Techie stuff

With the semester launched, I've had some time to work on technical things. I've set up one computer to try to start building a template for supporting Lion in the computer labs. I'm not sure when we'll switch, though: there are several pieces of software we use that won't run under Lion and, so far, I've not seen any compelling reasons to switch. And several reasons not to.

One thing that's a PITA is Apple's strategy for distributing Lion: through their obnoxious "App Store". At the University, they provided media that you can use to update Slow Neopard to Lion. Infuriatingly, however, there's no way to just install Lion and start clean with that. I googled around and found a guide that suggested you could wipe the partition with lion and then use the recovery partition to install clean from that. I tried it, but then it wanted me to log into the App Store with my AppleID (which hadn't purchased the license for Lion) and so it wouldn't let me install. So I ended up re-installing Slow Neopard and then updating to Lion.

It took me a while to remember how to set up LDAP authentication: I forgot you have to configure OpenLDAP manually before you use it in the Directory Assistant. Once I copied the key into place and referenced it in ldap.conf, everything worked just fine, although I still haven't figured out how to customize the directory template. This semester, I found where to set RealName = uid (instead of cn) so that when people want to print or mount a server share, it fills in their "username" field with their uid and not their Real Freakin' Name. Two steps forward, one step back.

In related news, I was hugely disappointed to see that Growl is only going to distribute via the App Store. I don't use the "official twitter client" because its only distributed via the App Store. Letting Apple become the sole channel for distributing software is a HUGE mistake. Yes, it's convenient and, yes, it makes it easy to monetize everything -- so easy, in fact, that people that wouldn't otherwise monetize stuff don't see the point in not monetizing it. But the App store does two really unfortunate things: First, it lets Apple choose which applications to let people run and, from there, it's just a small step to letting Apple be in control of what you can do with your computer. They already do that with the iPhone: why can't I write a tethering app so that I can share my Internet Connection with computer? Oh, that's right: an Apple Partner has that capability as part of their business plan. Even more simply, though, letting Apple gain a chokehold over the software ecosystem is as dangerous as it was for the music industry letting Apple control the supply of music. We'll all be better off if there's more competition.

So this morning, I updated my netbook with Ubuntu 11.04. All of the stuff that was problematic before just seems to work now: the ethernet card just works, the wireless just works, the camera just works. Oh, I had to twiddle some things to get the microphone to work in Skype. But it just works. It's not a bad little computer. I'll show it to the North Star kids when I see them next time: most of them have never seen a linux computer before. Maybe I should set up my macbook to dual boot. It may be time...