It has taken awhile, but arguably some of the presentations at the Ubuntu Live 2007 event were worth the wait. Head over to Ubuntu Live video site to see Marten Mickos, Eben Moglen, Jeff Waugh, Mark Shuttleworth, and others speak on open source, Ubuntu, and sundry topics.
I'm still waiting for Tim O'Reilly's excellent keynote to be posted. It's not there yet, but hopefully will be soon.
Thanks to the BoredandBlogging blog for the link.
Running Linux from a CD in Windows doesn't get you much closer to computing in a Windows-less world. To make Windows and Linux and either-or proposition, you have to set your PC to dual-boot. With Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu 7.10, a.k.a. Gutsy Gibbon, the repartitioning is done for you during installation.
Before you install Ubuntu, create a full system backup. Creating a system restore point may not be sufficient, because a misstep during installation could render Windows unbootable. Make sure that you've got your restore CD/DVD handy, and that your system is set to … Read more
This is the year I kiss Windows good-bye. Well, maybe not entirely, but the writing is on the wall for Microsoft's flagship operating system, and all other desktop bloatware: The future of PC software is open source. (I'll add that the future of PC applications is on the Web, which I'll cover once we've got Ubuntu in place.)
Being the belts-and-suspenders type, I'll make the conversion from proprietary to open in baby steps, the first of which is to get a copy of Ubuntu 7.1 (a.k.a. Gutsy Gibbon), the version of Linux … Read more
There are two dominant software projects that provide Linux with a graphical user interface, but only one of them will get long-term support in Ubuntu's next version of the open-source operating system.
GNOME, the default user interface for Ubuntu, will receive the support, but KDE won't. The reason, according to Canonical, which sponsors Ubuntu and is trying to make a business of selling the support contracts, is simply that KDE is at an awkward transitional period between two versions, the old-line 3.5 and the imminent and significantly different 4.0.
Developer interest is focused on KDE 4.… Read more
The Economist makes three technology predictions for 2008, two of which concern web surfing and the third of which concerns everyone, whether they surf the web or not. The Economist's third prediction is that the technology world will open up:
The embrace of "openness" by firms that have grown fat on closed, proprietary technology is something we'll see more of in 2008....
Pundits agree: neither Microsoft nor Apple can compete at the new price points being plumbed by companies looking to cut costs. With open-source software maturing fast, Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, MySQL, Evolution, Pidgin and some 23,000 other Linux applications available for free seem more than ready to fill that gap. By some reckonings, Linux fans will soon outnumber Macintosh addicts. Linus Torvalds should be rightly proud.
What's most interesting about its analysis, however, is where it sees the biggest impact for open source (Linux) and why (Ubuntu):… Read more
SearchEnterpriseLinux.com has a good analysis of what 2008 could have in store for the three leading Linux distributions: Red Hat, Novell's SUSE, and Canonical's Ubuntu. Red Hat needs to regain its Fedora passion, according to the article, while Ubuntu needs to learn to channel its Mac-like following into cash. Novell? Novell needs to learn how to market:
The reason that Novell barely gets credit for its work is that its marketing team never leads with anything remotely innovative. If they played it any safer they'd be asleep!...
In the next 52 weeks Novell needs to do … Read more
I really liked this InformationWeek article with Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu. I liked it in part because I think Mark is an exceptional person. But I also liked it for its insight into why Ubuntu has done so well.
Hint: It has a lot to do with making a very geeky thing (Linux desktop) less geeky.
IW: Why are you concerned about ease of use when many Linux developers see it as a lesser issue?… Read more
I came across this Linux distribution timeline today and found it fascinating. Truly a picture is worth a thousand words or, in the case of Linux, a thousand (thereabouts :-) Linux distributions. Looking at the graphic, it's clear that the many Linux distributions essentially come down to three primary springs:
Debian, Slackware, and Red Hat.
Virtually every other Linux distribution branches out from these three "trunks." I'm not sure if this indicates the inherent quality of these distributions, or if it has more to do with the vagaries of history, but it's interesting to me … Read more
Let me preface this post with the fact that I have been a sworn Mac user since 1995. Let me add that a few weeks ago I tried to use Windows just for my trip to Japan, and I bailed out after one painful day. I even had our IT guy kill a perfectly good Thinkpad with Ubuntu I hated Vista so much.
When Leopard came out a few weeks ago (it was a Friday) I went to the Apple store in San Francisco to buy it immediately but got spiked until the 6 p.m. grand reveal. So, the next day I went downtown first thing and picked up both Leopard and the new iLife. Easy enough.
I expected a few bumps in the upgrade of the OS and the applications. Sure enough, that happened but it was nothing major.
It has only been after a few weeks of usage that I find myself experiencing both OS and application crashes reminiscent of the mid-'90s when you had to obsessively save your work since you knew your Mac was going to crash at some point. I was bred into a "save early, save often" Mac culture at my first job in NYC where people would occasionally lose hours worth of work.
That was then, this is now. Or so I thought. … Read more
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