February 3, 2006
by sjvn01
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Why Photoshop tops most-wanted Linux app list

Photoshop? The application most people want, at this date, to be ported to Linux from Windows is Photoshop? Color me surprised!

When Novell Inc. started its survey of what applications people wanted ported to Linux, both Novell CoolSolutions site editor Scott Morris and I were both surprised to find Adobe Photoshop anywhere near the top of the list in early results.

Quicken, my own favorite, QuickBooks, Dreamweaver — sure. But Photoshop — when we already have GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program)?

GIMP, in case you don’t know, has long been considered one of the Linux desktop’s success stories. For example, it’s been described as offering, “a level of functionality comparable to Photoshop for free” in LinuxPlanet — back in the year 2000.

Now, what I know about photo editing programs could be placed in a small, say, 360KB 5.25-inch floppy disk. If you can’t do it with Google’s Picasa on Windows, F-Spot on Linux/GNOME, or iPhoto on Mac OS X, it’s beyond me.

So I pestered some of my friends in the graphics business to see why Linux users would prefer Photoshop over GIMP.

First of all, Photoshop — on either Mac OS X or Windows — is the default photographic and prepress program for serious graphics firms. Just as Quark Inc.’s QuarkXPress was for the longest time the best layout program in serious publishing work, Photoshop is simply “The” application that professionals use.

It’s also not really thought of as a “Windows” application in many shops. For many graphic pros, it’s a Mac OS program. So this appears to be a case where it’s not really so much that people want a Windows application ported to Linux, they want what they see as the best-of-breed application, regardless of operating system, to run on Linux.

I was also told that while GIMP’s functionality may rival Photoshop’s, how you get there is very different. For instance, to users who know Photoshop, GIMP’s SDI (Single Document Interface) can be confusing. In GIMP, each image gets a separate window, whereas Photoshop’s MDI (Multiple Document Interface) groups them all together in a single window.

Now, this may not sound like much, but I picked this example because the debate over whether SDIs or MDIs are the better way to handle a desktop is one of those endless debates in interface usability circles. Most people aren’t aware of the details of these issues; they just know that if they’re used to doing it one way, doing it the other way is a lot more difficult.

GIMP’s interface has also been criticized for hiding menus that should be near the top. I did some checking on this and I wonder if some Photoshop fans just haven’t looked at GIMP’s upcoming 2.4 update. For example, as Nathan Willis, in his early look at GIMP 2.4 in NewsForge noted, in the new GIMP, operations now have a top-level menu of their own instead of being buried in the Layer menu.

If you want a more Photoshop-like interface to GIMP today, your best choice is Scott Moschella’s self-described “hack” Gimpshop.

GIMP 2.4 will also include color management. This is a must for serious graphic designers, who must work with on-screen images that will end up in print. It’s still not perfect, according to both Willis and my friends in the business, but it’s a start.

Willis also lists several things that are still missing from GIMP 2.4.

“The most fundamental shortcoming of the GIMP, according to graphics professionals, remains its limitation to grayscale and RGB image modes; press-ready images need CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black), and many designers make heavy use of Lab color and duotone (tinted) modes. Second is its limitation to 8-bit color — as high-end scanner and digital camera prices drop, more and more people need to work with 16-bit-per-channel data,” wrote Willis.

Photoshop also has its own world of software training. There are many different ways to get to slightly different ends in Photoshop. People who’ve taken the time and trouble to learn many of them have very little incentive to learn another graphics program.

Another problem, according to my buddies, is that besides Photoshop itself, there are hundreds of Photoshop plug-in programs. Of those, everyone has their handful of favorites that they use on most of their projects. GIMP simply doesn’t have anything close to this sort of third-party add-on software community.

In addition, other important graphics and publishing programs are set to work with Photoshop. For example, remember how I said QuarkXPress “used to be” the pros’ only choice for pre-print and page layout? It’s being knocked off its pedestal by Adobe InDesign. In part, that’s because Adobe Bridge enables easy file integration across the entire Adobe creative suite.

As my colleague, John Rizzo, observed in our sister publication, Publish, “It’s no stretch to say that Adobe Systems Inc.’s Photoshop has made the transition from user application to major developer platform.”

And, there you have it — the reasons why users want Photoshop.

GIMP? It’s good, and it’s getting better, but unless Adobe takes a wrong step, I don’t see it playing a major role on professional desktops.

Some would argue, of course, that since GIMP is free software, it will eventually play a larger role. I still don’t see it.

As Rizzo said, and I’ve seen and heard now, Photoshop really is a platform, not just an application. When you’re buying into an entire system, as the graphics business clearly has, the upfront cost of a single application doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in the buying decision.

Still, if you look beneath the surface, simply bringing Photoshop over to Linux isn’t going be enough. For Linux to be taken seriously in design shops, Adobe needs to start moving its entire creative suite of software to Linux.

While Adobe has been edging toward Linux for some time now, it also took its own sweet time in bringing the latest version of Adobe Reader, aka Acrobat, to Linux. After all, Adobe didn’t even release Version 6 for Linux.

Still, Adobe did show up for the OSDL’s desktop architect meeting this past December. This was not a meeting for just anyone; only a few dozen of the top Linux desktop designers and architects were there. Because Adobe was there, it must be taking the Linux desktop seriously.

I certainly hope they are. After all, as the Novell survey is showing, Linux desktop users are certainly taking Photoshop seriously.

A version of this story first appeared in DesktopLinux.

February 2, 2006
by sjvn01
0 comments

Linux Wi-Fi hacking for fun and features

OK, how many of you are Wi-Fi hackers? Don’t be shy, we’re all friends here.

Besides, you’re in good company. There are several different groups working on better ways to get the most out of the Linux hidden away within many Wi-Fi devices. In particular Linksys Wi-Fi routers and APs (access-points) like the WRT54G and WAP54G have long been hacker favorites. (Editor’s note: If you’re considering getting a LinkSys router to hack, be sure to read about the WRT54GL — a special Linux-friendly version with more RAM and Flash).

Indeed, Eric Raymond, hacker extraordinaire and the person behind a little term you might have heard of — open source — has written a guide to hacking the 54G.

Why do this to perfectly functional Wi-Fi boxes? Well, if the famous climber George Mallory had been a hacker, he might have said, “Because it is there.”

But, it’s more than that. Firmware and Linux hacks on Wi-Fi devices can increase their range, add in security, add ssh (Secure Shell) functionality, and add VPN (virtual private network) services.

In other words, hacking a Wi-Fi device can add a great deal more functionality to an already useful network device.

Until recently, all of this has been, well, not difficult to do, but not a job for a newbie either. Now, however, as Joe Barr explains in a Linux.com article entitled OpenWrt nears prime-time, a new program that’s now at release candidate four, OpenWrt, makes hacking many different kinds of routers a lot easier.

According to Barr, OpenWrt RC4 is really a Linux distribution based on the 2.4.30 kernel. As such, you can use it to run a wide-variety of applications. Besides the functionality I mentioned earlier, you can even use it, on some devices, to run such open-source applications as the Asterisk PBX (private branch exchange); SANE, the Linux scanner driver; or DansGuardian, a Web proxy and content filtering program.

Better still for new users, OpenWrt now has a Web interface: OpenWrt Admin Console. This makes setting up the basic functionality — type of Wi-Fi security, operating mode (access point, bridge, client, or ad hoc), etc., etc. — much easier.

None too shabby, eh?

Of course, like any of these projects, you do take the chance of taking the perfectly sound and working heart of your Wi-Fi network and… turning it into a brick.

If you install OpenWrt, or any other such program like Sveasoft or HyperWRT, you will void your warranty and there’s always the chance that you’re going to end up with a paperweight with antennas.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

That said, in the case of OpenWrt, I’ve managed to get it running successfully on both of my Linksys WRT54G version 2.0 router/APs and it’s made both of them a lot more useful to me.

So, if you’re feeling brave and you want to give your Wi-Fi network a kick in the pants, what I can say except, “Go for it!”

January 30, 2006
by sjvn01
0 comments

Selling Linux and Open Source to Bean-Counters

I’m no bean-counter. I’m an IT guy. But, I know that over the last few years, it’s CFOs and dollars, not CIOs and gigabytes, that determine what technology companies buy.

But, here’s news you can use to get your CFO on board with a Linux and open-source make over. E-Trade Financial saved $13 million a year and they realized a boost in performance by switching to Linux from Solaris.

Now, $13 million isn’t chicken feed, even to a company like E-Trade that reported $1.7 billion of revenue in 2005.

It wasn’t just Linux that made the difference, though. It was also the Apache Web server and the Jakarta Tomcat JSP (Java Server Pages) servlet system.

In another eWEEK E-Trade story, E-Trade’s VP of architecture, Lee Thompson, explained, “the Red Hat 7.2 kernel came out, which had support for SMP (symmetric multi-processing) and a 32-bit message queue for shared memory. And, all of a sudden, our application booted.”

That, however, was only the first part of the story. It’s what E-Trade did next that many would-be corporate Linux supporters fail at.

Thompson went ahead and. “grabbed a bunch of our architects and we ran like crazy and got a full stack of our application… and we ported a representative stack of our application — our authentication, quote services, product services, some of our trading services and the servlets that rendered the HTML-over to this new stack.”

See the point? Thompson didn’t just show that Linux and open-source could now potentially run the company’s software; they went ahead and showed that it really could run the company’s software.

It’s one thing though to simply run software. It’s another to show that you can do it effectively. Thompson and his crew made that next step.

“We ran some load testing on it, and we knew when it fell over, and the way the Sun systems worked, we could keep adding more and more test users on the Sun box and it would just keep, cranking along — it didn’t really elbow. The Linux box was much faster, and then around, it was somewhere around 180 users, it would elbow… But before 180 users it was much faster.”

So, they showed that Linux was faster, but they also found out where it would stop working effectively. I think it’s very important when trying to sell Linux and open-source in a business to not oversell it.

Time and again, I’ve seen Linux supporters go on and on about how wonderful Linux is, but never mention it’s weaknesses. By doing this, they come off more as fans than serious IT workers. This, in turn, weakens their case.

The final part, and this is where Thompson et. al. showed that they know how modern IT works, is that they then showed that while the Linux systems could only support 180 users, as opposed to the Sun 4500s, which could support 300 to 400 users, the Linux servers cost about $4,000 each while the 4500s were running around a quarter of a million dollars apiece.

Now, those are the kind of numbers, not GHz or Mbps, that make a CFO’s day sunny.

Better still, from the big picture viewpoint, Keynote measurements of transaction numbers showed that with Linux, transactions were only taking 4 to 5 seconds, rather than 8 to 9 seconds with Solaris. For E-trade’s customers — online-traders who want speed, more speed, and then more speed on top of that — this was great.

So what are the lessons from this tale?

First, test out Linux and open-source on the actual jobs your company does. Next, test it with actual corporate work. Then, try it out in production. And, last but never, ever least these days, show how Linux and open-source will make money for your business.

It’s all about the bottom line, and with lower upfront costs than Windows or Solaris, there’s no reason why Linux shouldn’t become THE business operating system of the 21st century.

January 30, 2006
by sjvn01
1 Comment

WordPerfect for Linux lives on (Sort of)

Corel Corp. may have given up on bringing WordPerfect to Linux, but that doesn’t mean Linux users have to give up on running WordPerfect on Linux.

A reader recently wrote me to say, “One of the things that keeps me dual-booting Linux and (sometimes) Windows is WordPerfect. I can’t be weaned off it.”

He’s not the only one. Some law firms still swear by WordPerfect. And, once you have those function key shortcuts of WordPerfect embedded in your fingers, they can be hard to extract.

I understand perfectly. You see, my fingers, besides having vi embedded in them, still have the WordStar command set in them from its first days on CP/M computers.

Once you know — I mean really know — a word processor, it’s hard to switch.

His question of the day was, “Do you know if WordPerfect 8 for Linux is still doable? Or should I just give it up? My fear is that it uses libraries so old, they would not be compatible. This assumes I could even find WordPerfect 8 for Linux in the first place.”

He’s in luck. WordPerfect 8 for Linux is still available, and with some work, you can still use it with a modern Linux distribution.

While Corel, and most of the major Linux application download sites, like Tucows Linux, no longer have it, it is still available at several sites on the Web.

The site to find WordPerfect, and how to get the various versions of it to run on today’s Linuxes, is Rick Moen’s WordPerfect on Linux FAQ.

Before jumping into this project, be certain to carefully read Moen’s FAQ. There are many ways an installation can go wrong on modern systems. The program also lacks support support for many fonts. It will also fail on attempting to import any Word file later than Word 97, and it will fail, period, on importing any Word file if the system date is set later than September 9, 2001.

If that’s not enough, the downloadable version, WordPerfect 8.0, sits in a legally gray area. To quote Moen’s FAQ, “Corel seems to have the right to enjoin anyone from redistributing it,” but “fortunately, Corel seems either tolerant or apathetic.”

In short, I wouldn’t be betting my business on running WordPerfect 8.0 on Linux.

8.1 is a different story. While it cannot legally be downloaded, legal, used copies of it still show up for sale every now and again. It can be found as part of the boxed sets of CLOS (Corel Linux Operating System) Deluxe Edition and CLOS Standard Edition. Note, though, that the online version of CLOS, which can still be found on the Web as an ISO file, does not include WordPerfect.

8.1 is also thought of as the best of the WordPerfect for Linux programs. There was a later version, WordPerfect 9 for Linux, but it really wasn’t a Linux program. It was the Win32 edition of the program with its own special version of WINE. It never, by universal agreement, ran very well.

But, all that said, if you want to do it — and are careful with the installation — you can still run WordPerfect 8.0, 8.1, or even 9.0 on Linux. For many of you, this may seem like way too much trouble for way too little result, but if you really like WordPerfect, I’m sure you’re already downloading a copy of 8.0 in another window.

January 12, 2006
by sjvn01
0 comments

FAT patent fight not over yet

On Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reaffirmed a pair of patents held by Microsoft covering the File Allocation Table, but sources close to the Public Patent Foundation indicate that this will not be the end of the story of efforts to overthrow these patents.

Sources said, “the re-issuance of the patent is based on the examiner’s having accepted an argument previously advanced by Microsoft and previously rejected in the history of the patent, so documented on the file wrapper (the docket sheet of activity which accompanies each patent).” Therefore, the PUBPAT (the Public Patent Foundation) is “not precluded from bringing a new reexamination request, and there is every reason to believe that (it) will be doing so.”

Officially, Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT’s executive director and founder, said that, “If Microsoft sues anyone for infringing them, the defendant in any such suit can raise any defense they’d like, including invalidity, and even including invalidity in light of this same prior art.”

Indeed, “The patent office’s decision has no preclusive effect on a court and there are indeed cases where the patent office made a decision in a reexamination supporting a patent and a court later looked at the same exact issue, disagreed with the PTO, and found the patent invalid,” said Ravicher.

In fact, Microsoft doesn’t even have to sue anyone for the patents to be taken up in court.

“A party who is under a reasonable apprehension of suit for infringement can file a declaratory judgment action in US District Court asking the court to determine that the patents are not infringed or that they are invalid,” said Craig Bachman, a partner in the Pacific Northwest law firm of Lane Powell.

A Linux vendor might, or might not, qualify to sue Microsoft, since while there has been much talk that Microsoft could use the patents against them, there has been no actual legal action against open-source use of the patents at this time, according to Bachman.

Ravicher believes that Linux users don’t need to be overly worried about the patents yet.

Things are “no different than before the reexamination; these patents exist and must be appropriately respected, but not overly feared. All that has happened is that Microsoft has won a debate where they were the only party allowed to speak, in that the patent reexamination process bars the public from rebutting arguments made by Microsoft,” said Ravicher.

“We still believe these patents are invalid, and that a process that gave the public equal time to present its positions would result in them being found as such.”

Others are more concerned.

Florian Mueller, founder of NoSoftwarePatents.com, which fights against patent law in the European Union, said, “This is now a situation in which Microsoft could cause major problems to Linux vendors and users. Microsoft may not want to do that yet for other considerations, but the USPTO’s decision gives Microsoft the strategic option to do so at a time of its choosing,” said Mueller.

Mueller added, “The example of the FAT patents shows that all those patent quality initiatives and patent pledges have no significant value to open-source developers, vendors, and users, if Microsoft ever wants to go for Linux’s throat.”

With this decision to uphold the patents, the USPTO reversed its October 2005 decisions against the patents. PUBPAT had strived for over two years to strike down the FAT patents (5,579,517 and 5,758,352), on the grounds that they contained “prior art.”

Specifically, these file system patents impact programs like Samba, which make it possible for Linux systems to have read and write access to Windows FAT-based file systems, and vice-versa. Many such programs are licensed under the GPL (General Public License). In turn, the GPL forbids the distribution of programs that use patented technologies necessitating payment of any royalties. Microsoft insists that it be paid a royalty for the use of these patents.

This means, “it could be possible for Microsoft to argue that anybody using a free software system that reads and writes to the MS DOS FAT file system also has to pay a royalty, said Eben Moglen, a Columbia University law professor and the general counsel for the Free Software Foundation in an earlier interview on the FAT patents.

If the patents are upheld, this would make it difficult, if not impossible, for GPLed software to access FAT file systems.

A version of this story first appeared in Linux-Watch.

December 9, 2005
by sjvn01
0 comments

Mandriva aims to take on Red Hat, Novell

Mandriva Linux, known as Mandrakesoft eight months ago, has had quite a year. The Paris-based company believes it’s ready to bounce back into the race to capture international market share from competitors such as Red Hat and Novell. Only 18 months ago, the company was in the throes of bankruptcy. Now, CEO Francois Bancilhon suggests the company is ready to rid the world of the “RH/SUSE duopoly.”

Bancilhon told CRN’s Paula Rooney last week that although his company “tanked” after the dot-com bubble burst, it is now building a comeback based on its new product line and its acquisition of two commercial Linux distributions, Conectiva and Lycoris.

“We’re back in black,” he said, referring to a recent IDC report showing Mandriva as the No. 3-ranked distributor of Linux worldwide, behind Red Hat and SUSE with between 6 million and 8 million users, according to the CRN story.

Mandriva is known for its intuitive, attractive desktop design and wide international support; the operating system is available in more than 70 languages.

Out of bankruptcy

Mandrakesoft emerged from bankruptcy in March 2004 following a year of redressement judiciaire, the French equivalent of US Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Under the terms of its debt restructure, the company committed to repaying creditors an estimated 4.1 million Euros (US $5 million, at the time) over a nine-year period.

“The turnaround was done in 2003, it was done ‘the hard way,’ by decreasing expenses, reorganizing the company and increasing revenue,” Bancilhon told DesktopLinux.com in an email. “Non-profitable activities were stopped, and those [that were] almost profitable were improved or fixed. We also went through a Chapter 11 procedure, which blocked all the creditors for 14 months. Since then, we have raised more money and repaid most of the creditors.”

2005 has been a year of upgrading its bread-and-butter product and making partnership deals. Mandriva released its 2006 version Nov. 3, receiving a good response from users and reviewers. It made a major deal with Dell in September to produce pre-loaded Linux laptops in France.

Only last month, hard drive vendor LaCie teamed up with Mandriva to create a bus-powered USB 2.0 hard drive preloaded with desktop Linux. The GlobeTrotter boots Mandriva Linux LE 2005, and is available in 40GB and 80GB models.

Analysts skeptical following acquisitions

Mandriva acquired two struggling commercial distributions — Conectiva, in February, and Lycoris, in June. The two companies’ products were then melded into Mandriva’s product set, giving the company further reach into both the North American and South American markets.

Following the Lycoris acquision, analysts were skeptical about Mandriva’s chances for success despite its expansion plans, questioning whether it was growing too slowly to compete with Red Hat and Novell/SUSE. But Bancilhon said he believes the strategy has worked thus far because the products have been well-received, according to the CRN article.

Mandriva now faces a new challenge, however, from South Africa-based Ubuntu, which in the last year has turned many heads in the open source community.

Alternative to “RH/SUSE duopoly”

How does Mandriva hope to catch up in market share to Red Hat, SUSE, and new competitiors, such as Ubuntu?

“We have a dual focus: on individual users and the Linux community — this is our traditional customer base, and we’re not competing with Red Hat or SUSE on this part; and on large organizations — this is a new target we started addressing 30 months ago, by developing a new product line, by putting in place a support and consulting organization, and by starting direct sales,” Bancilhon told DesktopLinux.com.

“On this second line, we sometimes find ourselves competing with Red Hat or SUSE (more rarely). We do so by: (1) providing full solutions (products + technology + services); (2) by being aggressively priced; (3) by having a flexible license scheme (many users hate the per-box subscription mode); (4) by the quality of our administration tools,” Bancilhon continued.

“Two years ago, I did not believe we could compete, but the proof is in the pudding: We keep winning large migration deals. The world needs an alternative to the RH/SUSE duopoly,” he added.