The Price of Mobility: iPhone 4 VS Random Amazon PC

Some new features that I particularly like:

• The Mint menu highlights newly installed apps and has GTK themes support
• The Update Manager displays the download size, it has a revamped UI and should also be faster
• The Welcome screen will immediately give you the opportunity to install missing codecs that aren’t shipped with the distribution due to international licensing issues.

Here’s a link to the torrent (32-bit)

So, what do you think? Will any of you Ubuntu users be switching to Mint 10? Will any of you Mint users be switching to the upcoming Debian-based edition?

Linux Mint 10 “Julia” RC, Hot Off the Presses!

I decided to once again examine the Distrowatch distribution rankings. While these are just a very rough estimates based on site analytics, they give us a relatively good picture of the current state in GNU/Linux land. In this article I would like to highlight a few distributions that have, to put it bluntly, left me completely confused as to where the projects are heading.

My grudge with Fedora Linux has a lot to do with the fact that I constantly need to keep reminding myself the project does not have the same mission statement as most major distributions. A lot of innovative (or frustrating) components, such as the Network Manager and PulseAudio have been introduced to the Linux ecosystem by the Fedora Project. Being on the bleeding edge and the testbed for Red Hat, the Fedora developer community definitely tries hard to produce a stable version of the Fedora Desktop.
I tested every single release since Fedora 9 on three different computers. RPM is a lot better now, but still light-years away from APT. The OS crashes frequently. Fedora 12 constantly reminded me of updates that I already applied several times. The developer community tends to waste time on irrelevant philosophical software choices (Gnote anyone?). Fedora has become the distribution for only the most persistent users that don’t mind using what is in essence a product in perpetual beta. Competitors on the other hand use Fedora as a source of new software packages, integrating them into a better base, solidifying their dominance over the original makers. Being a testbed means your goal is to provide a stable product in the end. Well, at least that is what they claim Fedora to be. I remain unconvinced. If your product is too unstable, it needs more testing. If you believe you have tested the distribution thoroughly and many people still experience massive problems, it means something is wrong with the software base. There is no such thing as a stable testbed.

Mandriva Linux, actually its parent company, just recovered from some major financial problems. I do not know what the future holds for the once leading desktop distribution – it is always nice to see some cool stuff coming from the French developer community, though I cannot help but chuckle when podcast hosts or bloggers struggle to find a reason to actually use Mandriva (simply not being Ubuntu is not a valid reason), except for a good KDE experience, though I’m not so sure if Kubuntu lags far behind. Mandriva needs something like they had with Metisse, something that screams This is Mandriva and this is why we are unique. Despite the corporate problems 2009 was a great year for Mandriva, it is much more stable than it used to be. Unfortunately the WOW factor fades away after a few days of usage and one starts thinking why they didn’t simply stick with Ubuntu/Debian, since some specific features, e.g. urpmi and the USB installation tools leave a lot to be desired. Mandriva’s APT-powered counterpart PCLinuxOS has returned to a more frequent release schedule recently, which gives me hope (if they stick to their guns) because I view it as an overall better OS – together they might have a shot at world domination.

(Open)SUSE‘s German roots are still noticeable. The big, honkin’ distro comes loaded with different desktops. Although YaST had me swearing at the computer screen many times for hours, it is surprisingly stable. The goals of thsi project are “to make openSUSE the easiest Linux for anyone to obtain and the most widely used Linux distribution; leverage open source collaboration to make openSUSE the world’s most usable Linux distribution and desktop environment for new and experienced Linux users”.
A lot of the OpenSUSE architecture causes fragmentation in the Linux world, which makes command-line skills (i.e. using zypper, another take on RPM) harder to transfer. Another important improvement would be to slim-down the distribution a bit. This goal was partially realized with the OpenSUSE Build Service, but the process should be made easier for new users. NimbleX‘s customization UI seems like a good example.

The Linux distributions mentioned above are not going anywhere. They sometimes seem to be going nowhere. While Ubuntu, despite its flaws, is creating the widest desktop audience Linux has ever seen, the runners-up struggle to capture the flag for second place. If nothing revolutionary is introduced to the base or the desktop environment of the four mentioned distributions that Ubuntu or Mint cannot take and redistribute in a nicer package, they might go the way of OpenSolaris.

update: Mandriva is going to be forked, which means the community version might go in a completely different direction!

Related articles

• Mandriva Rises From The Ashes As Mageia (lockergnome.com)
• Welcome Mageia! (nowwhatthe.blogspot.com)

Why Major Non-Ubuntu Distributions Need to Step up their Game

With Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat just around the corner, users are getting excited about the redesigned Ubuntu Software Center. Since its introduction in Karmic Koala, the Software Center aimed to provide a central user interface for all the possible ways to obtain new software in Linux. Another important aspect of the Center was the possibility to sell software via the Center, an idea that was probably based off mobile application stores such as the Android Market or the infamous Apple App Store, hence the initial name “Ubuntu Software Store” (which was fortunately trashed).

There is no denying that the Software Center gave us the much needed unified software installation experience we were craving for. Before, you had to choose between the lacking Add/Uninstall Software UI, the unnecessarily complicated Synaptic or the good old command line: Ubuntu’s Software Center made it much easier to navigate the jungle of software available for download, in a nicely designed interface.

Hearing about the first paid application to arrive in the 10.10 Software Center portfolio, the Fluendo DVD Player, I immediately had my first doubts about the viability of a “Store” in a desktop OS. Exactly what software, except the highly specific professional application suites (the most dominant of which doesn’t even have a Linux version), will be compelling enough to the average user for him/her to purchase it?

Popular open source software is of very high quality, often, e.g. in the case of media player software, surpassing its closed competitors. If the publishers in the Store decided to sell open source software, they would rarely sell anything that wouldn’t be viewed as a donation to support the project. It is a vicious cycle, since Linux users rarely appreciate a closed development model –  open sourcing an application on the other hand would effectively eliminate their sales by enabling people to download the source code and simply repackage and redistribute the program. Someone would do it.

A big part of our day-to-day computing, even on Windows and Mac OS X, is done using free and open source software. I love supporting independent projects like the Humble Indie Bundle or making the occasional donation to Wikipedia or VLC. But support ultimately does not make you a customer. It doesn’t oblige you to pay and successful donation appeals reach the desired amount only provided they get decent exposure on the Intertubes, which is done by word of mouth, demanding an extremely high product quality. That is why open source advocates (i. e. most Linux users, at least to my knowledge) are the most difficult “customers” in the world, because they (we) are used to getting the best possible product for the price of $0 or pay-what-you-want.

So, will the Ubuntu Software “Store” earn some money? I guess only time will tell. There is already a music store in Rhythmbox that was featured in ars technica a while ago but failed to make waves, although a software market makes for a completely different beast. The success of this “Store” will also depend on the applications available for purchase. It would be interesting to see the developers implement a Donation button for the open source side of the “Store” portfolio and compare the numbers.
All critique aside, I’ll still be saving my Paypal money till the end of October

Any thoughts? Share them in the Comments!

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• Ubuntu Software Center Continues To Make Great Improvements (techie-buzz.com)
• Ubuntu ‘Maverick Meerkat’ erects own App Store (go.theregister.com)
• Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat Review + Screenshots Tour (maketecheasier.com)

Maverick Meerkat: Can an Application Store Succeed in a Free Operating System?

Usage instructions here.

Efforts to open source wireless card drivers are finally paying off, especially with Broadcom’s recent announcement. But until the software reaches ready-to-deploy status, we will often stumble upon a broken wireless connection on a new install. Well, ndiswrapper attempts to solve this issue by letting you use non-native .INF device drivers, written for Windows. Many times this method provides a more stable WiFi connection even with an already working card, so I recommend you try it out in both cases. All in all, a great tool to keep in mind, especially since it is often already included in a newly installed distribution.

A tip: installing ndisgtk (or Kndiswrapper) makes it even easier.

StartUp Manager

None of my Linux machines lack this useful GUI for GRUB. Ever since Ubuntu switched to GRUB 2 I gave up on trying to remember all the subtle differences in naming schemes, the new menu.lst replacement and the commands in order to master my bootloader. I always need to make really small modifications anyway, and this is thing that StartUp Manager does really well.

Htop

Instructions here.

The “top” process viewer is a very useful command-line tool, but htop takes the top base and makes it more accessible and more human. I especially like the faster start time and color scheme. You can read a comparison of the two on this page.

Terminator

What is better than a console window? Two console windows. What is better than two? Terminator. In Linux, you will often find yourself having multiple console windows on onedesktop, simply because in time you slowly realize it is much faster to work from a terminal. Terminator does one thing, and does it well: provides a tabbed, multi-console windowed environment for you to go crazy in.

wget

In short, wget is an integrated command-line download utility. The good stuff is hidden underneath the hood: because wget is a command-line utility, you can use it in scripts; it cannot crash, it can download multiple links and it supports shortened links. You can for instance save DL links as a text file and call it using wget to download them in order of appearance. This tool can be very powerful in the right hands – don’t take my word for it – try it out yourself, it is incredibly fun, mostly because of the intuitive way the tool works. Here are just a few things you can do with wget. The only feature this application lacks is Windows support. Oh, wait.

Other useful tools that were featured in previous articles:

Gnome Do is a powerful application launcher with quite a few tricks up its sleeve.

fsniper is a cool app that monitors a certain directory for changes.

5 Great Linux Tools You Should Know About

I love my Nokia E71. I can listen to podcasts, browse the Web and navigate using the built-in GPS. But for a long time I’ve had an itch that needed serious scratching. When I wanted to make a quick note I always used the Active Notes app. So my ideas were safe. Unfortunately, Active notes were accessible only through the device. I wanted my notes to be available anywhere, just like the Evernote client. I’m a geek, I spend a lot of time on the computer. The notes on my computer are not in sync with my mobile notes. This is a big problem since the bigger players in the notes-anywhere market like Evernote refuse to do a Symbian application, forcing users of Symbian S60 3rd Edition devices (a HUGE user-base) to either use stripped-down version such as evernote.com/m or sync notes by cable/Blutetooth.

What I needed:

1. A note-taking app that works on my Symbian 3rd Edition device and syncs to the cloud (Active Notes – out)
2. This app should also work offline, since I’m not always connected (Evernote’s mobile site – out)
3. An interface for editing and making new notes on the computer
4. This interface should be cross-platform, preferably web-based

Enter Upvise.

“Upvise provides mobile on-demand sync & collaboration software and hosted services for small businesses and individuals. With Upvise, you can organize and share information with your co-workers, and sync data between all the mobile phones and web accounts in your company.”

A free user’s account gives you much more, but let’s just focus on the Notebooks application. You download the Java-based app here. You will notice you can set it for online/offline mode. I removed all other menu options and just left Notebook. Sync your notes when you are ready by pressing the space key. Signing in at Upvise.com and visiting the Notebooks page will get you a fairly usable online interface for organising and editing your notes.

Not much to it, is there? Well, while this is kind of true, Upvise remains the only application I know that currently offers this functionality, for free, and I’ve done a lot of research. All the current workarounds don’t satisfy my 4 basic criteria. Being able to create and edit notes anywhere, anytime is a huge productivity booster and helps me remember cool ideas. So I hope this helps all of you Symbian users who, like me, have been searching for a client with this basic functionality. It certainly made my day.

Evernote Mobile Alternative for (Nokia) Symbian S60 3rd Edition – Upvise

This script is not valid anymore (well it works, but there is a newer, better method).
use this PPA repository, you can see instructions here: http://code.google.com/p/gma500/wiki/PPARepository

A little heads up to every angry Intel GMA 500, “Poulsbo” chip-powered netbook owner who has not been following this great thread on the Ubuntu Forums: a user called Lucazade, the main driving force behind the 9.10 script, brings you the new modified Poulsbo driver install script.

Owners of netbooks like the Asus EeePC 1101HA, Dell Mini v10, MSI X320, Sony Vaio P and similar Poulsbo machines can now rejoice because you can install Lucid Lynx and have acceptable graphics support right after installing Lucazade’s patch.

If you already installed the patch on a previous Ubuntu version, try to clean your system with the following command:

sudo apt-get remove –purge poulsbo-* psb-firmware psb-kernel-* xpsb-glx* xserver-xorg-video-psb* libdrm-poulsbo1* libva1 libva1-*

Then get the patch:

wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338581/Gma500/scripts/poulsbo_lucid.sh && sh ./poulsbo_lucid.sh

The patch now reportedly works, but it is still being improved. I am not the author of this script and haven’t yet had the chance to try it on my own machine. If you are having trouble installing or want to troubleshoot please visit the Poulsbo thread on the Ubuntu Forums. If the script works for you, please also take the chance to thank Lucazade.

HOWTO: Intel GMA 500 (Poulsbo) on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

Here is the Ogg version if you don’t have Flash/Gnash

Courtesy of PCworld.

Apple iPad Review for Linux Users

I am writing this now because Ubuntu Lucid Lynx is still in beta and we can help, by letting Canonical know what is wrong with the distribution before the stable release hits the “markets”. Open source is not a democracy, but companies use beta versions to do “field testing”, right? We all want to make Linux look as good possible, so make sure to share your thoughts on 10.04!

The Theme

I was waiting eagerly for the day Ubuntu changed their theme, I wasn’t a fan of the brown. It can always be worse, though. I’m not going to talk about the window buttons, there have been enough rants on the subject. Just look at this screenshot (hint: Ooo.org button: right, window button: left, mouse slalom?). The other problem with the theme are the colors. Can you even see half of the X button in OpenOffice? I am not a professional, and I saw violet and orange are related (as opposites) in the color wheel, but my eyes weren’t very happy. There is a reason most operating systems ship with light colors – websites, program workspaces: most of these are white. Try drawing on a white canvas for 2 hours with a black window border and toolbar. Yes, it’s doable, but very uncomfortable. Trivia question: Which other distribution uses a combination of orange and violet? Hannah Montana Linux.

The GIMP vs Pitivi

Ubuntu is a flagship Linux distribution. It should show people how powerful Linux is, how much you can do with only free software. The way things are now, with the removal of GIMP, Lucid simply reeks of “Me too“. F-Spot does the job nicely, as far as red-eye removal goes. However the GIMP is a great image editing tool that should not have been replaced by a simple (and unstable) video editor.

The GRUB 2 bootloader

More specifically, I’m talking about configuration of the Grand Unified Bootloader, version 2. In most cases, people simply want to switch the order of the operating systems in the boot menu and threads are popping up on linux forums where people are asking about how to do this on GRUB 2. While the new method may be safer, it is still unnecessarily complicated. Adding a simple GRUB configuration GUI to the default install would certainly be a step in the right direction. I’m also not sure if everyone’s thrilled with having a mile-long GRUB menu after a few kernel updates (seriously, this should be an option, not a default feature).

Disclaimer: as always, these are my opinions only. Post yours in the comments.

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• Canonical has released the first beta of Ubuntu Linux 10.04 (robbiz1978.blogspot.com)

Things I Hate About Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx (beta)

The Web Browser is evolving at a mind-bogglingly rapid pace, and the changes it went through in 2009 only are incredible. That is why I was really happy for a chance to talk to Asa Dotzler, community coordinator for Firefox marketing projects, who has been with Mozilla for 12 years. This is my first interview and I hope you’ll enjoy reading Mr Dotzler’s answers as much as I did. We cover Firefox, Mozilla and the new Web. Don’t forget to check out Asa’s blog for even more on the topic.

The interview:

In your personal opinion, what is Firefox’s flagship feature?

Probably not the kind of specific answer that you’re looking for, but I think that customizability is Firefox’s flagship feature. This feature takes many forms in the product but add-ons are clearly at the top of that list.

I don’t believe that any single browser feature set can satisfy everyone. I don’t believe that there’s even a “80%” case to strive for. Everyone engages with the Web in their own way and a browser that individual human beings can bend and mold to their own, very particular, use cases is a powerful tool for making the Web better for people and that’s what Mozilla’s all about.

In addition to customizability, I think another very powerful “feature” of Firefox is why and how it’s made. Firefox is not here to further some business interest. We have Firefox because Mozilla’s public-benefit mission is to promote choice, innovation, and participation on the Web. Firefox is a browser you can trust because of who makes it, why they make it, and how they make it. The public-benefit goals, combined with the open source development process, managed by the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation, means that users never have to worry about ulterior motives. Firefox is a browser you can trust.

Benchmarks aside, Firefox still feels much slower than other browsers, except IE. Do you think Firefox’s slowness hinders wider adoption? Is Gecko the problem?

I don’t believe that Firefox feels slower than other browsers. When I’m in Web apps, Firefox works as fast or faster than all of the other browsers I use. It also includes features and offers extensions that let me accomplish my online tasks much faster. One example that you can try yourself is scrolling a long spreadsheet in Google Docs. Firefox destroys the other browsers in that use case, even Chrome is awful there.

So, performance is also a very personal measure. If Firefox is really fast compared to other browsers at something you do often, like working in Google Docs, then you’ll think Firefox is great. If Firefox is slower than other browsers at something you do often, like starting up the browser, then Firefox might not seem so great. We have to get better at some things like startup speed, but we’re leading the pack at other things.

Also, some people who are on very old hardware or who have installed certain add-ons can find Firefox slow. My advice there is to try to move to more modern hardware and to be careful about which add-ons are used. It’s also important to keep those add-ons up to date — especially plug-ins like Flash which cause significant slow-downs and crashes in Firefox. Fortunately, the next version of Firefox won’t crash when Flash or other plug-ins do. You can even see this in action today in the Firefox developer preview builds.

Benchmarks of rendering time and JavaScript execution put most browsers all very close to each other and for most use cases on the web the difference isn’t really perceptible. We’re much faster at some things and not as fast at others, but we’re always working improve and Firefox has gotten consistently faster with every release.

Will we ever see a WebKit distribution of Firefox?

WebKit could never replace Gecko. One thing that I think people don’t understand about browser platforms is that there are actually a lot of pieces. WebKit in Safari is not the same as WebKit in Chrome for example. Both of those browsers have their own JavaScript engines, their own rendering and graphics layer, their own networking code, their own security services, etc., etc. Chrome on Linux actually uses Mozilla’s NSS security module because that OS, unlike Windows and Mac, didn’t provide them with one.

Mozilla’s Gecko also provides lots of features not available in WebKit, like XUL which is the foundation for most of Firefox’s extremely popular extensions, and a cross platform networking stack and security module that we can improve as we need without waiting on the OS vendor to release new versions. In addition to those long-established features, we’re leading the way on many Web standards where Firefox’s implementation is actually informing the standards and helping to work out cross-platform and cross-browser compatibility issues. The flexibility and feature set we have with Gecko makes it an ideal platform for Firefox and I can’t imagine WebKit offering that any time soon.

That being said, just as Google is borrowing from Mozilla’s code, Mozilla is and should be borrowing good ideas from the WebKit project. Having several different implementations of an agreed upon set of standards is a good thing and I’m thrilled that Apple, Google, Microsoft, Opera, and Mozilla are all competing to have the best implementations. With competition like this, we can insure that the industry never stagnates like it did when Microsoft stopped development after the release of IE6.

Web video: HTML5 with proprietary codecs or Flash? Do you think Ogg Theora has a chance, despite its poor performance in comparison to H.264?

There are really two discreet issues here. The first is the HTML <video> tag. The <video> tag is a first-class Web citizen that integrates video with the rest of a Web page because it is scriptable with JavaScript, stylable with CSS, and fits in the standard web page as a normally functioning block-level HTML element.

Video has become an integral part of the Web, like images and text did 15 years ago. It deserves to have the same status on the Web as images and text. The <video> tag in HTML5 and the DOM media API give us that. This is a much better long-term solution for video on the Web than proprietary plug-ins which, in addition to performance and stability problems, suffer many compatibility issues because they are not “native” to the Web.

The second issue is codecs. I think the way to think about this is to consider the <IMG> element in HTML. You can put a jpeg image in the <IMG> element. You can put a png image in the <IMAGE> element. The tag doesn’t care about which of the several image codecs you might be using. Different codecs are good for different things. A jpeg, for example, is much more efficient than a png when you’re putting photographs on the Web. A png is much more efficient when you’re posting line art or other hard-edged graphics. A png can do transparency and alpha-blending so if you need that, you wouldn’t use a jpg.

Different video codecs have different strengths. (As I mentioned earlier, irrespective of codec, the <VIDEO> tag is a win for the Web.) The most commonly used video codec on the Web today, H.264, is a very efficient codec for all kinds of video and there are lots of tools available for creating and playing H.264 video. But it’s got some down-sides too. The most important negative, as I see it, is that H.264 is patent encumbered and requires a license and a fee for commercial use. The terms of that license are also subject to change at the whim of the group that administers the license. That makes it not well suited to the Web because participation on the Web shouldn’t be restricted to just those with money and lawyers.

Theora is another video codec that’s growing in popularity on the Web, thanks to support in Mozilla’s Firefox, Google’s Chrome, and the Opera browser (which combined make up about 30% of all Web browsers.) Theora is also an efficient codec that produces good quality video all the way up to HD. It is not patent encumbered and requires no licensing fee to use for producing content or consuming content. It’s a simpler codec than H.264 so it doesn’t match H.264 in quality under all circumstances, but it’s “good enough” for almost any Web use case and because of its simplicity, it requires less processing power. The downsides to Theora are that it doesn’t yet have support in IE or in Safari, except though third-party codecs or plug-in.

So, these two issues are closely related, but not inextricably bound and the <video> tag, regardless of the codec issue, is a very good thing for the Web. We do still have to sort out the codec issue and I expect we’ll see the landscape changing pretty dramatically this year so keep your eye on this one.

Browser ballot screen… good or bad?

I don’t know yet whether it will turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing. The European Commission was quite keen on this but Mozilla never advocated specific remedies. In our communication with the EC, we focused on the principles that the Mozilla community believed were at stake, the issues that any remedy should address. The first two, and most important to us were 1) Microsoft must respect choices users have already made, and 2) Windows should not give any technical advantages to IE.

These two principles seem to be well reflected in the final settlement between Microsoft and the EC and I think that’s great. How the ballot, and the many other terms of the settlement, turns out is something we’ll need more time to learn.

Fennec, the Mozilla mobile browser, supports Windows Mobile and Maemo. What is going to happen to the Maemo version now that it is essentially a dead platform because of the MeeGo merge?

Maemo isn’t dead. All of the work that we put into Firefox Mobile on Maemo will easily translate to MeeGo. The two platforms were very, very similar and that’s why they could merge so easily.

Firefox Mobile is also running on Android now, though not in a release version yet. (And, while we’re on the topic, Firefox on Android handily beats the Android browser in JavaScript benchmarks.) As with the desktop version, we’re going to target all of the major open platforms. On the desktop, that’s Windows, Mac, and Linux. On mobile, that’s Meego, Android, and Windows.

Why did the community embrace Firefox rather than the (at that time more stable) Mozilla Suite (SeaMonkey)?

The community embraced the Suite enthusiastically from 1998 through late 2002 when Firefox (then Phoenix) started to gain traction. I believe that the Suite was chasing Netscape Communicator users (compare the feature set) and there just weren’t that many of those people left in 2002. Firefox, on the other hand, targeted IE users and there were a lot of those in 2002.

Firefox took the best features of the Suite and simplified them and made them more accessible to “regular people”, many of whom came online long after Netscape was a distant memory. With Tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, and extensions — all taken from the Suite but improved dramatically in usability, Firefox had what IE didn’t at a time when IE was suffering a major security compromise seemingly every week.

By 2003 and 2004, we had also managed to gain some major wins in Website compatibility. Gecko, Firefox’s rendering engine, was more compatible with Websites and, thanks to the efforts of Mozilla’s outreach programs, most major Websites had been upgraded to support Web standards and Firefox.

That’s a really interesting point, I think. Today, if you decided to build a browser, you don’t really have to worry much about Website compatibility. Thanks to the successes of Firefox in gaining market share and to Mozilla’s standards evangelism, most major Websites (with exceptions for a couple of Asian countries) work quite well with a standards-based browser. You might remember that when Apple launched Safari, it impersonated Firefox when identifying itself to Websites so that it could get the standards-based pages rather than the IE-only content. Now website compatibility, once a huge barrier to alternative browser adoption, is mostly a non-issue.

Let’s talk about Thunderbird. Is webmail killing the desktop client?

I don’t think it’s killing the desktop client in the general sense. It certainly has dealt serious blows to several desktop clients as they exist today, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a place for an innovative desktop mail client and that’s what the Mozilla Messaging community is working on.

Messaging is evolving really quickly, think Facebook and Twitter, and I think any desktop client of the future needs to do a lot more than the nearly 40 year email technology.

What do you think about browser-based operating systems?

For many of us, it’s already a reality. I spend 90% of my computer time in a Web browser. I rarely interact directly with the operating system and desktop applications. So, does removing everything but the browser make sense? For some, maybe. For me, I still do 10% of my computing in programs that haven’t made it to the Web yet or if they have don’t have as rich and powerful an experience there yet.

At Mozilla, we’ve been working on many new Web features that will help to close the gap for that remaining 10% of my usage. We’ve got geolocation support, experimental multi-touch input, a rich file API, Web protocol handlers, native audio and video, and several other capabilities that used to be considered the domain of the operating system. The more of this we add, the more Web developers will be able to build the kinds of experiences we used to get from the OS.

Your main workstation, OS, mobile device?

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad that defaults to Windows 7 but can also boot to Ubuntu Linux. I also have an Apple MacBook Pro that defaults to Snow Leopard and also boots to Windows XP when I need it for testing something. Finally, I have a Nokia N900 where I test Mobile Firefox.

One more question: Foxes or dinosaurs?

Well, Firefox isn’t really a fox. Nor is it precisely a Red Panda. Firefox is a mythical creature we invented to represent our product.

While I love the Firefox name and our Firefox logo, my history with Mozilla goes back to 1998 and I think I will always be partial to the red T-rex.

—
I’d like to thank Asa for his time!

Expecting a good discussion in the comments section

Firefox, Gecko, HTML5 and more: An (Email) Interview with Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler