I Want To Go And Live On A Hill

The title of this blog entry shouldn't really surprise anyone, seeing as the blog picture heading is my archetypal self - walking around on a Scottish hill somewhere, miles away from mobile phones, Microsoft operating systems and badly-designed user interfaces. It's the second one in that list that's been pissing me off recently. Unsurprisingly.

Okay, it's an old moan. But, my God, it's more relevant now than ever. As per usual, it's running slowly, even after a reboot. As per usual, an update has made those little DLL files, that are scattered across the hard drive, stop talking to each other. And, as per usual, this means that a lot of my multimedia tools (e.g. the video editing, the music player, internet plug-ins, etc.) have all been rendered useless. However, the smattering of arse-hairs over the bathroom floor this time is the fact that said operating system was only re-installed 5 months ago; over a completely new hard drive, completely new motherboard and completely new memory. So, after this next re-installation, I'll do a little machine housekeeping and then I'm finally dumping Windows. I'll finally commit to a completely monogamous relationship with Ubuntu Linux, rather than two-timing with a dual boot*. Now, a few friends have accused me of snobbery toward MS, saying it's a good all-rounder. Supposedly, I'm starting to sound like those smarmy elitists at parties who always drop the word "Mac" or "Linux" into conversation, as they stare imperiously down their noses at us herd animals.

Snobbery continues into software and not just operating systems. Take what's happening at the moment with Facebook, which, until recently, was the bon vivant of the social networking world. It recently underwent a Facebook facelift. Yes, another one! That's several in the space of a year. It's beginning to look like Michael Jackson's life story in cyberspace. Lovable, with a homegrown soul at a young age. Slick, media-friendly and ultimately world-dominating in midlife. And, in the final phase, trying to copy something that it perceives as superior. In this case, Twitter. All of which is utter shite - why not just let Twitter be Twitter? Facebook is all about writing on Walls, sharing photos and silly childish games. It's a VOLE, but a relatively sweet one (yes, I know I've just cross-referenced myself, deal with it). Twitter is a different, minimalist application (which, by the way, you can plug into Facebook anyway!). Since it is based entirely on 140 word soundbites, it does tend to attract a slightly different audience. And this is where the snobbery comes in. In that usual annoying, but adorably intellectual way, Stephen Fry mentioned technological snobbery a few days ago; just when I'd written the first draft of this. So, I'll try and riff off what he's said and still crowbar my own original thoughts in.

I'm quite happy to eat apples, oranges and lychees. I don't want all my apples to suddenly taste like oranges. And I don't want the occasional lychee to taste like an orange too. Similarly, on a night out, I quite like to wander around town - and not to always go to the same pub or the same art gallery. I don't want Facebook to try and be Twitter. Somebody in the know here has told me advertisers have started abandoning Facebook - so, I think this is just the old thing of someone panicking and going, "Oh, what's successful at the moment? Right, I'll be like that!". It's a similar rule for movie sequels and music bands.

Remember when Oasis were successful and every record company were signing up bands that all sounded like, um, well, Oasis? Capitalism sucks dry the athleticism of creativity and clones everything onto a conveyor belt. It so happens that Mr Fry's description of Facebook being seen as rather 'low-rent' these days is rather apt. Facebook is becoming that rather large sector of town that is getting rather overcrowded, with the wine bars becoming more vacuous and stuck in the 1980s (remember the Michael Jackson analogy again?). It's become that 'tourist trap' part of the island, with more and more advertising shoved down throats. It's quickly looking quite jaded and is looking jealous, as it glances over at a small section of town called the Twitteropolis. That bit of town appears to be full of writers, intellectuals, comedy performers and bloggers; all of whom are terribly polite to each other, no matter what their social class or level of success. Oh, and the pubs and restaurants in that area of town are more authentic and created with a bohemian minimalist ambience in the air, encouraging idle witty chit-chat. There's a few piss artists that hang off the bars there, but they get away with it because they're quite funny and everyone's quite welcome to interact with each other.

There are other parts of town that used to be quite popular, but are now quite niche. There's that place down in the West quadrant called MySpace. It's namely hardcore Indie musicians, opera singers and avant garde jazz bands in that region. The place must be full of strange architects, because all the buildings don't appear to fit together too well and the styles are all over the place. It's like Portmeirion, the filming location of the 1960s TV series "The Prisoner". As for Bebo Boulevard, nobody over the age of 25 goes there anymore. A few gangs of neds took over large areas of it, so unless you're very streetwise, the older generation don't go anywhere near it. Although, if you know it well enough, you're guaranteed a good night out if you stay in your area.

It's difficult to untwist the snobbery factor, admittedly. I didn't want to have this moan about operating systems either, but when my Windows machine pet repeatedly spat in my face, it's difficult not to want to it put down. For the past decade, if you trotted this old rant out, a bunch of rather smug Apple users would wax lyrical about their machines. Or, alternatively, a bunch of Linux gurus would exhort the beauty of Red Hat. Apple Macs are great multimedia machines and run smoothly. But, ultimately, they're very good for a few things very well. They're utterly great for graphic designers and media works. They're efficient. More to the point, since it's video editing, graphic manipulation, website design and multimedia uploads that I'm doing, my Apple friends are suggesting that now, more than ever, I should invest in an Apple Mac. But it's generic web development that I do; it's rare that I'm a fully-fledged graphic designer. Renting an Apple Mac every once in a while would work well for me. But if you're talking about a full sale, rather than just a "To Let" sign, why aren't Apple Macs as good at selling? Because ultimately, people go for convenience - as well as cheapness. Rather like Asda. I'm guilty of being a smug little arsehole in criticising my parents for shopping at Asda. "You know, whenever you buy that banana from Asda, that money goes straight to Walmart. And you know what means, don't you? That money goes straight to violating more human rights, because of workers' conditions. And then it kills an innocent Indonesian worker in a sweatshop. You are buying into an evil system!". And my Independent reading Dad just gives me a look, which more or less says, "I wish you were still 7, so I could give you a darned good smack on the bot, you smug snotty twat. I used to go on protest marches while you were still shitting your Space Invader tracksuit!". From seeing myself in that context, I'm aware that I'll be perceived as an OS Snob Private Club Member when I switch to a non-MS system. But not Apple.

Linux is free and open-source, but it's never been able to escape the whiff of sheer geekery (although, as I'm about to point out, this is about to change hopefully). But Microsoft PCs are the consumerist Asda of the computer world, and have been for the past 15 years. I don't think anyone is blind enough to not see that. It always has been the 'jack of all trades, master of none'. My problems with Windows is that it appears to have lost even that everyman edge to its functionality. A Windows machine is now more like the idiot child of the block, with more and more of their applications just copying from the parent operating systems. Windows platforms are now getting to the stage of regularly shooting themselves in the foot or choking on their own kernel. They are the George W Bush of the computer world. There are too many instances of "server farms" of about 500 MS Servers falling over every minute. They, sooner or later, 'upgrade' to Linux servers, because they're more reliable (note I'm not even saying they're cheaper!). For that reason alone, Linux is the one to go for; particularly since I'm moving in the direction of heavy-duty, server-side web development. But, more to the point, thanks to two distributions of Linux - Debian and, particularly, Ubuntu - the operating system that is the ultimate industry worker no longer even has the B.O. of nerddom. In fact, the Ubuntu user interface is a lot more intuitive and friendlier than Windows. It just exudes warmth as you talk to it. So, I'm now proposing to Ubuntu Linux over a candelit dinner. Cheers.

* Chris Nicholson would like it to be known that the "two-timing with a dual boot" is actually someone else's line and he credits it to Broccoli Man. He knows who he is.