2003.11_Choosing a Future.pdf

Welcome

COMMENT

Choosing a future

Dear Linux Magazine Reader,

We pride ourselves on the origins

of our publication, which come

from the early days of the Linux

revolution.

Our sister publication in Germany,

founded in 1994, was the first

Linux magazine in Europe. Since

then, our network and expertise

has grown and expanded with the

Linux community around the

world.

As a reader of Linux Magazine,

you are joining an information

network that is dedicated to

distributing knowledge and

technical expertise. We’re not

simply reporting on the Linux

and Open Source movement,

we’re part of it.

Linux is changing.

It is hard to judge

the speed of change

without constantly

upgrading, re-eval-

uating and testing

both the operating

system, application

and the utilities that together make it

such a wonderful usable system.

I was lucky enough to spend the week-

end playing with an older machine that I

had installed Linux on, more years ago

than is polite to mention. Just as quickly

as the hardware has changed over time,

so has the software. The underlying core

remained the same. I could still connect

the machine to a network and all the

basic tools were available. Graphically

the computer has fallen behind the most.

Although I like to think I favor the

command line for most things, using this

machine brought home just how much I

now use a graphical front-end for some

tasks. Going back to the old FVWM

showed both the advantages and per-

haps some disadvantages that we have

advanced to over the years. KDE and

Gnome are wonderful desktop environ-

ments that handle everything I currently

wish for. The downside of these is that

they tend to hog machine resources.

Even something small and quick such as

Fluxbox has a lot of eye-candy compared

to the older systems.

FVWM appeared clunky and from a

time long ago. Looking back at my notes

for the old machine that I had left

myself, I had referred to the improve-

ments that FVWM had compared to the

previous TWM. Where were all my little

tools and shortcuts? Still I had to get on

with the job and rescue some long lost,

but still needed data.

Time passed, and using both the Win-

dow Manager and the command line I

finally resurrected the necessary infor-

mation. My mind slowly remembered

how to use the system. Shortcuts slowly

resurfaced through familiarization. Once

finished, I realized that the system did

not have all the bells and whistles that

the modern Window Managers have.

However, everything went fine and I

probably spent more time actually work-

ing on the task in hand.

I like having the bells and whistles.

They are a nice comfort but I intend to

try to use less of them and concentrate

on using the quickest way to do what-

ever task I need to do in future..

With all the new features, we are in

danger of creeping featuritis. This mod-

ern disease attacks all software to some

extent. Star Office has over 80 different

highlighting colors. I know this may be

down to compatability, but who really

uses all of these?

One of the joys of Linux is the freedom

it brings. We are not forced to use one

operating system. We can move around

distributions and enjoy the benefit each

brings. Fixing on just one distribution

means no freedom of choice. Source

code may be free and open, but without

competition, the market would be no

better than any other.

We may say to one another socially

that our particular current distribution is

better than XYZ brand, but we can all

monitor and learn from the others. I am

fortunate to run so many different

distributions and although some have

advantages it is wonderful to compare.

Go East!

We are proud to announce the launch

of a new sister-publication, Linux

Magazin Romania . The Romanian-

language version started with the

September issue and is a reaction to

the very high level of interest that

Linux and Open Source enjoy in East-

ern Europe.

We wish our colleagues great suc-

cess in helping Linux become the

standard OS in Romania!

For those of you who read Roman-

ian, or just for fun, have a look at:

www.linux-magazin.ro .

Onward for a diverse future,

John Southern

Editor

www.linux-magazine.com November 2003

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