Software Freedom in Perspective - Part 3 - GNU/Linux in Argentinian Desktops/Laptops
Response to The bulshitification of freedom
IN THE opening part and the last part we shared Daniel's thoughts on freedom in the context of Argentinian politics at times of crisis. Tonight we move on to the next part - the portion in which he comments on the desktop:
The desktop
2006 was also the year I saw another glimpse of “the future”. Some partner at my job tried a live version of some linux distro as his work computer, but it had something very important to show us all: this guy installed Compiz, and we could all testify the dark and unspeakable power of the cube desktop. People was all “OH!” and “WOW!” and “INCREDIBLE!”, but I was just like “meh”: I was already thinking about a 3D desktop many years before that, and my idea was much better. Yet, I confess it had its appeal though.
And as much as I loved the web and worked with it and for it, the desktop status-quo was solid as stone. So we all kept using Visual Studio, given that programming in any non-Microsoft language had absolute no benefit over MS tools for MS desktops. Maybe Java, just for doing some web applet? Nah… Java was very ugly compared to flash on that front. However, there was a struggle with Java in the desktop too.
By 2001 or 2002, can’t remember well, Microsoft stopped its support for “Visual J++” -their JScript-esque approach to Java-, and actually also to the whole Visual Studio 6, which by its next version changed dramatically: it was the birth of .NET. I was a self-taught Visual Basic programmer, so I had some trouble gasping the rigorous OOP guidelines both Java first and .NET later pretended us to understand and to implement. It felt overbureucratic and dogmatic, forcing us to do lots of extra work without any clear benefit. Also, it all reeked like fatware, like change for the sake of change again -remember the tiresome jump between W98, ME, 2K, and XP-, and that was a shared feeling between both workers and bosses around here. Add to that the economic crisis, where we couldn’t afford to be changing computers just like that, and you have a perfect ecosystem for technological conservatism: we all kept using VB6 for as long as we could, forever even if we could get away with it.
But of course we didn’t had a very strong voice in the course of that from Argentina in the grand stage of things, and other stuff also kept changing versions: from players and their codecs to database engines, also going through the never stable MS Office, and lots of other stuff. The pressure to consider .NET was intense year after year. And by 2008 I had enough: it was about the third or fourth time Microsoft pretended to change the way we should connect to a database -from ADO to DAO to then something else I really don’t have intention to remember-, and this time I had to change computer in order to just install the newer Visual Studio. By that time the web made already normal to also use ssh -putty, of course- against some hosting server where you had php and mysql, so tired of Microsoft forcing me to change the way I was supposed to work I finally took another look at that “linux” thing.
Truth is, my main problem was with my ability to keep my custom libraries working on newer use cases. I was productive using the code that I was keeping and improving since the 90s, and by that time even other people depended on it. And this is something that needs to be carefully considered, as it’s a two-sided coin. On one side, I had to keep my job to pay the bills and sustain my life, so I couldn’t suddenly just not-know how to do my job, while my software had to also work on newer operating systems and/or using different newer technologies. And on the other side, other people also depended from that in some way: my coworkers, my family, and so on.
For example, I remember a coworker of mine was pregnant, and she had to take a license, and I can’t remember if this was also during an avian flu epidemic here, but the thing is I made the job’s systems accessible remotely and so we could do our job from our homes by just installing our custom software tools that I myself was developing. It was very rare back in the day to work from home, but it was possible thanks to my work and my ideas, so good stuff could happen to me and to others thanks to that.
So, second important note: checking out “linux” wasn’t about “linux” at all. The thing was that Microsoft made me face job insecurity. It wasn’t about liking or not liking their newer tech: it was about sustaining my life, and even the life of others, and Microsoft constantly trying to get his newer stuff in the way. This is, again, as it happened before with that first job interview during the browsers war, nothing trivial at all. And so choosing to take a look at “linux” was a BIG DEAL. I was feeling SO BAD by that time that actually took a look at the alternatives to Microsoft instead of keep being conservative about it. I actually COULD NOT change to “linux”, as I was not productive using it: that change was a project more than a simple change, trying to eventually stop depending on Microsoft to live, and a project I was doing with more desperation rather than passion or knowledge.
The big deal about “linux” back then was that it suppossedly worked better in older hardware -no need to change my pc-, it had more stable jobs -and better paid-, and had some tech still in use kinda older than myself -which is actually a selling point when you’re tired of dealing with constant forced changes-.
So I had a CD writter, and downloaded some LIVE ISOs to try out. The best one was Dyne:Bolic. It was my distro of choice. It was beautiful, had great software installed, and worked fantastic. Except that out of the live cd, the network didn’t worked, for reasons I wasn’t able to diagnose. Today I would fix that myself for sure, but back in the day it was a huge problem. So eventually also tried Ubuntu, it was kinda uglier but close enough, and this time the network worked fine. So I started to do my web stuff in my home with Ubuntu, and that way was able to get familiar with the lots of details about changing from Windows to “linux”. Never found on any Dyne:Bolic community how to fix that network problem, but Ubuntu communities were massive in comparison, and had full of tutorials and people available to make the path to “linux” quite pleasant.
It took a while though. Job’s was one thing, but there was also videogames. Wine was actually working quite well back then, but didn’t had the community muscle it has today, and so making stuff work could take some weeks or months. Then you had the drivers issue: linux gpu drivers sucked at the time. So had dual boot for a few years.
So tried to implement “linux” in my job’s office. It would had the benefit of being free (as in gratis), and I believed that could make non-linux-available stuff with wine as I already made with a game or two. Also, tuning stuff with wine require some windows knowledge, which I actually had, so I even helped some people online. I felt pretty secure about being handling this “linux” thing. And what happened was that my boss hated it. He had this own business where I worked, but he also had some IT director position in some big argentinian enterprise, where they where “Microsoft Partners”. That guy was the first person anti-linux I ever met. That and other stuff going on eventually led me to change jobs to another one where I could work with linux.
By 2010 I did that change. The interviews for the new job were about web techs, and I knew what I was talking about. They asked me if I had any trouble working with “linux”, and I said it was exactly what I was looking for. So I got the job, and it immediately got harder than I expected: It wasn’t just “linux”, it was entirely working over ssh. We had some dumb and minimal terminals where we could not install anything, and had to connect to an ssh environment where we would all use vi to work with perl. I was using “linux” for a year or two, but nothing like this: I was using “desktop linux”, and expected to work the same. But here I didn’t even had the ability to install some GUI text editor or browse files: it was natural for me to use console as I grew up with DOS, but I just didn’t knew the software this time; I didn’t even knew how to search a file in this systems without using some GUI. Had Firefox to test some web stuff, and a micro pc to connect to a windows server remote desktop if I ever had to test something in IE. I also had to be very disciplined in my programming: proper code guidelines, commit guidelines for a subversion server, had to write tests -a thing never did before-, had peer reviews… I knew web alright, but that was something else for me entirely. I even barely knew Perl at all outside of some tutorials.
It was horrible. I lasted six excruciating months where my self-steem was completely demolished and had to desperately change jobs again, this time using windows and all the old tech I was really productive with. It was about both economic and spiritual survival.
I kept using Ubuntu in my home, getting better and better at its inner details and learning all I could, hoping someday I would be able to have “a linux job”. Had a netbook by that time, and Ubuntu Netbook Remix was quite cool in it, so by the time Canonical launched its “convergence” initiative with Unity DE and Ubuntu Touch, I was fully engaged in the idea.
Daniel explains why many years ago many PCs shipped with GNU/Linux and that there was an economic reason for it. At least in Argentina. â–ˆ