So, 2006 is at an end; here comes 2007. Over the last two years, I have gone from MDK 10.0 Community via 10.1, 10.2, 2005LE and 2006.0 to 2007.0. A rocky ride? Yes and no . . .

As I recall mentioning at at least one point during this list of diatribes, my circumstances are slightly unusual. I am working in South Korea, teaching English to Korean kids, and I use MDV with KDE as my main desktop now not only on my PC at home but also on my new Averatec notebook (although I prefer the term "laptop"), which I am frequently seen carrying on the walk to and from work. Although I have the option to use Windoze on all of the systems with which I have contact - including all of those at work, where the Boss still has some machines running 98SE - I prefer MDV. And with the preponderance of Windoze, do I feel disadvantaged? The answer seems to be something like: "Er, mainly, no."

Mainly??? What does that mean? It means that there is a list of things which I can do on Windoze but which I can't do under MDV, and I am by no means the only one to comment in this way. From my point of view, these represent potential areas of improvement. I will mention these in passing before proceeding to those areas in which it is proving (and will probably eventually prove) most useful.

Firstly, I can't use my cheap little Taiwanese webcam with any of the versions of MDK/MDV which have been installed on this or the Averatec. In contrast, it can be made to work on both of my machines under Windoze. There is this thing called "Video4Linux" which I don't understand. Kernel modules are available for SPCA-5xxx-based webcams but not, apparently, for this Divio-based one. I can't get the thing to work under Mandriva but having said that, I don't use it very often now in any case. But it was good when I was teaching English to Chinese adults over the Internet in real time with video and sound. Such capabilities would make Linux much more useful as a teaching tool in the future (hint, hint).

Second, although ndiswrapper is now installed successfully on the laptop, it cannot (apparently) do anything. Interestingly, the situation changed this week after I uninstalled the rt61.inf file under Windoze by first uninstalling and then (or so I thought previously) reinstalling from CD-ROM. It was at this point that the software revealed that: "You have an older version . . . etc." After reinstallation the thing worked fine under Windoze, and guess what? It could then be configured under Linux too. But it still didn't work properly . . . except under Windoze (sigh).

To be fair I also haven't got all of the Internet sound facilities sorted out yet, largely because of a few problems which forced a second reinstallation of both OSes to this hard drive. But Skype works OK - if you remember that it needs ALSA rather than the more immediately useful null output device - and is always useful for calling home (or my stupid bank!).

Let me instead end the year with what I think are the good and useful things which MDV allows me to do.

1: Free office software. Not only can I have OpenOffice 2.x, I can also have Koffice and the one I use the most, AbiWord. I use this to create documents intended for use in my teaching job, then upload them to my Personal Folders on Yahoo, and finally download them again at work for printing. The reason I use AbiWord in preference to OOo/KWord is that I have the SCIM/SKIM interface installed and this does not seem to interface well with OOo and Koffice, although it is possible to use Leafpad with SCIM and then copy-and-paste, which gets around it quite quickly. Under both Leafpad and AbiWord, SCIM works flawlessly, although it should be said in passing that it really requires language support for all the target languages, which apparently can only be effectively enabled at the time of OS installation, and unbelievably, this was probably the only time I had not done this since my original installation of 10.0. This was why I had to do a reinstall again. This will be the subject of my next "Korean Konundrum" at http://www.linuxquestions.org/.

2: Sound recording to e-mail. As noted in an earlier blog, originally I started recording practice speeches for the kids using Audacity, and I have continued to do so as and when required. Audacity remains factually easier to use under Linux than under Windoze, simply because when setting it up, it can find the LAME codec automatically, whereas I have to do it manually under Windoze. How silly can you get? (Rephrase: "How LAME can you get?") (more sounds of groaning in the background).

Regardless, the advantage of this is that I can make a voice recording in a quieter environment (i.e. at home), save a copy as an mp3 and send this to the recipient as an e-mail attachment, normally with a printable copy of the script from which it was recited. Clearly anyone who wants to use this to create mp3 recordings for podcasts would have no problem at all. I also have Ardour installed, but have yet to get into it. Readers of my previous blogs will also recall the tribulations I had trying to transfer copies of my own (non-DRMed) recordings to my Korean mp3 player under Windoze!

3: Streaming audio. The last few incarnations of Amarok have been fantastic, I have the thing on all the time playing streams from Magnatune in California (which is pretty good when you live in South Korea!). However, I also use Real Player 8 to listen to e.g. the BBC in London or classical music streams from stations in Hong Kong, and there are also some video streams such as e.g. http://www.eastlink.com/ in Canada where you can get a decent picture (>300kbits/s) which plays OK in full screen.

A word about audio under Linux: It's so much easier to configure than under Windoze! I know this seems to go against the grain of what many commentators say, but in my experience, once you have a grip of the basic options, it is much easier to transition from (say) choosing the null output device (OK for RealPlayer 8 and Amarok) to ALSA (without which Skype is impossible) and back again without getting frustrated, as is the case under Windoze, where the GUI is entirely in Korean rather than English! (NOTE: See my first "Korean Konundrum" at:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/articles/Advocacy/A_Sad_Case_of_Divorce_not_My_Very_First_Korean_Konundrum

to understand how I really feel about this!)

4: Video reproduction. Support for virtually all video media is great under Linux, meaning that I can watch Real format video files as well as avi, wma, you name it, and as Korean TV tends to be rather dull and restricted (and dubbed into Korean), this is not a bad thing. Once all of the codecs are installed, there seems to be no type of video file that I can't watch, except perhaps ones which require the most recent RealMedia codecs (hint, hint).

There is also a great choice of players and KDE wrappers for them. By default, I normally use KMplayer, although Mplayer and Xine seem to work fine as engines on their own without these wrappers. Totem and Kaffeine also work very well but KMplayer seems to be more versatile.

In general terms, the media players work fine from the word go. Amarok has a problem, however, in that something keeps making it crash and to be blunt about it, I don't understand the Bugzilla interface at all, so I avoid using it (the Bugzilla interface, not Amarok).

I write this as our notorious fiends friends at http://www.osnews.com/ have penned another commentary on the state of the Linux desktop in comparison with the upcoming Vista (which I of course have no intention of purchasing) and the current MacOS. I fail to see what the problem is. Vista appears to be just some kind of GUI overlay of XP with a few silly widgets thrown in; how practical is that when you want to do some serious work? At my hagwon we have Office 2003 installed everywhere and frankly, in Korean especially, you can write in English and Korean but navigating the GUI is a nightmare; it has too many features. In contrast, I can write what I want in AbiWord or OOo at home, upload it to Yahoo, download it and print it at work and avoid all the hassle. And it prints out of MSWord!

My opinion: "Eye candy" may be entertaining but it is not practical, a paradoxical statement from someone who was originally attracted to Mandrake (as it was then) by the pretty desktop (KDE, not GNOME). For example, I prefer to use Opera as the web browser under both OSes, where it looks and behaves identically and the bookmarks can likewise be uploaded to Yahoo as a single file and downloaded and installed to the other OS at any time. You can "eye-candify" Opera so it looks the same, too. But what of the plethora of "widgets" which have come of age with version 9.x? Few of them I find useful; most are just reinventing the wheel all the time. Since the last reinstall, I have not been using any of them.

So instead, I plump for word (or text) processors which have both a simpler GUI and, therefore, fewer built-in features. What's the point of having any text processor which does too much? There's little point, as I see it, in purchasing excess capability unless you have a requirement to use it on a regular basis. Normally, I require only:

(a) left, central, right or full justification;

(b) page breaks;

(c) tabulation;

(d) font selection and control (bold, italic, etc.);

(e) selectable bullet points (maybe);

(f) table insertion;

(g) graphic insertion.

Believe it or not, for most of the things I do, this is all that I require; anything else is superfluous. I prepare printouts and then photocopy them either onto paper or onto celluloid sheets for use as OHP (overhead projector) slides (what a shame I can't copy them in colour!!!). These are then used in my lessons. So if I have something else that does this, is simpler, easier, cheaper and faster to use, why do I want anything more expensive?

Similarly, it might be argued that not being able to interface directly from a Korean/Chinese keyboard, as in M$'s IME, is a pain, but I disagree. I have more control as a result of this and I am happy with that. As one respondent to a previous blog put it, just because you do something under Micro$oft in a certain way, why does it mean that Micro$oft's way is the best? It isn't; it's just the result of a limited learning and a lot of Windoze conditioning - possibly allied to sheer intellectual laziness.

I would like to end this installment not only wishing everyone a happy Christmas and (I hope, certainly for myself) a more prosperous New Year, but also to suggest something that I think is important. It is all very well to have a wonderful choice of amazing non-Windoze software which allows you to do pretty much everything you want on a computer, but the people who create it need time and the more complex their new beasts become, the more time they need to continue creating it, and as I know full well from previous and impending writing projects, this is not an easy task, as it has to be balanced against many things, not least the requirements of job (if they have one) and family (ditto). People cannot live on air alone, they need bread too.

So I will end with a question: If programmers need to be supported in their efforts, where should this support come from? Are there international foundations which offer grants or scholarships which would allow this, or should major distro providers offer financial support to programmers whose packages they wish to include in their preferred package? It seems to me that more properly "monetized" programmers would then have the leisure to improve their products and have some commercial financial input, too. We hear stories all the time about not just apps but whole OSes which are effectively going down the tubes for lack of money and time.

With that, I now proceed to creating a new set of timetables using OOo, under Mandriva, for my Boss, who actually kept the printed originals from the summer to remind me. And I will continue to produce quality teaching materials for my kids using both this and AbiWord. Using KDE 3.5.x under Mandriva 2007.0. Because I am happy there.

Addendum: I got full transparency on menus and panels now, too!