A
Ablang
December 29th, 2004
Free Agent: Getting Better All the Time
Editorial Applications Devel. Mgr. Matthew Newton
One of the Gnome desktop's biggest weaknesses is the lack of a serious
CD burning application. Yes, there is a rudimentary-yet-elegant
burning function built right into Nautilus, the Gnome file manager:
Simply open up the CD Creator system folder, dump into it whatever
files and folders you want to burn, select File, Write to Disc, and
soon you have a brand-spankin'-new data CD. But if you want to burn a
bunch of MP3 files to an audio disc, or duplicate an existing data or
audio CD, you're out of luck. (Of course, Microsoft Windows can't do
these things out of the box, either.)
Linux users have had only one option when it comes to a GUI-based CD
burning tool: K3b, which is built for the KDE desktop:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/601437/0/
There's nothing wrong with running a KDE app if you're a Gnome user.
It'll start right up and behave just fine. But you may have to wait a
bit before its window pops up, as the system has to initialize all
sorts of KDE system components first. Further, KDE apps may look a bit
out of place on your Gnome desktop, especially if your distribution
doesn't have a visual theme shared by both the Gnome and KDE desktops.
So, though K3b gets the job done, I've been waiting for a native Gnome
app to handle all my burning needs. One candidate, the Coaster
project, has been in the works for a long time, and recently made its
first few public releases:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967983/0/
I played around with version 0.1.3 while working on this column, and
I'm here to report that it's far too early to tell whether Coaster is
the tool I've been waiting for. At this stage, the interface is nice
and clean, but support for burning audio discs has yet to be
implemented.
There's reason to think that will be the case: competition. I assume
that Graveman, a new offering from a hacker in France, has nothing to
do with burial or the undead, but rather takes its name from the
French verb for burning a disc, graver:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967984/0/
In any event, when I downloaded version 0.1, I was surprised to see an
elegant interface offering me the choice of burning a music disc,
burning a data disc, or performing a straightforward disc-to-disc
copy.
If Coaster doesn't kick into high gear in 2005, I fully expect to see
Graveman showing up on new Linux distributions to fill Gnome's CD
burning gap, because the sucker Just Works. And that's what we want,
right?
At Long Last: Painless Wireless?
It's been more than a year since I chronicled my travails in getting
Wi-Fi to work on my trusty Thinkpad:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967985/0/
Not much has changed. If I am at home, the machine connects quickly
and effortlessly to my home network, whose parameters (network name,
WEP encryption key) are stored in the wireless configuration for
Mandrakelinux 10.1, which I'm now running.
But when I'm elsewhere, trying to connect to an open wireless network,
the Gnome desktop falls short. I have to open a terminal window,
disassociate from any existing network, and enter lines and lines of
code at the command line to turn off WEP, scan for the public network,
and finally connect to the network and grab an IP address. That's
hardly the epitome of user friendliness. I don't need a computer that
holds my hand every step of the way, but I also have no desire to mess
around with the command line for something as simple (from an end-user
perspective, anyway) as connecting to a wireless network. I'm guessing
you feel the same way.
So when Novell was here at PC World HQ to show off Novell Linux
Desktop 9, I was intrigued by an applet running in the demo machine's
Gnome panel. A right-click on this applet showed all available
wireless networks and their signal strengths. Selecting any listed
network made the machine connect to that network. I was salivating; I
wanted that applet right away. I asked the Novell reps where it came
from. They told me that it was a custom bit of work by the coders at
Novell, and that, in due time, the code would flow back to the wider
Gnome project.
It turns out that wasn't true. The applet I saw is known as
NetworkManager, and it's actually a clever bit of work spearheaded by
a coder at Red Hat:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967986/0/
Novell Linux Desktop just seems to be the first distribution to ship
with NetworkManager included. (To be fair, I don't think the Novell
guys deliberately misled me: They also seem confused about which
publication I work for. I received a package from them this morning
that was addressed to Matthew Newton at PC Magazine.)
Ultimately, it doesn't matter where the applet comes from as long as I
can run it, right? Aye, but there's the rub: I can't get
NetworkManager running on my Mandrake 10.1-laden Thinkpad.
Toto, We Don't Have Setup.exe Anymore...
Most Free Software is crafted in the time-honored fashion of standing
on the shoulders of giants. Your typical Linux system comes with
hundreds and hundreds of code libraries on it--shared code that can
perform all sorts of low-level functions. You name it, and there's a
system component hanging out on your hard drive that can do it.
So if you're a Free Software hacker and you want to build an app like
Graveman or NetworkManager, you begin by finding out what the system
already knows how to do. In the case of Graveman, author Sylvain
Cresto began by working with components on his system that know how to
do things like read MP3 files, burn data to a CD, and more. To grossly
oversimplify for just a moment: The work involved in building Graveman
is to a large degree all about getting existing system components to
play nice with each other and with a newly crafted, attractive
interface.
When I downloaded Graveman, it came in the form of source code.
Cutting-edge versions of most Free Software are distributed this way.
After you download the code, you compile it, and then you install it.
During the compilation process, the compiler hunts down all the system
components that the new application will need in order to get its work
done. If a given component is missing, or isn't the
latest-and-greatest version required by the app you're trying to
compile, then the compilation will fail.
When this happens, you have a choice to make: Either track down and
install the needed component, or give up. Sometimes installing the
necessary component will require another download-and-compile
procedure, which may itself reveal another missing (or antiquated)
system component. If this sounds like a potential snowball effect,
then I've explained it adequately.
Consigned to Dependency Hell
The situation I just described is what longtime Linux users refer to
as "dependency hell"--and it's dependency hell that keeps me from
enjoying NetworkManager on my Mandrake machine. In my particular case,
attempting to compile NetworkManager generates an error message saying
my copy of the "wireless-tools" system component is too old. However,
the version I've got installed is the one supposedly required by
NetworkManager. I banged my head against that wall, trying various
bits of trickery I've learned during my six years with Linux, for a
couple of hours before finally (sigh) giving up.
I have two options. First, I can wait, hoping that some kind soul with
far more geek credentials than I will figure out how to make
NetworkManager compile on Mandrake. At that point, said kind soul may
make a binary (that is, precompiled) NetworkManager package available
for Mandrake. This sort of thing happens all the time: I am running
Gnome 2.8 on my Mandrake 10.1 machine thanks to the hard work of
another kind soul who posted some carefully crafted binary packages.
(Mandrake 10.1 comes with Gnome 2.6, not Gnome 2.8.) My second option
is to wait for Mandrake 10.2, lobbying Mandrake in the meanwhile to
include NetworkManager in that release.
Sure, there's a third option: I could spend a whole weekend getting
NetworkManager to work. I might very well meet with success. But there
are too many better things to do with a weekend.
This Beagle Can Fetch
Some folks say that Free Software is perennially in catch-up mode, and
that it takes the profit motive that's inherent in the commercial
model of software distribution to generate actual innovation. When you
take a look at the Gnome desktop, you see some signs of this alleged
weakness, with CD burning and wireless handling being just two
examples of missing pieces that ought to be there by now.
Elsewhere in the Free Software universe, however, innovation blossoms.
Consider, for example, the Firefox browser from Mozilla, the first
innovative Web browser of the 21st century:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967417/0/
There has been a lot in the tech press lately about desktop search,
what with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo releasing apps that live on
your machine and help you locate your own precious data.
In this context, it is gratifying to see the Free Software community
produce a tool as promising as Beagle, the forthcoming desktop search
tool for the Gnome desktop:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967987/0/
Enter a search term, and Beagle combs through your e-mail, your
documents, your instant message history, your media library, and more,
looking for related information. I wish I had Beagle running on my
machine today, but I smile to note that I am likely to see Beagle ship
as part of my Linux distribution of choice long before my friends
running Windows see any analogous tool built in to their own operating
system.
Catching up? In some respects, yes. But in other respects, my Gnome
desktop is every bit as cutting-edge as anything else I could install
on my Thinkpad. And it's getting better all the time.
Have a question or comment? Write to Matthew Newton:
freeagent*pcworld.com
Read Matthew Newton's regularly published "Free Agent" columns:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/239109/0/
===
"You can easily judge the character of a man by the way he treats those who can do nothing for him."
-- Goethe
Free Agent: Getting Better All the Time
Editorial Applications Devel. Mgr. Matthew Newton
One of the Gnome desktop's biggest weaknesses is the lack of a serious
CD burning application. Yes, there is a rudimentary-yet-elegant
burning function built right into Nautilus, the Gnome file manager:
Simply open up the CD Creator system folder, dump into it whatever
files and folders you want to burn, select File, Write to Disc, and
soon you have a brand-spankin'-new data CD. But if you want to burn a
bunch of MP3 files to an audio disc, or duplicate an existing data or
audio CD, you're out of luck. (Of course, Microsoft Windows can't do
these things out of the box, either.)
Linux users have had only one option when it comes to a GUI-based CD
burning tool: K3b, which is built for the KDE desktop:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/601437/0/
There's nothing wrong with running a KDE app if you're a Gnome user.
It'll start right up and behave just fine. But you may have to wait a
bit before its window pops up, as the system has to initialize all
sorts of KDE system components first. Further, KDE apps may look a bit
out of place on your Gnome desktop, especially if your distribution
doesn't have a visual theme shared by both the Gnome and KDE desktops.
So, though K3b gets the job done, I've been waiting for a native Gnome
app to handle all my burning needs. One candidate, the Coaster
project, has been in the works for a long time, and recently made its
first few public releases:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967983/0/
I played around with version 0.1.3 while working on this column, and
I'm here to report that it's far too early to tell whether Coaster is
the tool I've been waiting for. At this stage, the interface is nice
and clean, but support for burning audio discs has yet to be
implemented.
There's reason to think that will be the case: competition. I assume
that Graveman, a new offering from a hacker in France, has nothing to
do with burial or the undead, but rather takes its name from the
French verb for burning a disc, graver:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967984/0/
In any event, when I downloaded version 0.1, I was surprised to see an
elegant interface offering me the choice of burning a music disc,
burning a data disc, or performing a straightforward disc-to-disc
copy.
If Coaster doesn't kick into high gear in 2005, I fully expect to see
Graveman showing up on new Linux distributions to fill Gnome's CD
burning gap, because the sucker Just Works. And that's what we want,
right?
At Long Last: Painless Wireless?
It's been more than a year since I chronicled my travails in getting
Wi-Fi to work on my trusty Thinkpad:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967985/0/
Not much has changed. If I am at home, the machine connects quickly
and effortlessly to my home network, whose parameters (network name,
WEP encryption key) are stored in the wireless configuration for
Mandrakelinux 10.1, which I'm now running.
But when I'm elsewhere, trying to connect to an open wireless network,
the Gnome desktop falls short. I have to open a terminal window,
disassociate from any existing network, and enter lines and lines of
code at the command line to turn off WEP, scan for the public network,
and finally connect to the network and grab an IP address. That's
hardly the epitome of user friendliness. I don't need a computer that
holds my hand every step of the way, but I also have no desire to mess
around with the command line for something as simple (from an end-user
perspective, anyway) as connecting to a wireless network. I'm guessing
you feel the same way.
So when Novell was here at PC World HQ to show off Novell Linux
Desktop 9, I was intrigued by an applet running in the demo machine's
Gnome panel. A right-click on this applet showed all available
wireless networks and their signal strengths. Selecting any listed
network made the machine connect to that network. I was salivating; I
wanted that applet right away. I asked the Novell reps where it came
from. They told me that it was a custom bit of work by the coders at
Novell, and that, in due time, the code would flow back to the wider
Gnome project.
It turns out that wasn't true. The applet I saw is known as
NetworkManager, and it's actually a clever bit of work spearheaded by
a coder at Red Hat:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967986/0/
Novell Linux Desktop just seems to be the first distribution to ship
with NetworkManager included. (To be fair, I don't think the Novell
guys deliberately misled me: They also seem confused about which
publication I work for. I received a package from them this morning
that was addressed to Matthew Newton at PC Magazine.)
Ultimately, it doesn't matter where the applet comes from as long as I
can run it, right? Aye, but there's the rub: I can't get
NetworkManager running on my Mandrake 10.1-laden Thinkpad.
Toto, We Don't Have Setup.exe Anymore...
Most Free Software is crafted in the time-honored fashion of standing
on the shoulders of giants. Your typical Linux system comes with
hundreds and hundreds of code libraries on it--shared code that can
perform all sorts of low-level functions. You name it, and there's a
system component hanging out on your hard drive that can do it.
So if you're a Free Software hacker and you want to build an app like
Graveman or NetworkManager, you begin by finding out what the system
already knows how to do. In the case of Graveman, author Sylvain
Cresto began by working with components on his system that know how to
do things like read MP3 files, burn data to a CD, and more. To grossly
oversimplify for just a moment: The work involved in building Graveman
is to a large degree all about getting existing system components to
play nice with each other and with a newly crafted, attractive
interface.
When I downloaded Graveman, it came in the form of source code.
Cutting-edge versions of most Free Software are distributed this way.
After you download the code, you compile it, and then you install it.
During the compilation process, the compiler hunts down all the system
components that the new application will need in order to get its work
done. If a given component is missing, or isn't the
latest-and-greatest version required by the app you're trying to
compile, then the compilation will fail.
When this happens, you have a choice to make: Either track down and
install the needed component, or give up. Sometimes installing the
necessary component will require another download-and-compile
procedure, which may itself reveal another missing (or antiquated)
system component. If this sounds like a potential snowball effect,
then I've explained it adequately.
Consigned to Dependency Hell
The situation I just described is what longtime Linux users refer to
as "dependency hell"--and it's dependency hell that keeps me from
enjoying NetworkManager on my Mandrake machine. In my particular case,
attempting to compile NetworkManager generates an error message saying
my copy of the "wireless-tools" system component is too old. However,
the version I've got installed is the one supposedly required by
NetworkManager. I banged my head against that wall, trying various
bits of trickery I've learned during my six years with Linux, for a
couple of hours before finally (sigh) giving up.
I have two options. First, I can wait, hoping that some kind soul with
far more geek credentials than I will figure out how to make
NetworkManager compile on Mandrake. At that point, said kind soul may
make a binary (that is, precompiled) NetworkManager package available
for Mandrake. This sort of thing happens all the time: I am running
Gnome 2.8 on my Mandrake 10.1 machine thanks to the hard work of
another kind soul who posted some carefully crafted binary packages.
(Mandrake 10.1 comes with Gnome 2.6, not Gnome 2.8.) My second option
is to wait for Mandrake 10.2, lobbying Mandrake in the meanwhile to
include NetworkManager in that release.
Sure, there's a third option: I could spend a whole weekend getting
NetworkManager to work. I might very well meet with success. But there
are too many better things to do with a weekend.
This Beagle Can Fetch
Some folks say that Free Software is perennially in catch-up mode, and
that it takes the profit motive that's inherent in the commercial
model of software distribution to generate actual innovation. When you
take a look at the Gnome desktop, you see some signs of this alleged
weakness, with CD burning and wireless handling being just two
examples of missing pieces that ought to be there by now.
Elsewhere in the Free Software universe, however, innovation blossoms.
Consider, for example, the Firefox browser from Mozilla, the first
innovative Web browser of the 21st century:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967417/0/
There has been a lot in the tech press lately about desktop search,
what with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo releasing apps that live on
your machine and help you locate your own precious data.
In this context, it is gratifying to see the Free Software community
produce a tool as promising as Beagle, the forthcoming desktop search
tool for the Gnome desktop:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/967987/0/
Enter a search term, and Beagle combs through your e-mail, your
documents, your instant message history, your media library, and more,
looking for related information. I wish I had Beagle running on my
machine today, but I smile to note that I am likely to see Beagle ship
as part of my Linux distribution of choice long before my friends
running Windows see any analogous tool built in to their own operating
system.
Catching up? In some respects, yes. But in other respects, my Gnome
desktop is every bit as cutting-edge as anything else I could install
on my Thinkpad. And it's getting better all the time.
Have a question or comment? Write to Matthew Newton:
freeagent*pcworld.com
Read Matthew Newton's regularly published "Free Agent" columns:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/331949/15377829/239109/0/
===
"You can easily judge the character of a man by the way he treats those who can do nothing for him."
-- Goethe