So near...

Like most people who follow these things, I've been waiting with impatient anticipation for a Linux that's "ready for the desktop".

I'm no Linux guru. I've installed and tried dozens of distributions over the years, and I've worked in environments where Linux servers are doing a lot of the grunt stuff. But as for the heavy-duty command line stuff, well, I can see the attraction, but life's too short. What I've been looking for is an alternative to Windows - on philosophical grounds. Free software, free information, the workers have no nation... you get the idea. I thought openSUSE was getting close, although Novell's purchase and subsequent flirting with Microsoft kind of poured water on my sanctimony. I tried an early version of Ubuntu, too - but it didn't play nicely with my hardware, and I could never get it to print or recognise my sound card.

A full reinstall of my system - a couple of years with XP and it had to be done - along with a nice new 400Gb hard drive meant the time was perfect to get my partitions in order, and leave a bit of space for a Linux installation.

Ubuntu it had to be. All the spin has been that this is the OS for the masses, and hey, the screenshots looked pretty slick.

Install went perfectly. Burn a bootable .iso, and follow the prompts.

Small annoyance. A simple explanation of where it's installing and how this will relate to the Windows partitions is in order. It's not going to cut it if the user doesn't know about partitions, swap space etc.

Not too long to install, and it was up and running. And it looked horrible. Getting the video to match a 1920 x 1200 widescreen meant a driver for an NVidia card. Which is much the same as XP, I guess, but the "protected" driver didn't want to install. I went the long way, and a rather good HowTo helped. When a finally got it working it looked spiffy, and unlike so many distros, it's clean and uncrowded.

Most other things worked. Sound was perfect, and installing a network printer (via a bridge, which sometimes fools XP) took no time (although it didn't auto discover, and I had to guess a few settings as the model of my Brother laser wasn't in the database). Still, once I typed in the IP number (again, this won't wash with a lot of users) it worked a treat.

Getting it on the network was almost easy. It had no problem with my wireless card (unlike XP, which needs a driver loaded) and it identified my network. But would it accept my encryption key and connect? Nope. I had to go to manual configuration, and after a few false starts, I got my internet connection. (It's been rock solid since).

So... a few hours, a few guesses and a bit of prior knowledge and it was getting there.

I started to think about installing a few bits'n'pieces. I thought about going the "download a file, and chase the dependencies tail" route. But Ubuntu have pretty well got this beaten (I suspect I should be crediting Debian). Add or Remove on Windows means playing disks or downloads, and knowing everything new is going to take a few percentage points off performance. Not here. There are thousands of free apps available beyond what's already installed (most of the useful stuff) and the goodly majority work without a problem. This is where Ubuntu starts to really show it's worth.

I had to use a proprietary DVD player (LinDVD) and getting it working involved a bit of terminal work (back to the HowTo) so this isn't going to be popular with new users. Still, once up and running, it worked as well as anything on XP. I could never get my DTV card going. Tried various apps, but it seems the Winfast card just wasn't going to play. I installed my favourite media player - VLC - and it mostly worked, although it's decided to hang now and then. Lots of codec issues with video files, so I'm reserving judgement on this front.

I could see my NTFS drives, and read from them, and file browsing was easy.

I'd pretty well concluded that Ubuntu has got very close. Just a few annoyances here and there, and probably still requiring knowledge beyond the average uninterested-in-the-workings user. But the user experience, once it was all up and going is probably just as easy as XP. And it's got a feel of being clean and simple.

I paused for a bit of reflection at this point. I realised I probably spent less time on the Ubuntu install than I did on the XP. I had to use just one CD-ROM - the original install disk. And (apart from the failures with the DTV card) I'd had to "manually" install one driver.

Then I tried Beryl. It's an experimental desktop system that really tries to be different. Multiple workspaces on the sides of a 3D cube. Flick between them, instead of doing the "minimise-maximise" shuffle. Need to know a few keyboard shortcuts, but the result is just fantastic. I suspect it needs a decent video card, but it really has presented the best alternative to the traditional windowing system pioneered by Amigas (oh yes, possibly Apple) I've come across. It's tempting me to select Linux when I'm booting up - I've never really had that experience before.

I'm editing this blog in Firefox on Ubuntu with Beryl running right now. The pics were edited in The Gimp. Theres a music player going, my email is popping up with new messages occasionally (Thunderbird - with its profile imported from my Windows version) and nothing is crashing or glitching (I'm touching all the timber I can find as I write). It feels like a very nice place to work. Just maybe we've reached a tipping point...

Depth or Decoration?

Having a teaching program brimming with information and communication technologies is almost di rigeur these days. Let's state from the outset that this isn't some Luddite rant. But there's a need for a sceptical look at the depth of use in classrooms. So often teachers let the technology substitute for good classroom interaction. What happens between teachers and students is a complex, special process - most of it based on face-to-face interactions.

And technology is not just about presentation. A PowerPoint can be a great way to teach a concept if used sparingly and intelligently. But it's not a substitute for teaching using more fundamental tools: the voice, the eyes, and reasoning. Form the relationship with the child, then set about using the peripheral tools.

The superficiality of usage by some educators is so often mirrored in the work produced by students. - everything based on presentation. The technology is very good at that, but it's not the same as conceptual depth. So much student work is presented and published in frilly form, and we have to guard against being too impressed by the gadgetry. Blogs, wikis, social-networking sites - they have immense potential, as long as we analyse the content within. Otherwise, it's the equivalent of giving marks to the kid who draws flowers around their full-stops.

Hula Pod

Is the iPod the hula hoop of the 21st Century? I know they're ubiquitous (iPods), but are they more than a cultural icon? Okay, you can listen to music on them, and maybe they have an education role (podcasts). But I'm thinking they're really just a clever Walkman. You wanna walk around with music playing in your ears? Great. You wanna use technology to communicate, educate, extend the mind, work in new ways? Get a computer.