Wednesday, November 29, 2006

New Users and Linux

Below is a copy of a mail I sent to the Ubuntu team today, following some discussion last night with some prospective new Linux users who were having problems.

I am currently attending an evening course relating to computing and have had
the opportunity to discuss Linux with a few of my fellow students.
Last night, two of them both commented to me on the same subject - connection
to the web in Ubuntu.
It seems both have a USB Thomson (Alcatel) Speedtouch 330 ADSL modem -
commonly issued out in the UK by ISPs - which of course come with a nice
Windows driver CD.
Although I have set up the Speedtouch in the past under Yoper Linux and
Mandriva, I decided to see for myself how things looked in Ubuntu for the new
user.
Note: I am a fairly long time Linux user, so I have tried to look at this from
the perspective of a totally new user attempting to set up a connection,
based on the comments I received last night.

So, upon plugging in the Speedtouch, nothing much happens. Something occurs
because the HD activity light comes on for a few seconds - but no wizard or
other clue on the screen as to what is happening.

Now, the more experienced user - perhaps one who has not experimented with a
Speedtouch before- would perhaps turn to the command line and see what clues
dmesg or lsusb give - and indeed they would probably discover that the
speedtouch firmware is not present!
dmesg output -
[17184911.764000] usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and
address 2
[17184912.800000] usb 1-2: reset full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and
address 2
[17184913.012000] usbcore: registered new driver speedtch
[17184913.132000] speedtch 1-2:1.0: no stage 1 firmware found!

But the dmesg command is not something a new user would know nor should be
expected to know!

Anyway, the new user is still faced with no sign of life from their modem. So
I guess they would look at System Settings if using Kubuntu (as I am on this
test). Under the network settings there is nothing to indicate the existence
of the Speedtouch modem.
If this is a second machine, or a dual boot (or maybe a live CD test), they
may decide to boot into Windows to check out the wiki and discover -
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UKSpeedtouchDSLHowTo
or
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsbAdslModem/SpeedTouch

which would point them in the right direction. However, the setting up of the
Speedtouch (or indeed many other connection devices - winmodems etc) is very
intimidating for the new user. No matter how well written (and believe me, it
is hard to write these kind of things - I have done it for the Yoper Linux
distro myself) - such things as downloading and unpacking firmware, editing
files called pap-secrets etc is not what a new user wants to do!

So the new user may end up deciding that Linux is not ready for the desktop
and resign themselves to Windows useage once again. Surely this is not what
the majority of us want?

Whilst I can appreciate that many of these "drivers" - the firmware etc for
these modems - is proprietary, it must be possible to speak to
Alcatel/Thomson about possibly including the firmware in later editions of
the Ubuntu family? I believe they do release the firmware and unofficially
sanction its use. Things have improved a lot on the winmodem front over the
last couple of years - I can remember the misery of getting those to work in
older distros, but they are now tending to be superceded by ADSL for many
users and here in the UK, the Speedtouch 330 and the BT Voyager are - I
presume - still the two modems of choice for ISPs to issue freely to their
customers.
I would be interested in any comments or views on this from the Ubuntu team. I
am happy to test/work with any moves to get the Speedtouch working in a "plug
and play" type manner for those users and have a Speedtouch available to test
if needed.


This is, I feel one of the major gripes for new users in Linux - the fact that many things simply do not "just work" . The fault lies of course with the hardware manufacturers, rather than the Linux distros - the drivers etc tend to be available only for Windows (and to a lesser degree, the Mac platforms). Yes, most of this hardware - including the Speedtouch mentioned above - can be made to work, but it does involve a lot of fiddling which may be difficult for the first time user of a non Windows platform.
Sadly, there are a small but very vocal number of Linux users who do not care. In recent weeks, I have been involved in discussions with some of the "zealots" of the community - the people who decry any "proprietary" software inclusion in Linux distros - e.g things like drivers for modems or graphics cards which are released as "closed source" binary packages by the hardware companies. Whilst in an ideal world we would all like to see totally free and open source software, this is simply not going to happen overnight. My view is that a proprietary driver for my graphics card, released free of charge by the manufacturer, is better than using the non-3d accelerated "totally free " version which these zealots would prefer me to use. Sorry - but if I wish to game for example, I need 3d acceleration!
During the discussion, I pointed out to one of these people that Linux would not become popular without these so called binary blobs (the proprietary software) and was told, and I quote -

"The purpose of the system is to be free software, the purpose of the
system is not to be popular."



That comment is one of several similar ones made during a discussion which went on for a few days on a mailing list.
I was surprised by it I must admit - but it shows that there are a number of people out there who would rather see Linux relegated to a tiny niche market than expand.
Ah well - I guess thats one of the joys of the Linux community - we can all have our views and I respect that, even if I disagree with that particular viewpoint myself.