat the pants off any PC at the time, particularly for playing Lemmings. Many Amigas used a television for their display, as a result they could run at a super high interlaced resolution. This looked awful and induced headaches. Interlacing is a fairly good compromise for television shows and movies, it’s terrible for sharp graphics such as a computer desktop.
Nevertheless, in 2008, I’m pleased to say that the latest Linux drivers v169.07 by Nvidia support an interlaced display. These drivers are in Ubuntu Gutsy. This has meant my mythical MythTV computer is finally displaying in HD, at the native resolution of 1920 x 1080 interlaced, aka 1080i. The interlacing causes a shimmering during fade effects or vertical motion, it’s distracting but bearable.
This isn’t the big news though. Intel has released programming manuals for some of it’s graphics chipsets. This means Keith Packard can get some community assistance with the X.org intel driver and that bug 11220 has a better chance of getting fixed.
Update: Dear Intel, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Hello world!
Apr 7th
I begin with evidence that Linux on the desktop is a reality, the bottom feeders have arrived:
Note the operating system, in red. I’m guessing they just query the browser’s user agent, but it still made me do a double take.
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