I’m sort of tired of the question whether or not Linux is ready for the desktop or if it is grandma suitable. Maybe it is because Management and I have been using it with no exceptions for the last 4 years that I am a bit touchy on the subject but the question is silly and the often the responses more so. Think of it, would you ask if OSX is ready for the home user? Is Microsoft ready for the enterprise? No, you likely wouldn’t unless you are being snarky.
Case and point. My mother-in-law wanted a laptop for her birthday. She is running Windows XP on an aging HP desktop and wanted an OS that is secure and easy to use as well as a laptop that is well made and affordable. My recommendation? Go with ZaReason (she got a LightLapSR and now, after playing with it, Management wants one for herself).
Yes, I know I keep beating the drum for this builder but they build a great machine and have an excellent support team but more importantly, their machines “just work” and with all the peripherals she has collected over the years. From printers, scanners, to cameras, and iPods she is not left out in the dark with any of those devices. She was able to flip open the laptop, register herself as a user, sign onto her network, and check her mail in less time than it takes to make a cup of tea.
My mother-in-law is not a technocrat. It has taken her years to get comfortable with her XP machine but only comfortable in the sense that she has a passing familiarity with the way things are done on it. A couple of minutes after getting set up she found Mahjongg and was busy collecting tiles. She is much like 90% of the users out there. They want to surf the Internet, check their email, watch movies, manage photos and music, and maybe play a couple of hands of solitaire. Linux can do all of that and more.
Bottom line, Linux is ready for the desktop and ZaReason is mother-in-law approved.
This is one of those posts that has been tickling the back of my head for sometime and I have essentially avoided it up until now–mostly at the prodding of Tyler. Since I am epically lazy–notice how the bulk of my posts in the past year have been photos? Yeah, I’m to lazy to string letters into words and then into sentences. Complete thoughts? Pffffft–I’ll be presenting this as a list.
Love It
- Voice is a service–unlike my past phones voice on this one is just another part of the service mix.
- Internet scaled for your hand–best mobile browsing experience I have ever had.
- Email whenever, where ever–be it the mail application (which could use some feature love) or the sublimely designed Gmail for iPhones I can quickly retrieve and respond to messages
- No keypad–I love the touch pad and how it learns alternate spellings and will offer them up as you type making the process fast and efficient.
- Wi-Fi–Sure other phones have it but the stumble feature works great.
Hate It
- Crippled bluetooth–Great, I can hook up a headset but no file transfers or even laptop tethering. That sucks, Apple.
- iTunes–Yeah, I know. I bought a something from Captain Product Lockdown and I am bitching about having to use proprietary software but seriously, if Amazon can offer a DLM for their music store why the hell can’t Apple port iTunes to Linux? It is a real cramp in my ass to have my phone decoupled from the rest of my computing existence. As for jail breaking, it is not an option because I cannot afford the remote chance of bricking it as this is my primary tether to my job.
- Rebooting–Like a Windows box, Management and I are finding we need to reboot our phones on a regular basis to keep the touch pad and Safari gremlins at bay. Methinks they need to take a look at memory leaks on the device.
- No multimedia SMS–Seriously. WTF. Almost as stupid as breaking the legs off Bluetooth.
Bottom Line
The shine has worn off and my infatuation has mellowed into affectionate ambivalence. The iPhone has changed how I view cellphones and voice services in general. The device truly is a hand sized computer, allowing you to do many of the things you would on a laptop and it represents a paradigm shift: data is data is data. That said, it doesn’t blend well with a computing life off of either Apple or Windows. The inability to backup the device and sync content to it from my laptop handicaps the device enough that I will be seriously looking at what the Android based handsets will be offering this fall.
I could easily mark this as the worst morning in as far back as I can remember. Without the first cup of coffee I sat down to scan our servers like I do everyday, just looking for anything out of the ordinary, like services that failed to run. For the most part it is a ten minute job that rarely varies day to day. This morning was an exception.
Nearly every nightly job failed. Worse than that there was an hour and ten minute hole in the logs, 0155 to 0305 was completely unaccounted. I scanned every log from authentication to our application logs and every single one of them showed this hole but checking our external monitoring service showed that we had zero downtime. What the hell happened?
A cold hand of desperation and fear gripped my stomach leaving me dizzy. I ran chkrootkit but came up clean so I mentally prepared myself to rebuild the server and possibly be eviscerated by my bosses. How would I explain this? How could I protect us from it happening again, that is if I still have my job?
Sitting helpless I realized, “Spring Ahead”.
Read some great news over on The Debian User last night:
Why not offer computers, pre-built with Linux, to the people I like, or to their friends and families? I’m not a great coder, but as a former sysadmin I know my way around hard- and software enough to set up solid systems. So if these people (Debian Developers and such) provide all that great software, I could at least offer them some hardware, right?
Going that way with ZaReason was only the next logical step. Why re-invent the wheel, or try to set up competition, when there could be co-operation?
After months of hard work Wolfgang has launched a EU branch of ZaReason something that makes this happy ZaReason user just plain giddy. Congratulations and best of luck!
In my personal life I am incredibly lazy and often don’t et around to things unless need is so pressing that it should have been done yesterday. Case and point being recording support on my BigLap and the continuing mockery that I suffer for it not working and the fact that I lost my Bluetooth headset thus rendering Skype useless to me. So after some quick research I found the solution on the Ubuntu forms thanks to dejitarob.
james@elwoodicious:~$ sudo alsactl names
james@elwoodicious:~$ sudo alsactl store
james@elwoodicious:~$ alsamixer
The catch here was that the input sources needed to be pointed at Front Mic and Mic.
james@elwoodicious:~$ sudo alsactl store
That’s it. Skype works, Sound Recording works, Ekiga…Doesn’t. Not sure why Ekiga doesn’t but that’s a puzzle for another day. Well, it does after a reboot. Go figure.
It has been about three months since I purchased my BigLap and started a new job that sees me working like a gypsy floating from place to place as long as it has wireless Internet. My laptop goes everywhere slung on my back and has worked perched on a knee at conferences, sticky tables at cafes, late nights in hotel rooms, and at my parent’s dining room table while my daughter tugs at my sleeve. It feels as necessary as my wallet and keys and I feel a little naked if it isn’t on me.
So how has it performed? Unbelievably. I’ve owned a number of laptops from Toshiba, Dell, and Sony and out of all of them this has been the best build quality and features for the price.
- Battery life is solid
- Light for being a 17″
- Screen hinges are stiff
- Keyboard responsive and quiet
- Rugged design
Tech support from ZaReason has been equally great with quick response times with a genuinely conversational and friendly tone. They have worked hard to make sure that as much of the hardware is operational with the shipping version of Ubuntu. The built in webcam is the only piece that has given me problems in that the image displayed is upside down and cannot seem to be flipped but that is more a problem with the device and the driver.
segue/
After actually putting five minutes of work into researching the solution it is now fixed…
Gratefully cribbed from 0graham0’s post over at Ubuntu forums…
sudo mkdir /etc/camdriver
Download the driver from Sourceforge extract it and run the following…
sudo make
sudo modprobe videodev
sudo modprobe v4l1-compat
sudo insmod stk11xx.ko vflip=1
Add the following to /etc/modules
videodev
v4l1-compat
and to /etc/rc.local
insmod /etc/camdriver/stk11xx.ko vflip=1
Viola!
/segue
The great thing about ZaReason though is that they never dropped the issue and had emailed me possible solutions and are very receptive if you happen to stumble on one of your own and that level of service is what makes the company so great.
Bottom line: I love this laptop and I really love this company.
