Going Home

Well, after bitching about Mac OS X's shortcomings for a long while, I finally took the plunge and installed GNU/Linux on my MacBook. (Why it took this long was mostly because I didn't have that USB disc to backup my stuff, until now.)

In case anyone is wondering why, let me reiterate. The reason is twofold.

1. Ideology. I'm a devoted supporter of the free software movement. While Mac OS X utilises many open source components, and as a Unix system is fairly compatible with a large number of free software applications, it is still a proprietary system, and many of Apple's policies I just can't agree with.

2. Functionality. While Mac OS X is a certified Unix system, it's focus is on its own desktop environment, which doesn't intergrate perfectly with the Unix core, its command line interface or other Unix software not tailored for OS X. GNU/Linux systems (and probably most other Unix-like systems as well) are much more configurable, use the standard X Window System and are generally more 'whole', not suffering from an identity crisis as OS X is.

Debian GNU/Linux was the obvious choice, as I said before. Installing it on a MacBook isn't exactly a trivial matter, but following instructions on Debian's wiki page it wasn't actually too difficult, even though on the first try I ended up with kernel panic and had to do it all over again. In the end it booted without problems, though, and most features work fine pretty much 'out of the box'. (I still have a small partition with Mac OS X as a backup, and because a pure Debian system apparently still has some issues.)
There's still plenty of configuring to do, of course. The touchpad works, but needs tuning. I haven't been able to figure out how to get custom settings to work yet. And I haven't got wireless yet. It seems that this would require upgrading the kernel to a newer version, which is something I've never done before.

I might have been worried that I'd grown too accustomed to OS X's eye candy and convenient features. Well, I installed KDE 4, and it has certainly softened the blow. It looks pretty, and has pretty much all the desktop and window management features of OS X, such as a grid view of all the virtual desktops. And a slideshow mode for my many wallpapers.

For now, I'm just happy to be back home in a proper free software *nix.

Taking in Applications for the Position of the Next iTunes

I've written before about my love/hate relationship with iTunes. I keep my eye out for potential replacements, but the choices are very few.

Amarok 2 is one of the players that could have potential, but it's been developed on GNU/Linux. I read recently that it is possible to get it running on Mac OS X, so I thought I should maybe give it a go. Well, I did, and it didn't do me much good.

There's no official Mac installer yet. The only way to install an unstable version is with the KDE 4 Mac environment. Which was Problem #1. Installing KDE wasn't really difficult, but it meant I had to install a gigabyte's worth or more of packages, much of which I probably have very little use for. But I did it, and Amarok started up fine, albeit it took a moment to start. The UI looks interesting.

But that brings us to Problem #2. I haven't explored it much yet, but from the little I did, it seems this version still has too many problems for normal use. First of all, I couldn't resize the window. Which was annoying. More importantly, while playing a file on my hard drive appeared to work, making a library of my music didn't. This was actually noted on the KDE 4 Mac site, but, not familiar with Amarok's terminology, I wasn't sure what they meant. This makes its use very limited, and certainly means it's no competition for iTunes yet.

Until they release an official stable version for OS X, I'm buggered. There's a player called Songbird also available for OS X, which I maybe should try, but it looks like it's still somewhat a work in process and I'm not sure if it's as feature rich as Amarok.

In case anyone's wondering what my beef with iTunes is: it's proprietary software. As simple as that.

The Curse of iTunes

Since I started using a Mac about a year ago, I've grown very accustomed to iTunes, almost dependent. There's a lot to speak in favour of it. It looks pretty. It's easy to use. It has lots of handy features.

But there's just one major issue. It's not free software.

Apart from Mac OS X itself, iTunes is almost the only piece of proprietary software I use on a daily basis. There are a handful of proprietary Mac applications I use occasionally, like iDvd, but iTunes is the only one that's a major part of my life.

If there was a free software solution that could replace iTunes, I'd be happy, but I haven't found one yet. Since iTunes is free to download anyway, I don't see why Apple doesn't just make it truly free. Perhaps there are issues involving the use of the iTunes store, but I don't really see why making the software open source should have any bearing on it.

And while we're at it, I don't see what's keeping Apple back from making Mac OS X free software in its entirety. They've taken huge and important steps in making parts of it free and utilizing free software tools, but when they wrap it up with a proprietary interface, what's the point? It should be all or nothing when it comes to freedom. Certainly many GNU/Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, and other OSs have proven how successful free software can be. If money's the only issue, they can still sell versions, convenient installation DVDs with additional support, documentation etc, to people who want such things. Or just put up hardware prices slightly.

Corporations. They try sometimes, but they just don't get it.

Copylefting

I believe copyleft is a Good Idea. 'Copyleft', obviously a pun on 'copyright', is a term that refers to the concept that material placed under an open license should remain open. In practice this means that a licence for open source software or other open material should contain a clause that forbids the use of the material in question if resulting materials are not also released under an open license.

I think this makes a lot of sense. If you create something and release it to a community, you don't really want to see some money-grabbing corporation take it, improve it and release it commercially without making their improvements available to you or other interested parties. Sharing, and improvement via sharing, is the whole point of the open source ideology.

The little creations on my site aren't really interesting or big enough for the licences used to make any difference, but I still like to do things right and in accordance to ideals I believe in. My RPG settings have been under a Creative Commons license, but thus far under a version that restricted commercial use but weren't copyleft. While this would also prevent the above scenario from taking place, it's not commercial use that's really the issue. It's sharing and benefiting everyone through that sharing. So I've changed the Creative Commons licences I've used to 'Share Alike' versions and scrapped the 'Noncommercial' requirement.

Testing... One Two Three...

It's been a while, once again. Nothing new. Ben comes and he goes. Right now I'm setting up an environment for writing and publishing these pages directly on the web server. This'll make updating easier. But there's one or two hiccups still. Except future updates sooner than a year from now.

As for news, there's not much. My adventures in the world of operating systems took a new turn, as I bought a new MacBook last summer. I've been very happy with it, and Mac OS X, for the most part. No, it's not exactly all Free Software, but it's a hell of a better than Windows. And being a Unix system, OS X is quite compatible with much of the Free Software scene.

Update: I think I've got the hiccups pretty much sorted out. As a Christmas bonus I've added a new episode of my Kin of Cerberos RPG campaign, as well as two new video game reviews, Guilty Gear and Viewtiful Joe.

Crouching Pop Star, Hidden Gnu

Not much new in the past month. I've just added a review for a fun Japanese action game called Bujingai. My current passion is the Free Software movement, and I've been trying to get rid of as much proprietary software as possible. A couple of days ago I installed a new GNU/Linux distro called gNewSense, which shows a lot of potential... There's not much I can do myself for the cause, except make a stand and stick to the Free Software ideology as closely as possible in my own life. If there only were great many of us that did the same, the world might be a better place, at least as far as ethical and sustainable software development goes...