Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Once again it seems this next generation "network computer" may be "ahead of it's time". Maybe not.

I can't help but think when this ultimately works it will be ideal for people like my wife... she's a teacher, not technical, doesn't need much, and what she does need is, or could be, on the web. I am her sys admin, but if the computers worked, she would not need sys admin... and so doing everything over the web including full OS install and update (without the complexity of updating a "real" OS) should be ideal.

This assumes that "unsophisticated" users will be happy with Google Docs (which I really doubt, a lot).  Better choice: buy a Macbook.

What would the non-technical muggles miss in Google Docs? As long as the apps are usable offline (should be - offline storage is in HTML5 & already in Chrome/Safari/Firefox) it should be fine. Whenever a new MS Office release comes around, the usual consensus seems to be that the last relevant release was Office '97 which had everything you need;

Both Mac and Windows are terrible when it comes to software management, somehow neither Apple or MS have understood that; Debian is the most userfriendly OS in that regard - everything just works and upgrades happen w/o hassle. No big Vista -> Win7 or Leopard -> Snow Leopard jumps or anything like that; Debian just evolves gradually.

Actually - Apple's app store comes closest to this model, but El Jobso doesn't seem interested in bringing that to the desktop. Chrome OS & its web app approach is a good model as well - after all: web apps don't need to be upgraded, patched, molly coddled or mended. Chrome OS seems to be locked down pretty well, which hopefully cuts down on viruses as well.

It's annoying that computers require all that hand holding and admin; a solution that cuts down on that can only be good. After all - you don't allocate an hour every week to upgrade your microwave, toaster and TV.

I think it's a matter of platform lockin.  Get all the docs in Google docs instead of MS Office, and Google is in the position Microsoft has been in for a long time--all your base are belong to us.  It'll be an interesting play to see if what most people think of as an open system can turn out to be a trojan horse leading people into a closed system.

Even if it doesn't lead to platform lock, it still encourages people to get all their data where Google can index in.

Everytime we do the podcast with someone using Linux, there are audio issues that have to get cleared up.  There are still driver issues with things like cameras, printers, and various other USB devices.  On Mac and Windows, those things "just work".  And at least on OS X, software upgrades mostly "just work" as well.

I installed Ubuntu on a spare system here.  I answered a question about FTP services wrong, and have yet to find a way to get it working - looks like a full reinstall is the easiest answer.  On another Linux box, Samba just stopped working suddenly, along with the ftp server.  This sort of thing never happens to me with Mac, or even Windows.

We all have war stories about stuff just not working. This happened to me twice: had a computer with Windows on it, both times for about a year ... until it suddenly stopped working. No reason - just said: Sod off user. Best part: on both machines, Windows would never work again on; installs failed no matter what I did. What did work? Linux; both times without a hitch. Basic Debian even, without any fancy hardware recognition;

By now it's a fact that if a machine doesn't work, I whip out my Knoppix CD or DVD, which always manages to boot.

So yeah - my experience with Linux is different. Also: hardware support is getting easier in some way simply because of USB, which does away with so many categories of hardware and makes the rest easier to use (floppy/CD/DVD/ZIP/whatever were all different things - now it's all USB storage, even for new types of devices like MP3 players or cameras).

I do understand what you mean; I'm on a Mac now (18 months now, but I still consider it a trial, ready to go back to Debian any time). The main reason: Suspend to Disk, which does work on many machines, but in some cases it needs work, and I'm too lazy to do that. And while it's fun to just have stuff work on the Mac (mostly because Software & Hardware's from the same guys), I sorely miss my apt-get. Neither port nor fink is a replacement, except for very basic command line tools (git & co). I get by (kinda) by using only cross platform large apps (Eclipse, Firefox,...) which all come with their own update systems & co, but it's such a pain to herd all the smaller tools manually - the Mac way (or Windows way, for that matter) is just so backward. At some point I see myself simply going back to Linux in a VMWare Fusion instance (thus solving the suspend to disk problem), but that'll take two improvements: 3D hardware support for guest OSes (close - I think Parallels has OpenGL support, even for non-Windows guests) and I/O that doesn't completely hose the system (MBP's default 5400 RPM HD and crappy I/O system already makes handling large files a pain, don't even want to think about running every I/O operation via the hypervisor...).

James, your point about sound issues on Linux is completely tangential in the light of ChromeOS.  After all, it is only going to work on a subset of hardware, and in such a scenario they can make sure that drivers and hardware are compatible.

As for your points about Windows and OS X not just glitching out. 

I was a MCSE and I switched to using OS X in 2001.  I wanted to use Linux on a laptop but it was always so much of a struggle.  This year when my PB started to fail, I decided I was going to give Linux another go.  I bought a no-frills Advent laptop, installed Mandriva, and everything just works.  I now run Windows and OS X within Qemu on this laptop.

Linux distributions are more capable than you are giving them credit for.  I would say that Vista is not for the non-technical.  I still have a Vista partition on this laptop, and there are so many simple things that I can't find out how to do - even burning a DVD failed on Vista, but was fine on Mandriva. And bear in mind that I was a MCSE with years of experience in industry.