LinuxLaptop - (10 month) Useage Report
NEC VersaSX_&_RedHat_Linux_5.1(kernel 2.0.34)

NEC VersaSX_&_RedHat_Linux_6.0(kernel 2.2.x)

In the time I've spent with this machine since the March report (see below header "March 1999"), I've encountered a couple of more hardware problems (more dead AC adapters(2 x (but I found it works fine on a Toshiba 440 CDT power adapter as long as you keep the Toshiba iced down a bit, but the NEC pulls 4 amps at 16vdc, so it's a real power-hog) and a screen-modification while I was in Baltimore, Maryland, USA in May99 at the SANS conference. Luckily in BaltimoreI found a suitable NEC repair depot and was without the machine only 1 full day. AND - then most recently - in first week of August the whole LCD screen was replaced in Hong Kong.

However - not to detract from the Linux environment, since that is what this web-page is all about:

Several items relating to the new RedHat 6.0 release, which is pretty astounding...

new features in RedHat 6.0:

• kernel 2.2.x allows SMP (if you need this - which many don't
• Gnome CDE / KDE Desktop environment
• enhanced auto-detect for laptop & desktop hardware (though laptop auto-detect / auto-config is still a bit iffy with off-brands (like the NEC, though I understand it is pretty bullet-proof with the new Toshibas (like Andrew Walton now has)
• even better GUI support for "LinuxConf" (this comes under the Gnome item above, to some extent.
• failures of Dip (Dial-up IP (PPP)) - now don't get me wrong, it could easily be this "nut on the wheel" but I could never get DIP to work on RedHat 6.0 - though others have been able to make it work fairly easily.
• The add-on / support applications contains a number of really great network monitoring & management tools, I used, primarily: Ethereal and Scotty

More information section:

The 2.2 kernel "seems" more robust - I had no kernel crashes or panics in the 4-5 months or so that I ran 6.0. I had some other hard-ware related crashes (like sitting down to work, forgetting the AC adapter and going off for coffee when it said, "Excuse me please, could you plug me in, I'm hongry!"... So - in respect of the work done on the 2.2 kernel (especially on funky NEC hardware, I think we're really a step forward here. On the 5.1/5.2 Kernels I got about 2-3 kernel crashes in 6-7 months of useage

the Gnome user-interface which is CDE/KDE compatible is a real winner, in my opinion. This is especially true if Linux is ever going to (attempt) to topple Microsoft out of it's leadership position as the primary desktop GUI - Office-Automation applications environment / platform.

I have, personally, for MONTHS & YEARS felt that the added productivity of the "virtual desktop" paradigm is an infinitely smarter way to work than the single-desktop metaphor in Windows NT and even some of the older Macintosh OSs... T he newer Macs (especially PCI & newer Blue & White G3 desktops & G3 laptops) are all quite comfy with something called "Virtual" which provides the Macintosh afficiando with a similar, though better in some ways, virtual desktop.

It's surprising that the user community in the WindowsNT world has been so late in demanding this of Microsoft and/or of them providing it.

Anyway, the additional value that "Gnome" brings to the party is some lessons learned from Steve Jobs in his approach to both the Apple Macintosh GUI as well as to the NeXT-Step GUI, which was well integrated into the Mach Kernel for NeXTStep as the OS precursor to OpenStep (which later versions of NeXTStep were called when they provided it for Intel & then Sparc hardware. The newest version of NeXT/OpenStep is of course Apple Macintosh's "OS X Server" which is available now in "pre-beta" but pretty good most people say.

Anyway, in the Linux world many people have been using "AfterStep" a significantly upgraded version of NeXTStep's GUI, with a number of enhancements that Steve's NeXTStep never even thought of, such as:

• disappearing menu-bar at any edge of the screen you choose
• the Application Dock (ala NeXTStep) with:
  • sliding (horizontally) icons for applications in an "application set" - for instance in your "web-authoring-set" you might have a page composer on the desktop, but under that icon there is an FTP icon and/or a Site-Mill icon for managing your links - all in one easy to get to "stack" if you will, of icons.
• Pager icons for increasing the number & configuration of the virtual desktops you're using
• more Iconic Applications - something that began with something called "TimeMon" under NeXTStep - where the application's icon is actually the "run-window" for the application, and it displays it's output, dynamically, in the icon. This concept has been enhanced, further, with Gnome / AfterStep

Now having a 'jazzy' or 'more functional' GUI is part and parcel with the way the desktop GUI people are pushing research & development to say nothing of trying to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. The "marketplace" for GUIs is obviously Microsoft, and it's glitzy, too complicated icons and applications that make you click 2-5 times to accomplish the same task you need on 1-2 mouse clicks in Macintosh or Unix. HOWEVER, the world is "used to" and "dominated" (at the desktop GUI / applications / office-automation level) by Microsoft.

Microsoft has given us some good paradigms - like the disappearing icon or menu bar, and the familiar upper-right of window-border three boxes for close, menu-bar, or full-scren options.

However - IF - very BIG IF - Linux is going to compete for this desktop GUI / applications / office-automation market they need to do a few things:

• 1.) make a GUI that can be adopted by the Windozians without retraining
• 2.) make something that costs equal or less to admin than does Windows NT
• 3.) make something admins will WANT and SELL to both users & managers
• 4.) make something that is quick & dirty to install / config / train

AND - the hardest is to convince a basically un-educated, technically not terribly sophisticated populace that the "virtual desktop" is a way to enhance their productivity. AND _ that it's not too hard to pick-up without the manuals & the training sessions.

Here comes the rub, though, - both users & managers won't necessarly invest their time nor dollars in something that they perceive as new - especially if it involves a cost (either corporate or self-inflicted) at learning something new, they will want to hunt & peck & click til they discover new ways of working.

HOWEVER, there's a risk here, and it is simply this:

IF Linux / Gnome gets "too complicated" or "too sophisticated" for the average Joe user - then will we lose that market-segment because people perceive it to be too hard to learn it anew? in other words - will we "featurize ourselves out of the low-sophistication market"?

And/or is there anything the Linux community can do to convince managment that the benefits of using Linux (security, single-seat admin of large networks, inter-networking ease, etc.) are enough to overcome the obstacles of re-training thousands of Windows NT people on Linux / Gnome.

Gnome does DELIVER - many applications have very similar menu-structures, and a more uniform look & feel than in the past. Gnome has some absolutely stunning in form & function network, systems & other "admin tools" - all there for free, something we find on no other OS at all (though no other OSs are "free" like Linux).

It does have a downside, though - sometimes it crashes - it's not as stable as AfterStep. There is the familiar Ctrl-Alt-Bkspc to kill your X-server and get back to command-line unix - but when you re(startx) then you have to kill some of your applications' underlying processes(or kill them in command-line mode). Perhaps the next release of Gnome will be more robust. - I was losing Gnome about 2-3 times a week, but - hey - again - maybe it was the nut on the wheel.

Lastly - some lessons learned from an aging, grey-haired Admin type turned Manager:

During both my stints with Linx-Laptops & travelling extensively I learned a few things, that I might pass along:

Don't mix your "fiddle with the OS & new-tools/toys" with what makes you productive (editing files, reading e-mail) like I did, and a couple of times get myself into a real fix where I couldn't do what I get paid to do - which is, in essence, do e-mail at least once every 24 hours.

Do allow yourself a "backup" - for me that meant carrying two laptops - one to fiddle, learn, experiment and use to monitor networks & collect data & packets, the other is the "work" machine - to edit files, do e-mail and generally stay connected with my management and my customers. Now two laptops may be excessive - and I definately have a list to the left these days and my spine's more crooked than it was, BUT - that period of time was a tremendous learning process. IT taught me that:

• working on two OSs every day (regardless of Mac, Unix, WindowsNT, Psion, or whatever) really gives one a flexibility in thinking about productivity you don't get if you concentrate on a single OS
• have two laptops gives one GREAT Backups - ftp at the end of the day from laptop A to laptop B for redundancy
• a yearning for having the "best of both worlds" in terms of features & functions some of which are good for this - some good for that, and some good for nothing
• a recognition that, for the most part, for what we do in Systems Admin, that the command-line and the keyboard are still, in many many many cases significnatly more productive than the mouse. This is especially true if you deal mostly with text, like most of us do.

Many web-sites have a lot of graphics, and/.or color, which is fine, so do many applications. But in our admin realm, we still deal with text, more often than not, and that is best done on the keyboard, not with a mouse. - Productivity wise - the keyboard (perhaps with the track-pad ala NEC, Macintosh & Twin-head is a productivity gain that won't soon be seen in the desktop world. TrackPoint (rubber eraser) is still the dregs of pointing devices, and productivity wise a real detractor from actually getting the job done.

March 1999 status update (after 7 months):

Herein Mr. Bill sets down his thoughts on his experience with Linux on his most recent laptop, an NEC VersaSX (96MB / 3gig / 13.3" - 1024 x 768 LCD).

I got this machine in October of 1998, and while it took me a couple of weeks of e-mailing & futzing to get the screen working with the X-server (Xfree86) - that is not the fault of RedHat, nor Linux in general.  The machine was apparently a lot newer on the market than I had anticipated and "original" drivers had not been written.   The drivers I use now are not for this particular screen, however the thing has bullet-proof stability (except with Netscape 4.5) and it is amazingly fast, so who am I to complain.

My "design goals" when moving away from my treasured Macintosh PowerBook 5300 (the 3rd in a 6 year history of carrying Macintosh PowerBooks) were the following:
 

longer battery life (Mac's 4 batteries were old NiCad's and were down to 45 mins of life)

bigger RAM (max on Mac is 48MB , left little room for "swap" after OS & Netscape)

built-in CDROM (for reading CD-ROM documentation on my many airplane trips)

USB (is the future is in USB (or is it a chicken or the egg thing?))

less weight (PowerBook was about 7 pounds, the NEC is about 1/2 that)

migration away from Microsoft Applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. etc. etc .)

bigger screen (both physically as well as number of pixels( NEC: 13.3"  1024 x 768)

better integration with my server environment (closer to unix) - Now that's not to say that the Mac couldn't communicate - it could , but Unix  & the command line interpreter / shell environment is not "native" to the Macintosh - it is to Linux

fewer crashes - I was TIRED of being my own admin / config guru, and I was wasting a LOT of time re-booting & etc.

Now - a LOT of what you see here is hardware specific, but several items are a combination of OS & hardware, Reality is that the NEC-Linux laptop gave me everything I wanted, and more (it doesn't crash as often as MacOS (which was about once a week)).

On the "migration away from Microsoft" concept which was one of my greatest obstacles - one that had not proved solveable roughly a year earlier in the LinuxToshiba environment - but this (again) was no fault of Toshiba, Linux, but simply the "ApplixWare" filters for to/from Microsoft file formats were not yet "mature".

HOWEVER, as of March1999 (and in reality since I first starting using ApplixWare 4.4.1 in October 1998) they have been solved.   -

ApplixWare is an "office suite" software that, at least for Linux, is a single-user-license that retails for between $179 - $249 (US) depending on the purchasing currency, it's exchange rate, and the vendor.  I think I paid just under $200 US for my copy and that was while in the USA via a mail-order company.

I routinely receive e-mail attachments that are in Microsoft format, and I am able to "Shif-Click" on the blue-under-lined-text in the Netscape Messenger e-mail Client's window, save the file, then "Import" the file with the ApplixWare 4.4.1 tools (and have done so repeatedly for Word, Excel & PowerPoint(97) files).  This works about as flawlessley as any import filter software could or should.   There were a "few hiccups" last fall right after I got the ApplixWare and the RedHat 5.1 - but the AppixWare's Australian dealer / distributor has an EXCELLENT Technical support group, and since I'd purchased this copy of ApplixWare directly from Applix - the technical support was easy. (the previous version of ApplixWare I had was re-sold by RedHat - and so didn't get supported by Appix, - only by RedHat - and they had been pretty useless back then.

In any case if you're considering "dumping Microsoft applications on their serial port" - then please move ahead with all possible speed, and adopt ApplixWare.

Another ApplixWare benefit:

ApplixWare on any (unix-style) platform BUT Linux can be used via FlexLM and you can purchase whatever quantity of simultaneous licenses you desire.  I frequently run ApplixWare binary on my SparcStation in Sydney via the license-manager on my SparcStation(4) in HongKong.   So - if over a big network or a larger(than 1) group of users you're desiring to get away from having to offer a PC with MS-Office on it - or having to offer WinDD / Citrx for your ocassional-use Office-Suite users - then you could consider a network ApplixWare license.  see:  http://www.applix.com for more details.

Now - onto - more Linux - related observations:

Linux is dead-stable (at least on this box & with this user & this set of applications).  It has crashed only one time that I know of - and that was because I put it to sleep with only about 10% battery left and then left it for a whole weekend.  Other than that - no crashes in 7 months...

Netscape 4.5 is a USELESS piece of software under Linux 5.1 (but I don't think it's Linux's problem, I think it's Netscape (oh - and Netscape 4.04 wasn't much better...