Why I'm not using only Linux

There are many people blogging about whether Linux is ready for desktop use or not, and whether there is any need at all to use Windows. With this short piece I thought I'd list a few of the reasons why I don't use it exclusively.

1. It's not about OS installation, that's as easy as it can be for a lot of distros
   
2. It's not about any perceived difficulty to install software
3. It's not about not knowing what and how to do something

It's instead a lot about speed. A Linux distro is quicker to install and often has a much wider software selection (or you can compile it yourself). However, there is a lot of preparation required! You've got to read up on stuff, make sure things will work on your distro, possibly that all dependencies are satisfied, that supporting software is configured and running and so on and so forth. On Windows you install your software, sometimes you restart, and that's that.

Some say that the package repositories of many distributions are superior to finding and downloading some unknown installer from the net, but I have to say that just looking at the descriptions there it's impossible to know if you want to install a particular app, you will anyway wish to look at a web page with screen shots, documentation, FAQs and so on. From the actual install perspective the repositories are great, but from an information perspective they suck.

In short, with Windows you work less to get things working, with Linux you have more control, but you can spend aeons setting up stuff to work similarly to a Windows desktop if you're not happy with the defaults.

ivtv tuning problem workaround

Since my last post about problems testing if the ivtv drivers really work by finding a signal I have been thinking how to solve the problem. As the wiki states that you should avoid installing anything like mythtv since that might cause problems instead there should really be a way to scan for signals. I finally gave up and rebooted into my Windows XP installation and used "TuningAssistant.exe", which is part of GBPVR. It asks for your country and whether you receive your channels via air or cable of some sort and then scans the whole frequency band. Luckily it also displays the frequencies where signals are found so I wrote down the information and rebooted back to Linux and could then use

ivtv-tune -f196.250
cat /dev/video0 > test.mpg
ctrl-C

and then watch the clip in xine. Yay, I can see!


Now, on to Mythtv!

Media home developments

I have started to play with getting Mythtv to work. I have the intention of setting up my computer (never to be shut off!) running Slackware 11 as a Mythtv backend, and with VMWare to feed my wife's Windows addiction and for testing, possibly I'll have an older Windows installation for games although I aim to use WINE (in some form) at a later date. The latest version of Mythtv supports UPnP streaming so I finally see a potential for a very nice and integrated solution with my current setup.

But first I need to satisfy the Mythtv requirements, for instance getting the ivtv driver to work. But that's not easy!!! Things seem to work, but I only get static and the way to test seems not very conducive to quickly scanning through the frequencies and finding signals... I just don't see what to do, especially since the wiki discourages installing mythtv or other apps to avoid problems and as far as I can see there's no scanning utility in the ivtv package.

I am on a local cable network so the national channels listed by Teracom are probably not quite corresponding to the channels I receive. So how do people do this?!? I tried installing xawtv because you can change channels using the arrow keys, but no signal (and some say xawtv and ivtv don't mix). On Windows I use GBPVR, which includes a scan tool and there's no difficulty at all. I don't even know what I need to know to use the tools to find the channels - and I can't find the info in the wiki. There's a certain step missing and I guess that I need to continue looking, but I do not know what I'm looking for...

Should I go ahead and install Mythtv? Another tool? Can I otherwise check that the ivtv drivers work? I mean, static is not terribly interesting...

GAAAH!

Are people listening

Title leads to an interesting blog entry on Linuxtoday by John Terpstra from October 3rd, claiming that people make the wrong decisions because they don't listen.

Hmm, I think I know what he means, but is the problem really in listening? To be honest, if an expert (or a salesman for that matter) starts talking about all the details in a good solution, also not shying away from things that might go wrong I'd say most people will not have a problem listening, but a problem understanding. What's good about a Linux or any Open Source solution probably goes way over the head of most people because due to lack of understanding, the concepts discussed and their technical advantages and disadvantages compared to some proprietary system are way too fuzzy and intangible.

One big problem for Open Source Software is still that it requires you to acquire quite a lot of knowledge in one way or another to make the correct decisions. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good thing (tm), but it's not what people are used to. In the example cited about a SOX audit:

"He asks the local network manager to configure a particular data file for change tracking so that it will log all file access, all file changes, and to report same with a matching user network logon record. The network manager says he needs time to figure out how to do that."

This was not the answer the auditor was looking for and I believe the network manager should have understood that. He should have said "OK" and solved the problem (now I realize that the auditor might have wanted to have it done while he was standing there, but let's assume he didn't).

You always have to adapt the message to the receiver and the FLOSS community is not quite there yet.

Oh yeah, one other thing

I'm sort of changing the focus of this blog (on a whim of course!) although not by a terrible lot.

I will continue to make this a blog about my little slowly ongoing media home project, but I will also make it a place to rant and rave a bit. What this means is that sometimes topics are quite likely to be off-topic. I have discovered a need to express myself in bursts of annoyance at some issues of today's society so I'll do that now and then. I'm getting older and grumpier so I need a place to vent. I might get another blog name if it takes over too much but I hope not ;-)

"94 bottles of beer on the wall, 94 bottles of beer..." Cheers!

Ok, english might get me some notice...

I'm not in the least bit surprised that my infinitesimally small section of the blogosphere hasn't been noticed that much. My own intentions all along were just that I want to be able to take notes on my media-enabled home project. However, a certain craving has manifested itself, and since the only comments I have are from some sort of "bot" begging me to visit "its" site. So english it is. Actually i find it somewhat easier to think in english when it's related to computers and technology. It's a sad situation and I'd really hate to see the swedish universities stop providing advanced courses in swedish. As an engineer I believe it is extremely important that you are fluent in your own language as it pertians to your field.

But I digress.

I also drink beer, but I snuck away from the corporate party for a while ;-)

Anyway, the Wife Acceptance factor has struck again! I had to give up on only recording video on our main computer and instead return the VCR to its spot under the TV set since I, yours truly, had mistakenly shut off/killed the computer during recording of beautiful wife's important recording for the third time. NB: There were no insurmountable technical difficulties (apart from some streaming issues that I have fixed), just that the solution was not stable enough if I forget about it - I need a dedicated box for this...

So I am currently investigating various chassis for use as a base for building an HTPC. The new miniHFX from german mCubed looks sweet, but we'll see. It's not exactly cheap but it fulfills a major requirement: silence.

Second problem is that video editing is so slow (if I want to get anything else done at all)! I need to set up a bunch of SATA disks in a RAID1+0 (or 0+1) configuration I think - or get a SCSI controller plus disk... Again, not exactly cheap. And if I build an HTPC I might offload this task from my machine so the problem goes away. Decisions, decisions...

Still haven't done my homework to provide a network picture. Soon (tm).

Ta-ta! Oh, btw: Sweden will probably crush England in tonight's game :-O

Organisk förändring

Tänk om man kunde skriva mera, det vore skönt - men det finns ju så mycket att läsa också och dessutom en hel del att göra så skrivandet få ta långa pauser ibland.

Jag har fortfarande inte ritat någon nätverksskiss. Eftersom det är ett hemmanätverk så kan jag ju hålla allt i huvudet, men vad händer om någon anna n ska ta över? T ex om vi säljer huset någon gång, eller om jag ska tipsa någon annan om hur man gör (eller skulle kunna göra) för att bygga sin egen decentraliserade video-, foto- och musikanläggning... Nåja, det kanske kommer...

För två veckor sedan drog jag äntligen en nätverkskabel i kanalen mellan kontoret och proppskåpet och igår kontakterade jag! Nu ska vi se om min lilla NSLU2 är mer med på noterna när det gäller filkopiering . Den verkar nämligen ha ogillat den trådlösa länken mellan skrivbordet och routern i proppskåpet, medan det funkade bra när den var inkopplad på skrivbordets switch. Dessutom kanske mp4 och avi till DSM-320 funkar bättre när man slipper två trådlösa hopp?

Kanske skulle dra nätverkskabel till vardagsrummet också, och avsluta projektet "Gömma kablar i list längs taket" (har väl stått still ett halvår eller så nu...) med att peta upp antennkabeln och dessutom en ethernetkabel så att jag inte behöver använda det trådlösa nätet alls. Det har iofs funkat ganska bra, men vissa problem tror jag beror på det trådlösa nätet.

Har förresten låtit DSM:en uppgradera sig till version 1.07eu, vilket har fått mycket skit i diverse forum, men för mig har det iaf inte funkat mycket sämre än tidigare, något fler konstiga låsningar möjligen, men det kan lika gärna bero på nya versioner av servermjukvara. Tycker fortfarande TVersity är bäst.

Stor nackdel är att Twonky (som jag kör på min NSLU2) inte funkar alls bra, gränssnittet och även filmer och musik "låser" om jag använder den som server. Vet inte om det beror på burken själv eller om det är Twonky som bråkar. Ska väl skaffa ytterligare en NSLU2 för att felsöka...

Långsam förändring och utveckling gör iaf att man aldrig står still :-D