Linux: no longer a headfuck
When I last tinkered with Linux a few years ago, it
was more of an academic exercise than a realistic
attempt to embrace open source or switch to a new
operating system. On the old G3 I was using at the
time, I couldn’t get the graphics card to output at
anything higher than 1024x768, installation was
courtesy of a slightly terrifying text-only
interface, and Wi-Fi was more a theoretical ideal
than anything that I could actually coax into
operation. (I’m quite sure the res and Wi-Fi were
fixable, but I ran out of patience before I fixed
them.)
Fast forward to now, however, and Things Done Change. A slightly newer 500MHz Power Mac G4 in our study is now dual-booting into Mac OS X and Ubuntu, the Live CD’s installer was a joy, the screen’s at my display’s native res, and it’s connected to my WPA-protected wireless network courtesy of a Broadcom Wi-Fi card fitted in a PCI slot. I’ve even connected to my iDisk – yes, of course I am; it’s just a vanilla WebDAV volume – and am working off that in a rich text editor that puts Word to shame. And all for free.
All this is possible not just because Ubuntu is a very user-friendy distro that has come a long way, but because my knowledge of computers has increased as well. (I had to fetch the Broadcom firmware before my Wi-Fi card would work; ‘Broadcom’ and ‘firmware’ are moderately complex notions, and editing the yaboot.conf file to define the default boot OS is something many would balk at, so it’s not mass market yet.)
But – and excuse me as I saddle up my hobby horse – technology these days doesn’t have to get simpler for it to have mass-market appeal. It’s like has happened with me and Linux: where a downward-curving ‘complexity’ line meets an upward-curving ‘ability’ line lies the point at which technology and humans get along. ‘Win’, in other words. We no longer have to make technology simple enough for those who in the 80s were famously unable to programme a VCR. Sure, it’s nice to have simplicity and intuitiveness as a target – and Mac OS X gets this right better than any Windows or Linux flavour that I’ve used – but the great thing is that for people of my generation and for those coming up behind us, the language of computing is so instinctual and ingrained that a smidge of complexity doesn’t panic us.
Fast forward to now, however, and Things Done Change. A slightly newer 500MHz Power Mac G4 in our study is now dual-booting into Mac OS X and Ubuntu, the Live CD’s installer was a joy, the screen’s at my display’s native res, and it’s connected to my WPA-protected wireless network courtesy of a Broadcom Wi-Fi card fitted in a PCI slot. I’ve even connected to my iDisk – yes, of course I am; it’s just a vanilla WebDAV volume – and am working off that in a rich text editor that puts Word to shame. And all for free.
All this is possible not just because Ubuntu is a very user-friendy distro that has come a long way, but because my knowledge of computers has increased as well. (I had to fetch the Broadcom firmware before my Wi-Fi card would work; ‘Broadcom’ and ‘firmware’ are moderately complex notions, and editing the yaboot.conf file to define the default boot OS is something many would balk at, so it’s not mass market yet.)
But – and excuse me as I saddle up my hobby horse – technology these days doesn’t have to get simpler for it to have mass-market appeal. It’s like has happened with me and Linux: where a downward-curving ‘complexity’ line meets an upward-curving ‘ability’ line lies the point at which technology and humans get along. ‘Win’, in other words. We no longer have to make technology simple enough for those who in the 80s were famously unable to programme a VCR. Sure, it’s nice to have simplicity and intuitiveness as a target – and Mac OS X gets this right better than any Windows or Linux flavour that I’ve used – but the great thing is that for people of my generation and for those coming up behind us, the language of computing is so instinctual and ingrained that a smidge of complexity doesn’t panic us.
