Seeping Matter

I hobbled in to work today, because I injured my knee over the weekend.

I work with this guy, let’s call him Newsom, who really doesn’t have a lot of patience for my sense of humor.  This is kind of fun for me.  So when I limped into my morning meeting, Newsom asked, “What’d you do?”

“I injured my knee this weekend,” I said.

“How?”

“I blew out my knee upgrading my computer to Windows 7.”

Of course this made Newsom mad because he thought I was trying to be funny.  But actually, I wasn’t lying.  Of course, I was trying to be funny; I’m always trying to be funny.  But I really did hurt my knee upgrading my home computer to Windows 7.

You surely remember me blogging before about building my home PC, so of course you remember how I built it with two 750 GB 7200 RPM drives.  I used one of these drives for the OS and programs and the other for data.  Well, about a month ago I got a corrupt registry file that I fixed, caused by a bad sector on the disk.

As you know, getting a bad disk sector is like having someone move into your neighborhood who puts up Halloween lights.  It starts out as just the one, but before long everyone is doing it, and now the whole neighborhood is ruined.

So, knowing that I was going to be upgrading to Windows 7 soon, I bought a new 320 GB 7200 RPM drive to replace my bad disk but set it aside until the upgrade day came.

Which was last Saturday.  So I pulled the PC out from under the desk, sat down on the ground, and proceeded to pull the old hard drive out and put the new one in, and then I started the install.

It started up fine, but after a bit it said that it couldn’t use my ASUS DVD drive because it didn’t have the correct driver for it.  Upgrading the firmware didn’t help, and ASUS didn’t offer any newer drivers.

Honestly, that thing never worked right anyway.  So we headed down to Best Buy to get a new one.

I walked quickly through Best Buy and found me a nice HP DVD writer drive.  As a bonus, it’s a SATA drive, not IDE, which is excellent since I had two open SATA slots.  And it said it worked with Vista, which gave me confidence it would also work well for Windows 7.  So I picked that one up.

I noticed walking around Best Buy that I was feeling a bit of a popping sensation in my knee every time I flexed it.

When I got home, I sat down on the floor again and opened the PC to install the new drive.  I started the install again and everything went fine.  But when I went to stand up, I felt a very intense, sharp, burning pain in my knee, and it has been like that ever since.

I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I now realize quite clearly:  This is ASUS’s fault.  Some might claim this is Microsoft’s fault.  I’ve thought about this, though, and I know quite clearly that it is not Microsoft’s fault.  This is primarily because I work there.  And of course, it isn’t my fault.  I mean, seriously!

Yeah, ASUS is to blame.

(By the way, the Windows 7 install went without a hitch after that.  And, coming from a fan of Linux and Mac desktops, I have to say that Windows 7 is really excellent.)

UPDATE:  Diagnosis is complex tear in right medial meniscus plus partially torn medial collateral ligament.  Surgery to come.

I got an interesting e-mail the other day from Novell:

Please Note: You have been sent this email because you are listed as an administrator of one or more Novell Forge projects.

When Novell Forge was first launched Novell recognized the need for a site dedicated to providing hosting services to a growing number of software development projects, many supporting our open source initiatives. Novell Forge quickly grew and was soon providing these service to nearly 1000 such projects. Demand for new projects has all but disappeared during the past two years while a number of additional project hosting options have begun that can provide a similar set of services to those of Novell Forge.

Now that there are many other options, Novell can turn its focus to other areas and pass the project hosting responsibilities to these other dedicated hosting sites. Novell will be decommissioning the Novell Forge system on December 15, 2009.

This is interesting to me because it is not entirely true.  I should know, because without me there would never have been a Novell Forge.

It’s a bold statement, I know.  It’s one I’m happy to explain.

I came to Novell from IBM in 2000.  It didn’t take long to realize that Novell’s developer story and strategy, or rather the complete lack thereof, was (and still is) a significant weakness in their overall execution.  People buy a computer operating system in large part because of the applications that they can run on it; if a business wants to run a CRM system, they’ll want to be sure that whatever platform they buy will run a CRM suite that is acceptable to them.  This is why having a strong developer strategy is crucial to platform providers, and almost everyone seems to understand this.  Novell certainly should; NetWare owned the x86 server market in the 80′s and early 90′s until Microsoft entered that market.  Initially, the Microsoft offering was not necessarily better than NetWare in terms of stability or performance, but Microsoft definitely outgunned Novell when it came to applications.  It was so much easier to create applications for Microsoft’s platform that their supported portfolio dwarfed Novell’s, and that was a significant key to dethroning Novell’s dominant position in the x86 server market in the mid 90′s.

Anyway, when I came to Novell and learned this, I thought that probably Novell’s Developer Services organization just didn’t know what to do (a mistaken analysis, I later learned) and if I worked there I could probably fix everything.  I was pretty young, arrogant, and naive then.  But in 2002 I was presented an opportunity to work in Developer Services and I took it.

One of the first things I was asked to do was to provide support to customers programming to eDirectory.  I decided to try to learn more about how to do this the same way our third-party developers would, by using the resources that were available online.  I found what appeared to be our authoritative how-to-program-to-eDirectory tutorial, got most of the way through my sample app, and got stuck.  Finally I started asking questions.  I quickly learned that everything I’d been doing was wrong; the authoritative documentation was incorrect.  It used an out-of-date and deprecated API and was no longer considered best practice.  It was some two or three years out of date, but hadn’t been changed yet because changing the documentation was just too painful.

I felt this situation was unacceptable.  We needed the freedom to create an abundance of rich and helpful developer content and to have it published and updated freely and frequently.  We needed to be able to do this without going through drawn-out and tedious approval processes and staging phases for even minor edits.  We needed to be able to continuously deliver not only whitepapers but tutorials and sample applications.  I felt that what was needed was a complete overhaul of Novell’s developer site, converting it into a web application where administrators (Novell Developer Services employees) could update the content and have complete control over what information was being provided to our developer community.

I discussed this with a colleague and my manager, and then we called a formal meeting to discuss this proposal.  I think there were four Developer Services employees in the room.  As we discussed the reasons to do this, other advantages surfaced.  A key issue was that, in Novell’s then-existing developer forums, many Novell developers were already contributing to solving each other’s problems, including answering each other’s questions and even sharing code, from small snippets to complete applications.  We realized that instead of top-down support flowing from company to customer, what our customers really preferred was community support with Novell as an active participant.  As we discussed this, one of my colleagues suggested that instead of writing the web app I suggested, we should do a project hosting site, like SourceForge.  Such a site would allow us to participate as a community with our users to exchange sample code, documentation, tutorials, and other content.  Novell Forge was born.

As we began to socialize the idea, we found out that a separate group within Novell had been tasked with creating a project hosting site for internal company use.  When we both became aware of each other’s goals, the synergies were obvious and it seemed apparent that we should try to coordinate our efforts.  Interestingly, we had human resources to give to the project but lacked funding for capital expenses; the other group had capital expense budget but lacked human resources.  Ultimately we agreed that, as my team developed the Novell Forge solution, we would also develop an internal-use version of the site to meet the goals of this team; in exchange, they would help us to get the hardware we needed to host Novell Forge.

Around the time Novell Forge was launched and completed, a number of people involved directly or indirectly from that team claimed credit for having launched Novell Forge.  Some of them were quite handsomely rewarded by the company, presumably at least in part due to their claimed credit for the site.  Others still claim in public that they are responsible for the site even though they had absolutely nothing to do with the conceptualization, proposal, approval, or implementation.

Meanwhile, those of us who did come up with the idea, who did make the business case and get the approval and deliver the site, well, we pretty much had to settle for a brief pat on the back from Novell.  Or did we even get that?  Anyway.

Novell Forge, despite its pretty lame name and humble beginnings, was actually quite well received by the press.  It earned kudos for Novell from Dave Kearns of NetworkWorld, which was not exactly easy to come by.  And as Novell tried to reinvent itself with an open source focus, purchasing such open source companies as Ximian and SUSE Linux, the existence of Novell Forge was frequently cited as evidence that Novell was serious about an open source strategy (example).  Interest in the site grew quickly and it soon hosted over 1000 external projects, as stated in the e-mail I quoted above.  My team was excited about the traction the site was gaining.  We had many, many ideas for how to grow the site and make it an even more useful tool for software developers.  We had more work to do than time to do it, and it was neat to feel like what we were doing had an impact to Novell.

Even though Novell didn’t seem to care about it.

Oddly, in spite of what my team thought was a pretty obvious success, we could not get approval for funding to continue to promote the site.  The team was gradually reduced in size, again and again.  When people would leave, their vacancies would languish unfilled until that position was eventually lost.  The team was instructed to not develop the site but instead to work on undefined new work in other undefined areas, wasting many person-years of development effort.  The community could sense Novell’s lack of investment and they lost interest.  Novell Forge became a laughing stock.  It was used as evidence of what a company does when they “just don’t get” open source, when it was ironically used as evidence of Novell’s good faith not too long before.

Things finally came to the point where there was only one employee assigned to maintain the site, along with other unrelated duties (I, and the rest of the team, had by now been reassigned to different projects).  Novell Forge was completely unsupported by Novell’s IT group, leaving instead the support of the site to this one individual.  I recall an occasion where the site went down over the weekend and was out for a couple of days.  It was obvious that the site was in demand, because users made Novell aware of the outage quite quickly.  However, Novell was not willing to pay for 24/7 support for the site, so instead of being brought back online right away, the site was down for the entire weekend until that resource came in to work the next Monday.  My manager brought this to the attention of our team with the insistence that we address it.  He stated that from that point on, that one employee would be the primary off-hours maintenance person for the site, and I would be the backup.

I then asked if Novell was going to start reimbursing me for my cell phone bill.  He said no.  I asked if they were going to buy me an additional cell phone, pay that bill, and also pay me extra to carry that additional phone.  He said no.  He said they would just list my personal cell number in the emergency contact list, and would call it if there were an emergency.  I stated that in that case I maintained the right to not answer.  He stated that I would have to answer, that it was my assignment.  I claimed that Novell could not require me to answer my personal cell phone if I’m the one paying the bill.  I then reminded him that in Novell’s support organization, at least at that time, people that were expected to respond 24/7 had their cell phone bill paid by Novell, were paid an additional amount to be on call, and were paid an additional amount if they actually took a call and worked that call during off hours.  I said, “If the site is important to Novell, that is what Novell should do.  If the site is important, it should be important enough that Novell is willing to pay in order to maintain uptime and keep our customers satisfied.”

Novell was not willing to pay.

I shortly moved on to a different team within Novell, and the other guy left the company altogether.  I’m not sure who has been maintaining the site since then.

What Novell chooses to do with their money and their human resources is their business.  This isn’t meant as a criticism; I don’t claim to have the right experience to criticize their decision to strangle Novell Forge to death.  This is simply meant as a statement of fact, and the facts are pretty clear:

• You get what you pay for.
• Novell did not pay for Novell Forge by giving due reward and recognition to those who truly brought this idea to the company.
• Novell did not pay for Novell Forge by feeding its success with additional funding, promotion, and development.
• Novell did not pay for Novell Forge by giving it the kind of support and maintenance that its customers expected.
• The customers of Novell Forge were initially enthusiastic, but grew to sense the lack of commitment by the company and thus stopped participating.
• Novell Forge died as a result.

Novell Forge may be planned for decommission this December, but it died years ago.  And don’t think you can fool me, Novell.  Novell Forge did not die because of lack of interest by the user community.  Novell Forge died because you did not care about it.  Whether that was a good decision or not is not for me to decide, but please, Novell, at least be honest with your community.  We did not kill Novell Forge — you did.

UPDATE:  Dan Reese, a member of my team back then, corroborated this in his blog.

Setting up a new computer is one of those things that should be enjoyable, but is mostly just tedium.  That’s because there really isn’t a single OS out there that does for me everything I want in a single distribution – at least not one I’ve found.  In truth Linux comes closest, but in the case of Linux, there are still some things (like Motocross Madness 2, one of the best PC games ever) that you just don’t get there.

And don’t start giving me lectures on Mac.  Same problem applies there.  Even without games, I still have pretty much the same setup overhead for Mac as anything else.  Macs are great, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t write Mac software anymore, so I don’t have to be showing the Steve-love for a while now, until I start doing Mac development again.

Anyway, I’m willing to bet that at my new job my development machine will be a Windows machine – it’s just a hunch I have.  So here’s the rundown of setting the machine up for usefulness and effectiveness.

Basics
	First is Firefox. Firefox is a great web browser, fast and pretty reliable.  Once you’ve got Firefox installed, you’ll want to grab a handful of Firefox plugins.  When I set up next, I’ll be trying Google Gears, AdBlock, FireBug, Better GMail/GCal/GReader, Tab Mix Plus, FaviconizeTab, Fission, and GreaseMonkey of course.  I keep IE around because sometimes I need it, but I make Firefox my default browser.
	In addition to e-mail, I use calendaring and news readers (RSS/Atom) almost every day. A lack of decent free options in the past got me used to using Google for all of this stuff. But if I were to decide to use rich applications for these purposes instead, I’d give Thunderbird, Sunbird, and RSSOwl a try.
	Next is OpenOffice.org. I know, most people use Microsoft Office.  I realize it is better.  I realize it is more powerful.  I realize it is more ubiquitous.  It is also expensive for my purposes.  Stick with Office if you like it.
	For instant messaging I use Pidgin. Since I’ve got friends using MSN/Hotmail, Google, and Yahoo! among others, Pidgin gives me a great way to be able to chat with all of them in a single IM client.  And it has some great plugins that I’m eager to try out.
Multimedia
	For listening to and organizing music, I’ve been hearing a lot about Songbird and I think I’ll give that a try.  I don’t buy music from iTunes and I don’t have an iPod (I know, lame).  If I did I’d go with iTunes.  Although, I do like iTunes Genius feature, so I might go with iTunes just for that.
	When it comes to audio editing, Audacity is where it’s at.  I’ve used Audacity to make ringtones from some of my music MP3s, to edit and mix recorded WAV files into MP3 files, and even for my son’s science project to examine the differences between sound waves.  A must-have.
	In doing research for this blog post, I ran across these apps:  MediaCoder for translating and saving media files, Handbrake for ripping copies of your DVDs to formats for your handheld, and ImgBurn for creating DVDs.  So I haven’t actually used them yet, but I can hardly wait to try them out.  Managing video files and recordings is something I built my computer to do, but finding the software to get the job done has been tough.  Hopefully I’ll find the answer among these tools.
	DoubleTwist is a new application I’m eager to try for managing the transfer and synchronization of files from the PC to your handheld device.  I’ve got a really cool little Sony Ericsson phone that is supposed to work flawlessly with DoubleTwist; can’t wait to find out.
	I’ve used The Gimp for my photo editing for years and, for me, it removes any need for me to buy Photoshop.  I’m sure Photoshop users would disagree.  But hey, I’m not a graphic artist.  I’m just a guy who needs to edit photos from time to time, even for my job, and can’t justify the expense of Photoshop.  Lately, friends have been telling me about Paint.NET, and what they are telling me is that they like it better than The Gimp.  That’s a high standard in my opinion.  I’ll have to check it out.
	Ah – where would I be without Steam?  Steam’s client is free to download and serves as the launching pad for most of the games I play.  A lot of games I really like, such as Audiosurf and World of Goo, I first found out about via Steam.  Every time I launch it it seems there are more titles and more publishers available through Steam.
Security
	Truecrypt is a highly regarded application for encrypting data on your PC – one I’ve been meaning to try for a long time and plan to soon.  I know, I should do this.  Eraser, on the other hand, is one I’ve used for a long time.  It makes it really easy to truly erase files from your computer by performing multiple overwrite passes to keep your data from being restored after you’ve intentionally deleted it.
	For managing the applications that launch automatically when your PC starts, it is hard to beat Mike Lin’s Startup Monitor and Startup Control Panel applications.  Startup Monitor runs discretely in the background, and just notifies you when some application has requested to be run at startup, allowing you to decide whether to accept this or not.  Startup Control Panel offers a simple view of the applications already scheduled to run at startup, and allows you to disable them.  Great for improving boot times and free resources, not to mention helpful in keeping your desktop secure from rogue apps running in the background doing who knows what.
	Spybot Search & Destroy is essential for keeping your PC clear of spyware and adware that want to do evil things behind your back.  It integrates with most common web browsers, including Firefox, to help lock them down to avoid evil cookies and other tracking software from sending information about you to others.
	If you are up for trying a free PC antivirus application, ClamAV is the answer for you. Okay, I haven’t used it and probably won’t for a while because I’ve already got a license for a security suite.  But if you are in the market it is probably worth a try.  It certainly could not be worse than BitDefender (that steaming pile).
Utilities
	Daemon Tools is a simple utility that can mount local disk images as filesystems.  Mac does this very easily, of course, with .dmg files, but you need a tool like Daemon Tools to do it on a PC.  Use Alcohol 120% to create mountable disk images from game CDs, for example, which will enable you in most cases to play PC games by mounting the disk image in Daemon Tools instead of inserting the CD.  Or use it to mount ripped DVD ISOs when you are converting them to a format you can use on your handheld.
	Many years ago, Novell had this really great product called iFolder that you used to synchronize files between multiple computers.  Like many Novell products, it was a really awesome product that nobody ever heard about because Novell can’t figure out how to market anything.  But Novell employees know about iFolder and most of them are like me – once I got used to using it I could hardly stand to not have it. When I left Novell this was a big big problem for me. Finally Dropbox came along to address my problem.  Dropbox allows you to do what iFolder did years ago – synchronize files between multiple computers.  Dropbox is not nearly as full featured as the latest iFolder 3, but at least this one you can use without being a Novell employee.
	As I’ve said before, once I started working for Mozy I realized that online backup should be considered essential for anyone.  I really don’t know why a person wouldn’t use Mozy.  Even if you are backing your data up on a second drive, USB drive, thumb drive, etc. you should be using Mozy, to automatically provide a secure backup copy of your data in a separate location – for recovery from fire damage, for example. Having worked at Mozy for the past 14 months, I can vouch for their solid technology which is, in my opinion, the best in the industry without question.  You need online backup, so why not use Mozy?  You can back up 2GB for free or as much as you want for $5/month.
	For archiving and compressing infrequently-used data, I recommend 7Zip. It will unpackage almost anything and will package in the most common formats, including Linux-compatible TAR/GZ formats.  It’ll also do encryption and self-extracting packages in some formats.  In other words, it’s pretty much everything you want in an archiving tool, for no cost.
	I haven’t tried Everything yet but I plan to soon.  This is a highly rated desktop search engine along the lines of Spotlight for Mac.  Windows search I mostly use as last resort, but if this is anything like Spotlight I’ll use Everything all the time.
	Freemind is a note-taking application that I’m eager to try.  I’ve been needing one of these for some time, so I’m anxious to give it a shot.
	I consider Cygwin an essential PC utility.  Since I’m a lot more familiar with the Linux shell than the PC DOS-style shell, Cygwin provides me with a command prompt I’m comfortable with.  Cygwin comes with a large number of helpful tools, like the GNU C complier suite, ssh/scp, wget, and others.
	I’d also consider SQLite an essential PC utility.  SQLite is a very simple file-based SQL engine that is very useful and freaking awesome.  I’d recommend a PC utility for using SQLite but there really isn’t a good one.  Probably your best option is SQLiteSpy.
Application Development
	I’ve said before that if a person’s going to learn to write software, I think the two most important languages to learn are C and Python.  Since you already installed Cygwin you probably already have a C compiler on your machine, so now you need to get Python installed. In addition to Python, Ruby seems pretty interesting and one you should definitely look at, in addition to Python (and not instead of Python, not yet anyway). You should note that if you plan to do Python and/or Ruby development, you’ll probably want to get used to doing that natively on your machine, and not via Cygwin.  So don’t depend on the Cygwin Python and Ruby interpreters – use the native interpreters instead. If you must, use Java.  Sometimes there’s stuff you just can’t do without it.
	Ah, Eclipse:  the mother of all development environments.  Having worked closely with the Eclipse foundation and been part of starting an Eclipse project myself, I have a strong affinity for Eclipse.  For Java development, I’d consider it one of the best, if not the best, Java IDE available.  It’s also a great free alternative for a lot of other languages and application types.  Get not only the base Eclipse, but the plugins for C/C++, PHP, RCP/Plugin development, Data Tools, Test and Profiling Tools, and Web Tools. And if you aren’t going to get the Eclipse Python plugin, you’ll want to install Eric instead.  Eric is a pretty good little Python IDE that works on both Linux and Windows.  You’ll need PyQt for Eric to work I think. If you are really wanting to do development in C# and .NET instead, but don’t have the .NET platform, you could try SharpDevelop.  I haven’t tried it though, so I can’t say – and in my new job, I’ll be doing my C# development in Visual Studio, which is certainly better.
	If you want to try out simple GUI programming, especially cross-platform GUI programming, try wxWidgets.  You can program directly to wxWidgets in C or C++, or in Python using wxPython.  If you think GUI programming with wxPython is your cup of tea, you might also want to try Boa Constructor, which is a good Python development environment with GUI building tools.
	For web development on a Windows PC, I love WAMP.  This simple bundle offers Apache, MySQL, and PHP all together in a single package that you can easily start and stop all as one. (This is the part where the Mozy PHP bigots comment to tell me how rotten PHP is, and where they tell me how much better Perl is, and where I nod and pretend to agree in order to keep the peace.  So bring it on.) WAMP is great for your typical free-style web application development, especially if you are building from an existing framework, which is quite likely to be built in PHP.  If you’re building from scratch, however, you would probably want to strongly consider Ruby on Rails, in which case you’ll want to install RubyGems to get Rails and other goodies. Finally, I hear Kompozer is a pretty good HTML-style editor and page builder, and I might give that a shot sometime.

My inbox is overflowing with emails from people asking, “Matt, how can I be more like you?”

Honestly, that is only sort of true.  Some of the emails say, “Lose 30 pounds in 12 minutes!”  And some say, “I am the prince of Nigeria!”  And some say, “I am lonely and looking for a purely physical relationship!”

More honestly, that pretty much comprises the bulk of the email I receive.  Nobody has actually asked how to be more like me, strangely enough.  But that day is surely coming, and since I am a computer scientist, or at least since USU says so, I could start with a list of books that you can read if you want to become a true nerd and rule the world the way I do, which is to say, not.

(So, in fairness, I haven’t actually read all of these or owned them. There are some that I haven’t read, but I read one like it; those are marked in blue. There are some that I haven’t read but think I should; those are marked in gray. There are some that where I read one like it, but I want to read that particular one – they are bluish-gray. And I didn’t list the probably 40-50 CS books I own or have owned and read that are not shown here. So cut me a break.)

Math and English

First off, in order to be a good software engineer and computer scientist, you have to be a good mathematician and a good writer.  Sorry.  You simply can’t be a competent software engineer without a solid mathematical background, and you can’t be an effective one if you can’t figure out how to express your ideas clearly in writing.

Learning to Program

Your next step is to learn basic programming concepts.  In my opinion, you should learn two languages at this point:  Python and C.  Python is a good beginning language, very easy to create real applications, easy to learn, and very versatile and useful in the real world.  C is the fundamental systems programming language.  Knowing Python and C will allow you to program just about anything and gives you a good fundamental background.

Computer Science Fundamentals

Having learned how to write basic computer programs, now is time to get into the science of computer science.

Programming Technique and Methodology

How to write software well.

General Programming

Two other languages you might want to know are C++ and Java.  C++ is much maligned, but widely used, especially for systems applications, games, and other high-performing software applications.  Java is an abomination in every sense of the word.  But it is also very popular and good to know.  If you are going to learn Java, you should also learn JNI, so you can get from Java back to C and get some real work done.

Systems Programming

If you are going to do systems programming, you’ve got to know the specifics of how to program to the environment in question.  It’s worth noting here that the UNIX books basically cover POSIX, which applies not only to UNIX but BSD, Linux, and Mac as well to varying reasonable degrees.  I’ve also included an internals book for the big three platforms (Windows, Linux, and Mac).  And if you are going to program for Mac, you will probably want to learn another language: Objective-C.

UNIX/Linux
Windows
Mac OS X

Other

Every good software engineer should clearly understand open source; hence The Cathedral and the Bazaar. You will find you are missing out on a number of inside jokes if you don’t read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And everyone should read The Code Book, simply because it is so interesting.

Image Credits: amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com

Some time ago I had a Linux server set up at home and it was working pretty well, other than the wireless NIC. It had a Belkin 54g Wireless Network Card F5D7000 in it with the RT2500 chipset. I had been able to get it working on my wireless network, sort of, sometimes. But it was flaky enough that it wasn’t good enough to consider my server usable, so I abandoned it.

So this past week I decided it was time to get that thing running. It’s good timing because I just built a new PC not too long ago and I kept a lot of the old parts from the old PC that were still potentially salvageable, like the memory and hard drives and case. So I cobbled together a new, better server with the best parts from both old PCs. And now that openSUSE 11 is out, I decided to give it a try.

Well, all I can say is, if only it were as easy to configure wireless on Windows. openSUSE 11 detected the card type and chipset of my wireless card and preinstalled it as a network interface. All I had to do was enter in the access credential and it worked like a charm.

Bottom line: SUSE Linux really is awesome. Remember, I don’t work for Novell anymore. I don’t own any Novell stock (seriously, what kind of an investor do you think I am???) I have nothing to gain from promoting SUSE Linux really, other than to tell you that it really is a great all-around distribution. Great server. Great desktop. Really.

This is really interesting to me because some guys at work just the other day asked me, almost casually, what Linux desktop I would recommend. I told them it would depend; that for a new user I might recommend Ubuntu, but for me without question it would be openSUSE. The immediate response was, “Well, that’s just because you used to work for Novell.”

Actually, I’ve been using Linux for a pretty long time. My first Linux install was dual-booting on a Pentium 100 with Windows 95. I managed to squeeze a Caldera installation onto a portion of that 1 GB hard drive, which was pretty big back almost 13 years ago when I was doing this. I remember many hours spent configuring that video card so X would work.
Since then I’ve used a lot of Linux in various times. I was a pretty loyal Red Hat guy until Novell bought SUSE back in, ah, whenever that was. I changed from Red Hat to SUSE at that point, and suddenly realized what I was missing.

Novell’s problem is leadership, plain and simple. That, and they refuse to admit that their problem is leadership – which is a circular problem. That’s not just me talking – Peter Drucker also wrote that if a business is not performing, the management – the leadership – of that business should be held responsible.
Technology has NEVER been Novell’s problem. Never in my life have I worked on more talented teams than at Novell. They have excellent technologists and generally excellent products, if management gets out of the way long enough to let the engineers create a quality product (for example, eDirectory, iFolder, or iChain). Of course, SUSE was already a quality software distribution before Novell even showed up, and openSUSE continues to be quality.

It is unfortunate, then, that I find that my career, my experience, is suddenly tarnished because of the fact that I worked at Novell. Novell consistently underperforms, but that isn’t because of me or the other individual contributors there. And it doesn’t mean that Novell’s products are not any good – especially openSUSE, which has primarily just a financial relationship with Novell.

Don’t be like that. Don’t discount ex-Novell-employees, their experience or capability, or Novell products just because Novell’s management isn’t being held responsible for better performance standards. Not only is it not the fault of the individual contributors, it simply is not accurate.