I decided to take on the task of installing KDE (http://www.kde.org). Yeah, I know
that sounds crazy, but how daunting could it be? First, I
installed XDarwin (a version of xorg for Macs), kind of by accident (I
could have installed Apple X11). Next, I started installing
KDE (http://www.kde.org). Well, lo and behold, there are no binaries for KDE (http://www.kde.org) on
Darwin! Surely someone has installed KDE (http://www.kde.org) on Darwin before and
uploaded their binaries! I guess not. Fink started
downloading each kde tar.gz source and compiling it.

I left it alone for several hours until it stopped
unsuccessfully. After several times of giving up and even
installing Gnome (http://www.gnome.org), I went back to try KDE (http://www.kde.org) again. I let it go all
day and well into the night building from source.

Finally, I had a working KDE (http://www.kde.org) desktop. In full-screen mode, which
I prefer, it works pretty well. It has no problem with Apple’s
Airport Extreme wireless card, as installing Linux (http://www.linux.org) would have caused.

I had to enable anti-aliasing of fonts (can’t remember how at the moment), and everything was looking crisp.

What’s really cool is that, even in fullscreen, you can switch back and
forth between the KDE (http://www.kde.org) desktop and the Mac OS X desktop. I had to
change the key combo to get it to work (ctrl-option-F11).

There are, of course, some things that don’t work. I can’t get
Kmail to work, but I don’t really need it anyway. There is no
flash player for darwin, but I hate flash anyway. Then there are
just some packages that Fink doesn’t include, for whatever
reason. The whole kdemultimedia package is missing (K3B, Kaffeine,
etc.)Â I can use Mplayer as a video player, but there is no plugin
package for it either. One day I might try downloading the
sources and compiling them, but it’s not really crucial.

I am currently typing this in Firefox (http://www.spreadfirefox.com), on my KDE (http://www.kde.org) desktop, on Mac OS X,
on an iBook. How’s that for odd? Who’da thunk it?

I’m going to spare you my review of the iBook, because there have been
enough of those. Frankly, it works pretty well for most purposes.

Nevertheless, it has made me think about software freedom a little more
closely. What was Apple’s true goal in using BSD (http://www.bsd.org/) as their
base? What is their goal in sitting with the Free Software
Foundation and making sure that their Apple Public License was in line
with the FSF’s definition of free software? My thinking is that
Apple still doesn’t get it. They are still driven by greed and
probably took those actions with the hope of attracting open source
unix enthusiasts.Â

They did not release the source code for their developer toolkits (at
least not to anyone who did not sign a non-disclosure agreement), and
they certainly did not release the source code for their desktop
system, which could have benefitted the free software world
tremendously. Essentially, they did not release any of the
software that could have significantly benefitted the free software
community.

Instead, they’ve simply setup a BSD (http://www.bsd.org/)-branch called Darwin that is
open source. Â In doing so, they have a community of volunteer
developers, who make their software better without paying them a
cent. What are they really giving back to the community?

The real problem is that many people do not understand the difference
between free software and open source. Â Something can be open
source and not be free. Even Microsoft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft) has jumped on the open
source bandwagon, initiating their shared source programs.Â
They like the idea of having a community of developers who can help
make their software better, without having to pay them. But that
is not the point of free software. Â At the end of the day, you
still have activate your copy of Windows and only install it on one
computer. You cannot share the source code they’ve given you with
someone in say, Iran or China, for example. You’ll be sued and
possibly thrown in jail. That’s not freedom.

Free software means that I can take the source code, recompile it, put
my own logo on it, sell it to whomever I please, and give it away to
anyone or everyone. Free software means that the only limitation
on your freedom is that you cannot transform free software into
non-free software. It’s not about money. Many companies,
such as Redhat (http://www.redhat.com), have been very successful at selling free software.

As desktop KDE (http://www.kde.org) Appeal Desktop Project)
we will see more users turning to it. There are already more
Linux (http://www.linux.org) desktop users than Mac desktop users. When it starts to
compete with Windows, we will see more and more companies realizing
that they cannot compete unless they open the doors on their secret
labs. Â If it does not happen, they will simply cease to exist,
which is fine by me.

First let me clarify, that my experience was on an iBook, which
wouldn’t allow me to have administrative rights. Had I been able
to login as an admin, I could have easily downloaded all of the
necessary software that I needed. So, the point of this article
to not to say that Mac OS X cannot be made to work for the power
user. Â The point is that Linux (http://www.linux.org) works out of the box.

Late yesterday afternoon, I received a digital video of a lesson that
the principal wanted to be aired the next day. Simple enough, I
thought. Mac OS X has a superior video editing program, I
thought. Linux (http://www.linux.org)’s video editing programs just aren’t ready for
primetime, I thought, and iMovie is just so easy.

After completing a very nice editing job with iMovie, I was ready to
explore my export options. I knew from the beginning that this
iBook did not have a DVD burner, so my forethought led me to believe
that I would be able to burn a VCD. On Linux (http://www.linux.org), this is a simple
task that requires no additional downloads.

I soon discovered that iMovie/Quicktime will NOT burn a VCD out of the
box. After searching through many forums, most people said to use
Roxio’s Toast. Well, I can’t download and install anything
without admin rights, and Toast is not free anyway. Strike one.

I then had the bright idea that, Hey, I have my SuSE (http://www.suse.com) Linux (http://www.linux.org) laptop
sitting right next to me on this counter, why not send the dv file
through the LAN via ssh. Â My thought was that, since Mac OS X is
so cleverly based on BSD (http://www.bsd.org/), ssh would surely be enabled. And I’m
sure the ssh client is enabled, but I could not access the terminal
without admin rights! Who ever heard of such a thing!Â
Anyway, no big deal, I’d just use Safari. I knew Safari was based
on khtml, which is based on Konqueror. I figured, Hey, Safari
probably has all the features of Konqueror and then some, right? Â
Wrong.

Trying to do an sftp connect with Safari/Finder/etc proved pointless. Strike two.

I then decided to use FTP. I quickly installed an FTP server on
my linux laptop (because I don’t normally use ftp at home). No
problems on the Linux (http://www.linux.org) side. I used Finder to connect to the Linux (http://www.linux.org)
FTP server. I then thought, Yes! I’m so close. Now,
with all the Mac ease and sophistication, I’ll just drag and drop this
dv movie right into my /home folder on the Linux (http://www.linux.org) laptop. Â Â
ERROR, read only. What? I logged in as myself. How
could my own home folder be read only? I was sure it was
something on the Linux (http://www.linux.org) side. I set overgenerous permissions, I
checked the pure-ftpd config file. Finally, I even download
proftpd and compiled it from source, thinking that it must be a problem
on my Linux (http://www.linux.org) end.

Still nothing. Surely, I’m not that dumb. So, I checked the
mac forums again. Apparently, connecting via FTP with Macs is
always read-only. To actually upload something via FTP, you have
to, yep you guessed it, download (or buy) another program. Strike three.

Tasting defeat, I closed the iBook and waited until this morning when I
could just copy the edited dv back to the camera and play it through
the media retrieval system from the tape. No VCD.

So, like I said, Mac OS X might be good for power users after one has
spent quite a good deal of time downloading, finking, and compiling all
the necessary software, but why go through the trouble? So, I can
have widgets? I don’t think so. I can download FreeBSD (http://www.bsd.org/) and
have a working system with everything I need (including widgets).Â
Why use Apple’s WannaBSD (http://www.bsd.org/)?

If you want to play around on your computer with cute eye candy, get an
Apple. If you want to do some serious computing, you can still
get an Apple, but make sure you install Linux (http://www.linux.org) on it.

This is a test of BloGTK that I just installed on my laptop.

Test

Test