Avaktavyam

Laptop manufacturers have recently started marketing a new technology which will soon be available to costumers (if not already available). There are a number of different approaches but the general idea is to provide the user with a BIOS which contains an OS and applications tailored for speedy access. So the user can, instead of booting into Windows or Linux as usual, boot into this “instant-on” OS (which is usually Linux). The advantage is that this “instant-on” OS boots in a few seconds which is quite fast compared to a regular Windows or Linux boot. Depending on the specifics of the technology used there can be other advantages like extended battery life, etc. I think the problem is real and legitimate: if a user just wants to check something quickly on the web or read email, booting up can introduce a significant delay. However, I think the solution of providing a customized OS in the BIOS is a bad one. I really wish the engineers would have spent time making the boot process faster for regular OSes. At this moment, I’m convinced that the “instant-on” OS feature is going to be a failure. Here’s a list of reasons in no particular order:

1. Boot times can already be mitigated by avoiding the boot process in the first place. Put the laptop to sleep instead of turning it off. Sure, the idea of the “instant-on” OS is to turn off the laptop completely and rely on the ability to turn on the laptop instantly. So in theory the user would keep the laptop off more often. So this “instant-on” OS should in theory be more environmentally friendly. But are the trade-offs of using the “instant-on” OS be worth the savings?

2. Missing features in the “instant-on” OS are going to be an irritant. Browse, browse, browse and bang, you can’t read a web page properly because the browser is not up to date or lacks a plugin? Or if someone sends an email with an important attachment which can only be read with software not in that “instant-on” environment? Users will say “screw it” and boot into their regular OS right off the bat rather than wait and see whether they’ll hit a brick wall again.

3. This is yet another environment to babysit. Yes, users of smartphones already deal with this. I myself have a Treo. The bookmarks on my Treo are not the bookmarks I have in Firefox in Linux. I’ve had to configure email access again on my Treo and then I stopped using it because the email software was just too old.

Someone somewhere will scream “but you can upgrade or install another email reader, you idiot!” Sure, but that’s my point: this “instant-on” OS thingy represents yet another environment which must be managed. Is it really worth managing that thing besides my regular OS and my smartphone? Users of smartphones will turn to their smartphones rather than their laptop with “instant-on” OS when they want “instant-on” capabilities with all the downsides which come with it. People who do not already have smartphones will have to make the mental shift towards managing multiple environments. For most people, we’re talking about dealing with a different OS than the one they are used to: Linux is not Windows.

Of course, some of this babysitting can be eliminated by relying on web-based applications. For instance, a user who has Gmail as their only email application does not have to reconfigure email readers everywhere. Bookmarks can also be managed online. But there is always a minimum of configuration which must be replicated across environments.

4. How secure is this feature going to be? Are updates addressing security issues going to be released frequently? How is my data going to be stored? It is probably not going to be encrypted. Is this going to be the low-hanging fruit for people looking for sensitive data on laptops?

5. What about added costs? Nothing is free.

6. A laptop is not the best vehicle for “instant-on” computing. People need computing devices which will fit into a pocket and that can be used instantly. They understand that such small size comes at a cost. There is a monetary cost. There is also a technological cost because these devices are not full-fledged computers. People also need portable full-fledged computers. But the “instant-on” capability on laptops fulfills neither needs. The laptop is too big to fit into a pocket so it does not replace the need for pocket-size computing devices. On the other hand, the “instant-on” OS does not give access to all the capabilities of the laptop. That is, a laptop with a regular OS already fulfills the need of having a portable full-fledged computer. The addition of an “instant-on” OS does nothing towards fulfilling this need. What I mean to say here is that it is unlikely that customers will think that such a feature is a must.

I need to reiterate here that I think the problem is legitimate and should be solved: it would be desirable to have laptops be able to go from being off to full functionality in a matter of 2-3 seconds. However, engineers should aim to achieve this by booting the regular OS users want rather than a BIOS-embedded special environment.

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Well, the Mandarin intensive at UVA started yesterday. Small class (6 students). That’s good. For me though, the setting is a little weird.

This is my third summer language intensive. I took my second year of Hindi in an intensive summer program at Madison, WI. I took my 4th year of Sanskrit in an intensive summer program in Pune, India. Now I’m taking my first year of Mandarin in an intensive summer program at UVA. For the first two programs, I had to temporarily live away. In Madison, I shared a room with a student from Korea (who was studying something else than Hindi… I don’t remember what). In Pune I shared a flat with an American student who was also in the Sanskrit program. But UVA is where I’m doing my Ph.D. So for the length of the program, I’m just using the same old efficiency I was using during the past academic year. My lodging is the same. The university is the same. In the other programs, I was away from my wife for the whole duration of the program but during this program the isolation will be broken by weekend visits. Somehow, without having to live in a different city, it does not feel like a summer intensive. It’s not like I’m not doing all the work. I’m practicing my pinyin and my Chinese characters to death. There’s just some other intangible element missing.

Then there’s something more tangible missing: my friend Llerena. We took our first year of Hindi together and then went into the summer program together. After that, life took us into different directions. One day during the Hindi intensive, our entire class was walking together. I don’t quite remember what we were doing but what I remember however was that I was mumbling to Llerena that our path was not optimized. Of course, I meant optimized for speed towards our final destination. Instead of taking a direct but more boring route, we took the scenic route which meandered by the lake shore. Llerena just laughed at me and asked, grosso modo: What about how pleasant the walk is? Doesn’t that count? She insightfully pointed out how my obsession with optimizing for speed was flawed: optimizing for speed would have meant sacrificing other, more pleasant, aspects of our walk.

I should drop her a line…

Edit: I should preface this by first saying that I think there are plenty of backup solutions for Linux. It is just that the set of features I want does not seem to be widely available yet. If a piece of software is great at encryption, then it does not have continuous backups or if it has continuous backups, then it is not good at encryption, etc.

I’m currently researching and testing backup solutions for Linux. I stumbled upon this post, in which the author comments:

In the last years several projects were started to provide user friendly solutions for the backup of Linux desktop machines. A year ago I already reported about SBackup. Also, the Ubuntu team developed the solution TimeVault and last but not least there is flyback which I used for several months to keep a backup of my thesis. But despite their advantages they all suffer from stalled development: all mentioned projects are effectively dead at the moment.

This is distressing. I was looking forward to TimeVault and Flyback becoming mature solutions but it seems that this won’t happen any time soon. What I’m looking for is:

1. end to end encryption: with ID theft, I’m not comfortable with leaving unencrypted copies of my files around.
2. client-initiated backups: I need to backup laptops which are not always on so the client must initiate the backup.
3. continuous backup (similar to what TimeVault and Flyback provide).
4. support for a backup store located on a network.
5. user friendly: desirable but not essential.

I realize that neither Flyback nor TimeVault offered all of this but it looked like they were going to really tackle the continuous backup problem head-on. Right now, I’m testing boxbackup and I’m also keeping an eye on duplicity. I’m not sure yet which one I want. I know that duplicity does not (yet?) support continuous backups but it has other advantages that may make up for it.

I’ve started using Hardy Heron in its beta incarnation. Right now, it is not possible to use my repository to install OOHanzi on Hardy. The interface to install Open Office extensions has changed very slightly but that causes installation of my extensions to fail. A few notes:

1. If you upgrade to Hardy form Gutsy, all the OOHanzi packages will be uninstalled.
2. The packaging system will not prevent you from reinstalling OOHanzi on Hardy after you upgrade from Gutsy but the installation will get stuck. So do not install OOHanzi on Hardy by using the automatic method yet.
3. It is possible to do a manual installation as documented here.
4. It is possible to do a semi-manual installation by installing java-unihan-oosupport from the repository and then installing the oounihan and oohanzi extensions manually. The actual steps to perform this are left as an exercise for the reader.

I’m planning to fix this problem before Hardy goes gold but I have a lot of other things to do so I may delay the release for later. If you use OOHanzi and are just burning to move to Hardy, please leave a comment. It will incite me to do this faster.