Linux Lost the Netbook War

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The only netbook running Linux on Amazon's Top 25 Netbooks list is the EEE 901, sitting at #19. The war is over, folks.

Why did Linux lose? There are four big factors:

1. Migration: Netbooks have quickly moved from their intended purpose (appliances) into extremely low-cost notebooks. Screens went from 7" to 10". SSDs became HDs. 256 - 512MB RAM became 1GB. Prices went from $199 to $500. People expect all the same functionality from these new machines as they do of their normal notebooks, and that requires Windows software. XP wins through the network effect.
2. Poor promotion: Linux netbooks were never promoted in stores or evenly reviewed by tech journals. Those located in stores were always the "cheap" option with lower spec'ed hardware. Salespeople didn't understand how to promote the Linux systems. Reviewers tended to ding the Linux models for not having XP. XP wins through a premium image.
3. Poor education: Consumers often weren't aware that what they were buying wasn't a notebook and wasn't intended to run random software. They went home, opened the box, and were unpleasantly surprised. XP wins due to ubiquity.
   
4. Poor OEMing: OEMs didn't do their job -- they supplied machines which weren't completely functional out of the box. They didn't tune. They didn't test. They sold machines without wireless drivers. There were sleep/resume issues. The distributions provided were crippled. All of these things would have been easy to fix (and they were in the XP models), but the Linux models got little to no engineering effort. The only Linux models still selling well are Asus EEEs. Asus put a lot of effort into their custom distro. Win XP wins through adequate engineering from the OEMs.
   

I said that Windows 7 will kill Linux on the netbook. Win7 will be too late to do any more damage and Linux will continue to sell 5-10%. Android and ARM netbooks still hold promise, but the chances are slim.

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Help YouTube Install Flash Properly

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Most users run to YouTube first to check their Flash capability, and they are told that Flash isn't working for them. YouTube helpfully offers a download from the Adobe site, but this doesn't help many new users.

This problem occurs because YouTube uses Javascript to detect the Flash version. Other sites not using Javascript and containing Flash videos trigger the plug-in finder.

Solution #1: Ask Adobe for help
Ask Adobe to place an apt:adobe-flashplugin link on the download page that YouTube links to. Make sure that this link is clearly for Ubuntu users.

The user will click the link and Flash will be installed from the repositories.

Solution #2: Re-write the YouTube link to be an apt: link.
We could use Greasemonkey and a userscript to rewrite the link to Adobe into an apt: link installing the software. This would require Greasemonkey to be installed by default. There could be space and security ramifications.

How to Create a "Drive-by" Download for Ubuntu

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In Pwn2Own trifecta: Hacker exploits IE8, Firefox, Safari, it's obvious that the browser situation is pretty bad. Mac with Safari fell first with the first contestant, but the contestant order was by luck of the draw, meaning that any of the exploited browsers (that's all of them, by the way) could have been first to go. Ubuntu never fell, but that's mostly because it wasn't in the competition. The P2O discussion gets a lot of people stating that Linux (generally Ubuntu) is too well designed to be pwned this way. I say rubbish.

While getting a straight "drive-by" download going for a Linux distro would be difficult, if you include a little social engineering, it becomes quite easy.

Necessary ingredients:
1) Functionality the user want (e.g. porn viewing directly in Totem via a plugin)
2) A browser vuln giving you the ability to run a local command. Firefox has a few.
3) A distribution which uses gksudo to elevate permissions with a time-out policy. Ubuntu will work fine.

Process
1) Create a HowTo page or spam e-mail.
2) Ask the use to install software which is likely not installed -- totem-xine for example. If you use and apt: link, it will help. These are from the repos and are absolutely safe, and everyone knows it.
3) Break to second page (via link) with the browser exploit running gksudo and whatever command you need. It will not time out (using the gksudo token from the totem-xine install) and will elevate privileges automatically.
4) If your "Porn viewer" really works, you'll get plenty of traffic and plenty of bots. Make it really work.
5) Almost no one will ever know that they are owned because few run anti-virus or rootkit detection, and they didn't install anything outside of the repositories.

Not too difficult. Or you can take the more direct approach -- package your exploit in a .deb file with your porn viewer. The user downloads, double-clicks, and installs your malware.

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IBM and Sun -- Win - Win?

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The Wall Stree Journal reports that IBM is planning to buy Sun, maybe even inking the deal this week. Sun reportedly wants a buyer, and IBM makes sense. Why?

Sun is a company which has recently transitioned to an open source business model, but they haven't quite figured out how to make it work yet. Java, MySQL, and a good part of Solaris are OSS now. Then of course there's OpenOffice.org and VirtualBox. People knowledgeable about Sun have talked about the struggle inside the company over OSS, with the public face seeming to waffle over what it wants and where it needs to go. It hasn't quite figured OSS out as a business model.

Then there's the hardware side. SPARC and the server line have seen a recent refresh, and enterprise geeks have been drooling over them. Does IBM really need more hardware in its line-up?

In contrast to Sun, IBM is a business that understands open source. It has been selling services on several competing OSS operating systems since 2000. It makes billions every year with OSS. Acquiring Sun will give Java (which IBM already has a competing implementation of), Solaris, and the other offerings direction. IBM will figure out how to play this software to profit.

Good luck on the merger guys. It sounds like a win-win situation.

Dana Gardner has a nice article explaing why the purchase makes no sense.

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Portable Apps Suite and Wine

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This month I'm running between 33 different classrooms with what seems like 33 different Windows XP setups, all in Korean. Getting around the mess is hard, so I've long depended on Portable Firefox to help me out. I installed it long before FF3 was out and have lived with FF2 because I didn't want to borrow someone's computer to get it up and running.

When I finally decided to upgrade, I though "Hey, why don't I just go whole hog and install the whole suite?" so I downloaded it and was ready to find an unused Windows machine when I realized that Wine might work for the install. After all, I have pretty good luck with installation in Wine, even if the program itself doesn't work. Sure enough, the portable apps suite installed fine (though it took almost ten minutes for the file copy) using Wine 1.1.17, and I was left with the question of whether the suite was installed properly or not.

Why not test in Wine? I left the "Launch Portable Apps" box checked and there in my notification area was the PA menu. Firefox worked, and I logged into my Google Apps and Zoho accounts, saved the passwords, and set my home page. Cool Player +? Sounds great. OO.o3? Works as slowly as ever. Sudoku? Fine. In fact, it all appeared to work.

What can I say but "Cool beans?"

An anectdote about the Portable Apps suite: I installed it a couple of days ago for another teacher who is sharing my material on Google Apps, and she had a Toshiba USB device already plugged in. When I taught her how to use PA by plugging the USB key in another computer, some Toshiba software came up, which she promptly closed. Later, when it came up again and she was slower closing it, it turned out to be a Toshiba-skinned portable apps suite with no apps installed and a wizard to install Firefox, OO.o, and the others. I guess PA is hitting its stride and being pre-installed in some USB keys. Note: After some investigation, this is probably be a branded U3 installation.

Gnome Replaces Nautilus-CD-Burner With Brasero and RIP Rhythmbox

Gnome 2.26 will officially accept Brasero into the desktop and fully deprecate Gnome-CD-Burner. While I personally have preferred the simplicity of Nautilus over a dedicated burner, it's nice to see Gnome responding to user desires.

It's interesting that almost all of the functionality of Brasero could already be had from Nautilus (to burn data CDs and images), Rhythmbox (to burn audio CDs) and Totem (using the VCD/DVD burner plugin). Burning a CD from the media's application always made more sense to me.

On another note, Rhythmbox will see a 0.12 release, after which active development will cease, Jonathan Matthew feeling that the code base is too much of a dead end. This doesn't mean that it will be replaced as the default music application anytime soon, but the news could cause some distros to move toward Banshee or Exaile. There was much gnashing of teeth over at the Ubuntu Forums.

Any thoughts?

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Knoppix Kicks KDE to the Kurb, Loves LXDE Lately!

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Knoppix has always used KDE. Shockingly, that has changed recently according to Download Squad and Linux Magazine. LXDE is now the choice for the father of Live CDs and prominent Debian prodigy.

Download Squad says:

Lat[sic] month Knoppix 6.0 was released, and it's even faster and prettier than earlier versions. But it's still designed to run well on older and slower computers. Among the changes in version 6.0 is the switch from the KDE desktop environment to the LXDE graphical environment. LXDE is light weight and loads quickly, but it's capable of offering all sorts of visual candy including Compiz desktop effects.

Knoppix 6.0 also boots twice as fast as Knoppix 5, and comes with fewer applications preloaded, which helps keep the size down. While the main disk image weighs in at 645MB, it can be remastered to use 256MB or less.

You can also now save your settings after shutting down the system by creatng a persisent boot image.

LXDE is an awesome new DE that I use for all my old Win2000-era laptops. It runs great in 128MB RAM with Debian or Ubuntu as the base so there's no surprise when Linux magazine says about Knoppix on netbooks:

Knoppix has always been regarded as one of the most versatile Linux distros out there, but the latest version of the venerable Live CD Linux distribution has got yet another trick up its sleeve. Thanks to its excellent hardware detection, blazingly fast boot process, and the lightweight LXDE desktop environment, Knoppix 6.0 makes a perfect distro for netbooks. In fact, it supports all hardware on ASUS Eee PC 701 and 900 as well as Acer Aspire One right out of the box, including the wireless card. That's right, you don't have to fiddle with ndiswrapper or install a custom kernel in order to make your wireless card work. Knoppix 6.0 also detects the graphics card correctly, chooses the proper screen resolution, and enables Compiz Fusion 3D desktop effects. Even with 3D desktop effects enabled, the system feels very snappy.

Congratulations, Knoppix, on staying so relevant for so long!

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