Linux Rants

Recently, the cord on my extremely uncool (but functional) pair of headphone have started to bother me. After a near miss on my usual bus, I found myself wandering the isles of our friendly neighborhood Fry’s Electronics. I found myself a nice set of Bluetooth headphones to go with my phone. They work like a charm.

As I was sitting at my computer the other night, I thought that it would be a good idea to get myself a Bluetooth adapter for my computer so I could use my new wireless headset with some of my games, and of course, Skype. Again, I found myself wandering the isles of Fry’s Electronics, and found a nice, cheap little Belkin adapter that would barely be noticeable attached to my computer.

After my purchase, I realized that I was in a great position to do a little head to head comparison of how Bluetooth would work in Windows vs. Linux. My computer dual boots Vista and Ubuntu 10.04.

I started with Vista.

The process was pretty normal, with one little hiccup that I don’t consider a deal breaker. After opening the case, I was informed that the disk didn’t have a Vista driver, and they pointed me to the website. I click a few links, a 200MB+ download, and the driver is in my possession.  Run the Setup.exe file, and it installs all the software that I’d ever need to use the Bluetooth headset. Sure enough, connects first try. No fuss no muss. Other than the driver glitch, not a bad process.

On to Ubuntu.

I was a little nervous about this as I’d never done this before, and there was no mention of anything about Linux in the little dinky book that came with my little Bluetooth adapter. I figured the process might be similar. Find me a nice little driver out on the website, download, install, done. After firing up Ubuntu, I was in for a pleasant surprise. There was already a Bluetooth icon in my upper panel. The first thought that crossed my mind was “that can’t be it.” I was wrong. That was it. I clicked on it and connected to my headset first try. No installs. No software downloads. No setups. It’s just there.

The funny thing is, people say that Linux is hard.

Microsoft is up to it’s usualy bunk again, claiming that people that use Redhat have, or eventually will have, an obligation to pay Microsoft.  Redhat’s response has, so far, been just to yawn in Microsoft’s face.  Microsoft isn’t the first company to try this with Redhat, but hopefully, it will be the last.  SCO has recently filed for Chapter 11 after years of trying to show that they own one iota of the code present in Linux.  I seriously doubt that Microsoft would go bankrupt over this, due to their amazingly deap pockets, but I also seriously doubt that they can prove to a court of law that anybody not running Windows owes them anything.  As for those who are running Windows, well, they owe Microsoft their immortal soul.  Bummer.

Microsoft has recently stated that Linux violates several of it’s copyrights, and that people using Linux owe Microsoft money for licensing.  Why does this sound so familiar?  The old saying, people who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it.  I think it would almost be funny for Microsoft to go to court over this and lose massively.  Just the fact that they’re threatening Linux tells me that Microsoft is very concerned about it.  That’s a good thing for Linux.

I’ve been running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition on my desktop computer for a little while now. I picked it up because I was able to get a massive discount on it. Less than $50. If the price had not been so low, I would not have bothered to buy it. I’ve been demoing the new Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 5 release of Ubuntu, and have been really liking it. Liking it to the point that I’m seriously thinking about ditching the hugely expensive (normally) OS for a free one. Today I was reading about the people that are complaining about the Windows Vista Ultimate Extras package, and while I didn’t pay nearly as much as other Windows Vista Ultimate users did, I have to agree that Microsoft has treated us with indifference, if not disdain. Their treatment of their customers only pushes me closer to leaving their OS behind entirely. Is there any reason that I shouldn’t?