Today this blog turns one year old.

It’s gone through three different domain names (wordpress.com, tmac.andrewmin.com and now tsmacdonald.com).

It had an identity chrisis when it was a few weeks old, where it was transformed from a personal blog about what I was doing to a techy blog about what I thought.

It’s had 39,635 visits when it was on tsmacdonald.com and 7,633 on tmac.andrewmin.com, for a total of 47,268 (nothing significant happened on wordpress.com).

The most-viewed post was the “Response to ‘9 features Ubuntu should implement’,” which made the Digg Linux/Unix front page and currently has 855 Diggs. I’m also reasonably sure it’s the most Reddited, with 41 (60 up, 19 down).

I got comments from people who loved me, people who thought I was brilliant, and people who were surprised I had the mental faculties to type.

I learned that good articles don’t always attract traffic, and traffic doesn’t always come to good articles.

I learned how to use Wordpress well. Which is a good skill.

I learned that if you don’t know what you’re saying, people will call you on it, and mock you for it.

I learned what bad writing is, and how to avoid it, and am still learning good writing.

And I learned that you’re probably reading the last post to appear on this blog.

Why?

• I was really running out of things I wanted to write about. Dedicated readers probably noticed that both the frequency and originality of posts experienced a sharp decline in the past six months.
• There’s other things I would like to do–stuff IRL, but I’d also like to spend more time coding, helping software out at Launchpad and learning about the guts of Linux.
• If I do get a brilliant idea for something to write, it makes a lot more sense to polish it up and submit it to a magazine–for many hundreds of dollars ad fame–than to post it here, get a thousand visitors, and an extra eight cents (on a good day. It could be three.) from advertising. I’m currently paying money to write this blog–ads don’t cover the domain name registration (and I’m fortunate enough to get free hosting).

So thanks for reading, but good bye.

A few months ago, I was messing around with my Thinkpad, trying to make it fast yet usable. Arch seemed the way to go, but X was uncooperative (note to self: try Arch again). Why? It didn’t get the driver right for my video card. Next up was SliTaz, and after that Ubuntu Server. Both of which wouldn’t recognize my PCMCIA network card (which Arch did). Ubuntu GTK 1.2 Remix also got the wired card down, but no amount of coaxing on my part would convince it to recognize my wireless card. I finally ended up putting Xubuntu on it, which was too slow despite swapping in Fluxbox (which was hideous) for Xfce.

In addition to problems like mine, people have all manner of trouble getting wireless cards, graphics cards and dual monitors to work. And most just give up on extra buttons on laptops (out of the four on my Vaio, only one worked). Forums and IRC are sometimes helpful–and sometimes not. Googling works fairly well for common problems…which are probably less than half of all problems. Unlike Windows, where you can get a 90% success rate by going to the manufacturer’s website and downloading and installing the right driver, there’s no clear method for solving driver problems in Linux. And even if there was, some hardware just doesn’t work in Linux.

Now let’s not get  pessimistic–a lot of things do work, and they work out of the box, no less. Millions of people are having an absolutely charming time with Linux and their hardware. All of my “modern” (made on this side of the year 2000) computers work somewhere between great and flawlessly with some version of Ubuntu (Hardy, Intrepid, Jaunty, Xubuntu, CrunchBang…).

But on the other hand, it is really offputting to not be able to interact with your computer the way you want to.

“Linux is the answer!” people cry. “It even has Skype!”

And the answers:

“That sounds great. But my webcam doesn’t work.”

“Mine does, but my microphone’s out.”

“At least you can connect to the Internet.”

“Yeah, well be happy X doesn’t bork for you, and leave you at a bash prompt.”

A lack of hardware support is limiting people’s ability to properly use (and enjoy) Linux.

It’s like test driving a Ferrari with bad brakes. You should be able to have a nice ride, but you don’t even get to experience it properly since you can’t stop.

And if people were able to use Linux the way it’s meant to be used, they would be able to form a fair opinion on it, developers would be able to focus on real problems, and I would be able to sleep calmly, since I wouldn’t have to put up with idiotic reviews and forum posts that exclusively focus on how badly Linux stinks because it doesn’t work for them.

I can’t wait.

——-

Further reading: How I think the driver problem should be solved.

Today, Google linked to a site that had changed hands, so I got bait-and-switched to…I don’t even know what, but there was this large popup:

It might’ve been convincing if I wasn’t using Ubuntu (and hadn’t looked at the window decoration or left pane, and was completely ignorant of how anti-virus software worked). So I tried to close it, and got a lot of wonderful error messages:

(Hmm…didn’t really give me a choice there, buddy (I actually just Xed it out)).

So I guess the moral of the story is that Timmy encountered a ridiculous website.

And if you wan’t to get philosophical and/or upset, you could say that it’s for reasons like this that computer-ignorant people shouldn’t use Windows–that could’ve been a mess of nasty viruses. Even a Mac is better*.

*Unrelated: I had the chance to use a Mac for a few hours last week, to use the Internet and also write music in ABC. I won’t say it was unpleasant, but I did have quite a few what the heck? moments. So I remain unconvinced, but I might be beginning to understand why normal people like them.