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Where is the PC headed?

You've heard about it. You've probably read about it. Maybe you've even tested one of the betas or release previews. Everybody knows: Microsoft are about to release a new version of their behemoth of an operating system: Windows 8. We've seen Microsoft release new versions of Windows before, of course, and there was never much to it, but this time around, it's different. This time around, the largest user base in the history of software is facing a revolution. Microsoft is fundamentally altering the character of their product, and nobody knows what to make of it.

I considered writing a review. I could have, I tried the preview — but I'll just cut straight to the chase: I like it. I think it works. It's a good, well-designed interface, that's perfectly suited to keyboard-and-mouse use if you just give it a chance. Before tackling the more interesting questions, though, I'd like to quote some reviews just to clarify what we're talking about here. Mr Jeff Atwood, of Coding Horror and Stack Overflow fame, has this to say on the subject:

Windows 8 is, in my humble opinion, the most innovative version of Windows Microsoft has released since Windows 95. Maybe ever. And it's good. Really good! I can't remember the last time I was this excited about a Windows release, except when I was kind of obsessively running betas of Windows 95 and waiting for Windows 95 to be released. Don't judge me man!

Okay, so Jeff's just a little excited. But what's it all about? Yesterday's This Is My Next feature on The Verge is a little more explicit.

Using Windows 8 is like living in a house made out of internet. There's a browser, sure (and it's a good one despite being named Internet Explorer), but the whole OS is constantly changing and updating because its every fiber is connected to the internet. As Paul Miller noted last week, the computer itself has morphed from hub to spoke, giving you access to things rather than managing those things itself. Windows 8 fills that role beautifully, and luckily for me I’m not taking a year away from the internet so I get to enjoy the benefits. (…) The Start Screen makes it possible to check a dozen things in five seconds — from any app, just tap the Windows key, and you can check to see if you have a new email, an upcoming appointment, inclement weather, or any breaking news. Tap the Windows key again, and you're back to your original app. Imagine how long checking all of those things would take using Mountain Lion.

With this year's release, Windows is jumping head-first into the post-PC era, and, from what I can see, it's spot on. Microsoft is trying to redefine the personal computer, and their vision makes perfect sense: what the vast majority of Windows users use their computers for is exactly what Windows 8 does well: browsing the web, connecting with friends, looking at photos, watching films, and maybe writing the odd letter or blog post. The new user interface, formerly known as Metro, revolves around content; it says so in Microsoft's design guidelines:

Content is the heart of Metro style apps, and putting content before chrome is fundamental to the design of Metro style apps. Everything else is accessory—or chrome—that helps present and enable interaction with the content.

The Windows 8 based tablet/ultrabook chimæra is a kind of iPad without the limitations, and this is exactly what most computer users today actually need.

But what about the others?

I've been speaking a lot about the majority of users—but what about the others? What about the remaining minority? Who is this minority that is not well-served by Windows 8, and do they matter?

The fact of the matter is: the Windows 8 user interface is so focussed on content consumption that it forgets about content creation. It's so bent on being touch-friendly that it locks out tasks that cannot be accomplished on a tablet. As David Pierce points out in the Verge article I've been quoting, Photoshop’s not going away any time soon., and Photoshop is never, ever going to be a first-class citizen of the shiny new Windows 8 world. It is not possible to build a graphics program of the calibre of Photoshop with the restriction that it has to work well on tablets.

Yes, the Windows “desktop” is still around, and it's quite possible to run software like Photoshop in it, but it's clearly conceived as a legacy feature. It's so badly integrated into the rest of the system that it's quite clear that you're not supposed to use it if you can help it, and nobody but a philistine yearning for the days of Windows 95 would actually want to use it.

There is a whole range of people who are treated as second-class citizens by Windows 8. Graphic designers. Photographers. Film makers. Architects. Engineers. Scientists. Programmers. Mouse-and-keyboard gamers. What about these people? What's the plan? What are they going to do?

Maybe they'll stick to Windows. After all, it won't actually work any worse than it did, will it? Perhaps, perhaps not. I think there's a real chance that many of the customers that Microsoft don't care about a whole lot will, in fact, turn their backs on Windows, even while millions embrace the new age. The PC gaming industry, reportedly, isn't too keen on Windows 8, and it looks very much like those that don't want to focus on the tablet and phone market are planning an exit strategy. The number of games for Mac OS X has been continuously rising for ages, and chances are that Valve porting Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux isn't an isolated development. The gaming industry is planning for the possibility that much of their clientèle is going to leave Windows in disgust.

What about the creators? From graphic designers to microchip engineers, they make Windows 8 and its content focus possible, but they need the kind of power that Windows 8 doesn't want to intimidate you with. But then, isn't this exactly the market that Apple has been targeting? Haven't the creators been deserting Windows in large numbers for years? Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft have given up on the creative market.

Windows 8 is going to be a smash hit. There will be great devices, great apps, a great experience to be had. It will be a great fit for all those people that need a computer because everybody needs a computer, for all those people that really just want to have a great time on the internet. And yes, some Apple hipsters like David Pierce will switch, because, let's face it, it makes sense. But those that want their computers to be powerful machines with which they can do great things, from the inspired soul that wants to create a masterpiece, to the hedonist gamer thrilled by the idea of making millions of pixels of Max Payne dance across the screen through agile keyboard commands, those, I expect, will prefer to think different. Then again, many of them already do.

And what is going to happen to desktop Linux? I don't know. It may triumph, or it may fall. That may be a topic for a future post.


Auto-poweroff that server in your cellar

Our cellar houses an old grey box that acts as a home server for the family. It's quite useful in a number of ways, as a file server, web server, database server, and so on. It also, traditionally, had a habit of wasting power—it's so much nicer to just have the machine running when you use it. But, with the wonders of Wake on LAN, even the “I'm too lazy to run into the cellar” argument has lost any validity it might have had.

So much for turning the box on, how about turning it off? Figuring out when nobody is using the machine and then remembering to turn it off as well is hardly a task for a mere mortal. So I wrote a script that does it for me. is_anyone_here.py checks whether anyone is logged in, and looks for any evidence of recent usage. It was written on/for a Debian GNU/Linux (lenny) system with vsftpd and samba, and may require some modifications to work properly in your environment.

Have a look at the whole script after the break.

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Creating the perfect keyboard layout

After having read this post's title, you might have though “ah, he'll be presenting [insert favourite subculture keyboard layout eg neo]! nice!”. If so, you'd be wrong. If, on the other hand, you're thinking “perfect keyboard layout? There's no such thing!”, then I couldn't agree more. Anyway, …

I have been using the standard US keyboard layout for years, almost always without actually using an American keyboard. The main reason I chose it over the German layout is that characters like []{}\|/`, used in many programming languages, are placed in a civilized manner, meaning I can type them quickly and without breaking my fingers.

The standard US layout has a certain problem, though: when it comes to typing in languages that don't happen to be English, it fails spectacularly. Since I have to write quite a lot of German and, nowadays, French, on my computer(s), this is quite a drawback.

Umn, I fixed it

It's not that hard to create your own keyboard layout, which I have done. I chose to use a standard US layout as base, leaving every single key binding intact, using level-3, i.e. AltGr, bindings to represent missing characters.

The German umlauts and ligature ÄäÖöÜüßẞ (the last character is the capital ß) I decided to map to the most obvious places imaginable: on the A, O, U and S keys, so AltGr+Shift+U produces Ü.

I created support for most romance languages by adding Çç to the C key (as above), Ññ to the N key, and a number of hidden dead keys: AltGr+' e renders é, AltGr+" e renders ë; the keys for `,~ and ^ act equivalently. The characters Ææ,Œœ,Øø and Åå are on the W,I,Q and Z keys, respectively, ensuring full support for French, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and probably other languages. The Esperanto alphabet is completed by the dead circumflex ˆ and AltGr+y, rendering ŭ. The Dutch IJ and ij are on the J key. Some other possibly useful characters, beside the quotes „ « » ‹ › “ ” (on the [] and <> keys), are ¿ ¡ € £ ‰ ¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁰ ≠ ± Ππ Μμ Δδ Ττ ° § ¦ – —. If you're really interested in the details of the layout, please, try it out!

Yes, you can have it

For X11 (Linux and other Unices): github (tarball)

For Microsoft Windows: us_tj2c.zip. (older version, missing a number of characters. German, French, and Spanish are supported equally.)


Why do I use Linux ?

Years ago, I used Linux because it was new and interesting to me, and I had the time and motivation to just play around with it. The fact that I switched distributions all the time was a mark of that.

At some point or points in between, it might have been the freedom.

Now, the reason is: “Why not?”; I've used GNU/Linux for ages, I can almost always make it do what I want to do when I want it – it works. Windows or Mac OS X would probably also work just as well if I was as used to them as I am used to Linux. But I'm not.


Bringing synergy to the table

Once again, my desk is rather clean (a state that doesn't tend to last for long, let's see how long it holds this time), and I have decided to reintroduce a multi-head setup at my workstation. I've done this twice, and always enjoyed the space, and now I've also seen what it's like to have only a 20in wide flat screen sitting in front of you. In addition to that, I made sure there was a place for my laptop, as the recent acquisition of a PCMCIA network card made it desktop-compatible once again.

my desktop

To spice things up a bit, and, I'll be honest, to spare myself the tedious labour of stretching toward my laptop whenever I want to use it, I've started using one quite magnificent piece of software called Synergy. What Synergy does is, quite simply, allow me to control my laptop with my desktop's keyboard and mouse (over the network). This feels just like having multiple X11 displays: I just move my mouse pointer off the left edge of my big screen and focus is on my laptop. This allows me, for instance, to have an IRC client running on the wee laptop screen without really being distracting :-)

By the way, the video deliberately placed on the right-hand screen in the photograph is one of Julien Doré's extremely arty «Les Limites»-clips. Grep Youtube for it if you will.


Impressum

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