Writings

Hi folks, just a quick note to let you know that the interview I recorded with the Open Source Musician podcast a few weeks back is out now, for your listening pleasure… I hope I can’t remember what I said at and I need to listen to it again but it went pretty well from what I recall. Massive thanks to Dan and Steve for kindly inviting me onto their show, I had a great time. You should really check them out if you have any interest in making music and or audio seriously with on Linux. They’re the only show I know of covering this area and they do a great job of informing and entertaining.

I was interviewed in episode 35 which you can now download.

It’s even spurred me into working harder on sorting out music production on my Ubuntu Studio set up this week. I still use Windows XP for the odd music job which I’ve always been honest about. However, all podcast production and other audio is done on Linux and has been for a very long time I’m proud to say. I’ve got some hardware gripes with a possibly faulty audio card but I’m on the case now. Earlier today I started working on a new blues song in Ardour. It wasn’t planned but a nice riff popped out of my brain and I started recording, I’ll let you know how it goes. I’ve not had time to produce much music in the last few months and I don’t see that changing very soon, but I do want to do more music on Linux and really see the how strengths and weaknesses stack up. It’s long been a goal of mine but time just hasn’t allowed it. Hopefully that will all be fixed in 2010!!

Ok enough rambling, enjoy the interview. See ya,

Dan

Digital Britain Report

Hello folks, today I have a very serious matter to discuss with you. The Digital Economy Bill is being passed through parliament in the UK right now. This is the law which would allow UK citizens to be disconnected from the Internet on the accusation of file sharing or piracy, not conviction, accusation. As a musician, online broadcaster and member of the Open Rights Group this is obviously an important matter to me. At the moment certain members of the government are trying to force this bill into law without a proper debate in parliament. This is a bill which goes against the advice of the Government’s own Digital Britain report published last year, which clearly stated Internet disconnection should not be used as a punishment.

I have written to my local MP today to ask them to call for a full debate on this before any law is made. Whatever you think of the Digital Economy Bill and whichever side you consider yourself to be on, passing this law without so much as a proper discussion has to be wrong. It doesn’t benefit any of us. Don’t let large media companies make laws like this through the back door, demand proper democracy!

If you live in the UK I urge you to write to your MP too and make them aware of the situation. I’ve copied my letter below. I sent this to my local MP Stephen Hesford today. You can find details of your own MP and how to contact them through the fabulous writetothem.com

Remember, they work for us and we have a right to ask them questions but please be polite at all times. Abusive rants will do our argument no good. You can also use the 38 Degrees website to make this process even simpler.

Thanks for reading

Dan

————————————————————————————————————

Dear Stephen Hesford,

I’m writing to you today because I’m very worried the Government are planning to rush the Digital Economy Bill into law without a full Parliamentary debate. An important change to the law like this must be properly reviewed and debated in the house not just rammed through carelessly, as I’m sure you appreciate.

Industry experts, internet service providers (like Talk Talk and BT) and huge internet companies like Google and Yahoo are all opposing the bill – yet the Government seems intent on forcing it through without a debate. This is obviously wrong, it’s no way to make legislation. Especially legislation that affects something so vital these days as Internet access. In today’s world we all need computer access to interact with even the government’s own services like the Inland Revenue, NHS, benefits agencies and so on. There is no burden of proof in this law, only accusation is enough to incur punishment. That has to be against the long standing principals of justice and equality we pride ourselves on in this country. Guilty until proven innocent is not justice in my view.

As someone employed in the IT industry for years and now a part-time broadcaster/journalist reporting on these matters, I worry that the people forcing this agenda don’t actually understand the full technical and social implications of their actions, not to mention the practical headaches of implementing this. What we need is time for proper research, debate and reflection, rather than a ham-fisted approach to something so vital. I am a musician and broadcaster who uses the Internet as an empowering tool that gives me opportunities I’d never get otherwise. I produce a podcast about Linux and Open Source software which now gets over 15,000 downloads per week. I believe everyone deserves the same chance to use the Internet to educate and inform themselves. There is some strange media coverage of this situation right now and the line that “the Internet is bad for musicians and must be stopped” is a complete misnomer. There are many professional musicians, artists and broadcasters on both sides of the argument. The likes of the Featured Artists Coalition (Radiohead, Billy Bragg etc) have condemned Internet disconnection as a disproportionate and heavy handed punishment. That voice needs to be heard in this debate too but it seems the people forcing this bill realise the power of the argument and would rather pass the law before it can be heard. We all want to help artists and musicians thrive in the new digital world and as a musician myself I have a vested interest in protecting that more than anyone. The Digital Economy Bill cannot be passed in it’s current state as it will do more harm than good, however good the intentions are.

As a constituent I am writing to you today to ask that you do all you can to ensure the Government doesn’t just rush the bill through and deny us our democratic right to scrutiny and debate. I am a member of the Open Rights Group in the UK and a look at their website http://openrightsgroup.org might also offer some useful information.

Thank you for your time,

Dan Lynch

It’s been a while but I’m finally back with another Weekly Rewind. I missed last week because I was too busy, so I’ll try and briefly recap the last 2 weeks events now. It’s been an exciting and slightly hectic time of late. Much OggCamp business, some web development stuff, live talks and other things. On this bright Sunday afternoon I’m getting some spare time and it’s going into the much neglected blog. So let’s get into it.

There’s been a couple of Linux Outlaws releases since my last update. We’re up to episode 140 now, which I can still scarcely believe considering our expectations when we started the show. It continues to go from strength to strength and for that I’m very grateful. You can join us for the live show from 7pm GMT on Mondays. The IRC channel has been crazy during the show lately and we seem to average over 100 live listeners and viewers now. It doesn’t sound much and as a proportion of the 58,000 downloads per month I suppose it’s not, but the live interaction really makes a big difference and I’m glad people enjoy it. I also did another Rathole Radio last Sunday night which you can download at your leisure. I finally released the tickets for the live gig and so far they’ve sold ok but I need to sell a lot more to break even. Much time was spent this week licking envelopes, writing notes and posting those out. If you want to come along please buy tickets in advance from the website. Thanks! I also got a new logo for the show this week and I’m really pleased with it (see image below). It was created for me by graphic designer extraordinaire Scott Jones of Bad Format and we’ve also been doing a fair bit of website work together lately. I’m mostly hacking Drupal sites, customising modules and so on. I’ll give you more details on that when I can in future.

New Rathole Logo

These events are all out of sequence now but let’s carry on. My 5min Ignite talk entitled “The Blaggers Guide To Linux” went really well on March 4th. There were about 50 people there and they seemed to enjoy it. Overall the night went brilliantly and I enjoyed the other talks immensely. There was quite a mix of art and cultural stuff and it fell to me to finish off the event with something geeky. I hadn’t intended to talk about Linux really, people expect that of me and I don’t want become a one trick pony (also the title of a good Paul Simon album BTW). It seemed to bring a nice balance to things though and people said they liked it. The after party at the Everyman Bistro was much fun and still continuing as I left at about 1am. The Ignite talks were filmed by a local media company so I hope I’ll be able to share that footage with you in future. It’s being edited right now I’m told. I think it will end up on the O’Reilly site somewhere.

OggCamp10 planning continues at pace. I’ve been chasing up sponsors a lot in the last 2 weeks, some of whom haven’t paid yet! I think we’re making progress though and I’ve also been inviting many interesting people from the Open Source world to join us. I had some drama with the venue and I have to confess it had me worried but it’s all sorted now. The person I was dealing with left the organisation and it seems the paperwork hadn’t been done properly, probably why they left. I had nightmare visions of 300 people stranded in Liverpool city centre with nowhere to go but thankfully that’s not going to happen. I went over for a meeting on Friday and we agreed all the details which was a major relief. I also met the lead tech at the Black-E and it turns out he’s a true Free Software beard, literally. He had the Stallman look going on and he’s a core developer on the Rivendell radio automation project. That’s really cool and it looks as though the technical requirements for the venue are all up to scratch. Sadly we won’t be able to use the historic dome at the front of the building as the main entrance now. There’s building work going on in the venue which should largely be finished by OggCamp, but they can’t open the dome because the roof may not be passed as safe for the public. I’ll be signing the venue agreement and sorting out payment in the next week. Then it’s on to writing the kit list and tech spec for the event amongst other things. I also have to do a full risk assessment which I haven’t done since I worked in theatres many years ago. I’m sure that’ll be as thrilling as it sounds. It’s usually a big bunch of paperwork to satisfy health and safety regulations where there’s a public audience.

Other things I’ve done in the last two weeks include:

• Attend LivLUG and have fun socialising with everyone.
• Produce another Software Freedom Law Show.
• Rebuild my studio PC with Ubuntu Studio 9.10 and fix some hardware problems.
• Lots of Drupal hacking and server admin stuff for various clients.
• Learn the true power and beauty of Firebug for debugging a CSS stylesheet of over 1300 lines.
• Get more slightly depressed about the sorry state of Liverpool Football Club.

There’s probably more stuff that I’ve forgotten but that about covers it for now, you’re pretty much up to date. I’ve had quite a quiet weekend by my standards and I’m in need of a break. A little time to unwind is appreciated right now.

Upcoming:

It’s Sunday afternoon and I don’t have too much planned for the rest of the day. I do have to edit a new Software Freedom Law Show and I’ll continue to tinker with my studio set up. I have Skype working through JACK now which is very exciting and after the bugs on Linux Outlaws last week I’m also going to investigate Ekiga and other FOSS alternatives. Skype has always been a necessary evil for me. It’s hideously closed source but the audio quality is so much better than anything else I’ve found, and as an audio engineer sound quality trumps all other considerations to me, even software freedom I’m afraid. I hope in future experiments with Speex wideband will help fix this, but when you’re pressed for time and you have a show to do you just want to press a button and have it work. There’ll be more Linux Outlaws live tomorrow night as always. I’ll also be doing Rathole Radio next weekend but I may manage to report back before that. There’ll be a ton of OggCamp paperwork, phone calls and so on, which have become a staple part of my life in the last 2 months. It’s all good though and the event is going to be worth it, you should come and join us if you’re within travelling range and don’t forget to come to my gig the night before, tickets on sale now at http://ratholeradio.org/gig

See you soon, take care,

Dan

Hey folks, I realise I’ve missed my usual Weekly Rewind but it’s been far too hectic around here lately. I will get back to it next Sunday I promise. One of the many reasons for my omission is because I’ve just put the tickets for my Rathole Radio gig on sale. I’m doing the whole system myself (right down to licking the stamps) rather than use a ticketing company because I feel it’s the right thing to do. Besides, the punk ethos has always been “do it yourself” and I abide by that. I hate these big companies and the way they screw over music fans, Ticketmaster being a prime example (allegedly!). Not that they’d be interested in my little gig, but I still wanted to make the process personal and keep costs down. I’ve had a few people asking questions about the organisation of the gig in general, so I wanted to clear up the details here quickly.

Printed Tickets

The tickets are for sale now though the Rathole Radio website priced at £5 each plus £1.50 per order for processing and postage. I’ve kept them cheap because it’s not a money making exercise. If I sell all 200 odd tickets I will just break even, and only then. I’m putting this on because I want to have something cool for everyone to do in Liverpool the night before OggCamp, I also get the chance to play a gig alongside some of my favourite artists and that’s my payment. I’m taking it easy on public promotion this week to give OggCampers the chance to get in first and get tickets, after that I will be promoting hard and selling to the general public, once they’re sold out I’m afraid it’s tough. The venue has very limited capacity so the bottom line is this… IF YOU WANT TO COME BUY A TICKET. A lot of people seem to feel they’ll just wander in on the night and that may not be possible.

David Rovics

So far I’ve sold around 40 tickets since Sunday and it’s great to see people posting on Identi.ca that they’ve received them, that’s very satisfying and rewarding. But I’m still £807 in the hole staging this (I have a spreadsheet) and that tends to focus your mind. I’m not complaining or bitching, I enjoy doing the work and I will continue to, I’m confident we’ll sell out. I just want to make sure everyone understands the situation. If you want to come along please book now before I start pushing tickets outside of our usual circle. Besides, it’s going to be a great night and you should come and celebrate music, technology and Creative Commons with us. I’m already discussing innovative ways to bring technology into this event with some hacker friends. We’re looking at message walls, live streams and perhaps a robotic (might be a slight exaggeration) audience member who can make noise based on the reaction of the online chatroom. It’s going to be something quite unique and it’s not to be missed.

I have no problem with OggCamp attendees not being interested in this or not wanting to come, that’s absolutely fair enough. But if you ARE interested book now or risk being disappointed and turned away. I want to avoid that wherever possible but limited space and financial constraints mean I have to be strict.  You can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Tickets can be purchased direct from http://ratholeradio.org/gig

If you don’t have Paypal or for some reason don’t want to buy online, email show@ratholeradio.org and we can try to make alternative arrangements for you.

Thanks for reading this rant. Take care everyone a be lucky

Dan

Just a quick tip for you today. It may be that everyone already knows about this, but I ran into an interesting problem this week and wanted to share the solution. My mum has been using Ubuntu on her laptop for a long time now and she likes it a lot. The other day though she asked me why it opened “some other weird box” when she clicked on email links in web pages. She’s a savvy computer user, she taught me how to use a computer when I was a kid, but this confused her.

It was launching the Evolution mail client and starting a new mail message every time a “mailto:” link was encountered. I remember this behaviour from years ago with Outlook on Windows. I have never bothered to do anything about it on my own machine because I tend to copy and paste an email address from a page straight into a new message. I’m a geek though and trying to explain that to non-technical users is hard, it shouldn’t really be necessary either. Clicking a link and expecting it to open a new message in the client you use is not unreasonable. So after some searching around I found that the solution is actually very simple. You can set Firefox to use Gmail or other webmail providers for email links in the preferences. It’s 2 second job, and here’s how you do it.

Open the Preferences dialog in Firefox (on the “edit” menu in Linux)…

…go to the applications tab…

…type “mailto” in the filter box to bring up the mail settings. You can then use the drop down box to select Gmail, Yahoo or others.

That’s it, next time you click on an email link it’ll open a new message in your web mail. A simple little tip which everyone may already know but I didn’t until recently. This will of course work in Firefox running on any platform, Linux, Mac or Windows. The preferences link is under the “tools” menu and not “edit”  in Windows, it may be different on Mac too. Hope this tip helps someone and gets your mail links fixed. Other web browsers are also available of course

Cheers,

Dan

It’s time for Weekly Rewind number 53 and for once it’s not late, wonders never cease. Since my last update included Monday and some of Tuesday of this week, I’ll just start from Tuesday and make this a little shorter. I’ve still been a bit ill this week at times but overall I’m feeling much better right now I’m pleased to say.

So, on Tuesday I synced up the audio from Linux Outlaws and shipped it back to Fab. It was a little bit longer than expected as I said in my earlier post, but I think we’ll settle into the new format with practice. That was later released as episode 137 “Bing!”. It seemed to be pretty well received and downloads for the podcast in general have been shooting up lately, good news. I think we might have finally jumped the shark. I also got on with sorting out sponsorship for OggCamp and various other things. We’ve been working on an advert to appear in Linux Format magazine very soon. They wrote am article about us this month in very kind terms and we appreciate the support. They’re even offering Oggcamp attendees 40% off a year’s magazine subscription. So, without further ado here are our wonderful OggCamp10 sponsors: (drum roll needed)

Media Partners: Linux Format Magazine

(trumpets)

• The Linux Emporium
• Bitfolk
• The Open Learning Centre
• Viglen
• Opsview
• Recuit12
• Linux Fund

I’m still working with some sponsors who are confidential right now, rest assured I’ll let you know as soon as I can. It may be a cliche but we really couldn’t put this event on without their support. It costs a lot of money and it would probably bankrupt us, we’re a non-profit community event. It sounds dramatic but it’s true. So a hearty thanks to these folks for their support, we appreciate it.

Zonker

Anyway, back to events of the week. On Wednesday I worked on some Drupal sites for a while. I’ll give you more details on those in coming weeks when I’m allowed but it’s quite exciting. I also did more research for my Firefox Mobile article and wrote up some notes. On Thursday I interviewed former OpenSUSE Community Manager Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier for Linux Outlaws. I’m still working on the audio at the moment but you should be able too hear that as a special episode next week. It’ll be about 45mins in total. It was a very interesting chat I thought. Sadly I missed Chester LUG on Thursday evening because I was still feeling pretty rough. I’ll have to make it up to them next month.

On Friday I wrote, edited, formatted and published my FF Mobile review with some screen shots. It’s been pretty well received so far and I hope people enjoy it. I think mobile web browsing is a big area right now, and with the expansion of the smartphone market that’s only going to grow. I also spent some time working on HTML and CSS for a client site on Friday night. Trying to tweak a style sheet of over 1000 lines that someone else originally wrote can feel like chewing razor blades at times, but I finally got somewhere by the wee hours of the morning. Over the weekend I’ve been working on the Zonker interview audio, answering tons of email and I’m now editing the next Software Freedom Law Show for release on Tuesday. I’m also working on my 5 minute presentation for the Ignite Liverpool event next week. More on that in a second.

Upcoming:

Next week I’ll be getting onto OggCamp exhibition planning now that sponsors are mostly sorted. I also need to start working on a technical plan with the people at the venue. We’re going to be doing Outlaws live on Tuesday night at 7pm rather than Monday. Then it’ll be LivLUG on Wednesday night and I hope to be in good shape for that after missing Chester. On Thursday night I’m going to be giving a presentation at the Ignite Liverpool event, part of global O’Reilly Global Ignite Week. The idea is that you have 20 slides and 5 minutes to talk. The slides automatically advance every 15 seconds. I wasn’t sure what to talk about but now the idea of a 5 minute “Blaggers Guide To Linux” seems good to me. I get so many emails, phone calls and face to face enquiries from people asking me what Linux actually is, I think it would be good to give a quick foundation. Hopefully I can make it funny too, I’ll try. Come along to the Design Academy at Liverpool John Moores University at 6pm if you fancy seeing the result. You’re more than welcome. I’m sure there’ll be plenty else to get my teeth into next week. There’ll be more Rathole Radio at the weekend and I hope to have more news on gig tickets very soon. I’ll report back ASAP. Take care till then, see ya,

Dan

FF Mobile In Action

Today I’d like to tell you about Firefox Mobile on the N900, running in conjunction with the new Mozilla Weave web service. I’ve been testing them out on my handset for about a month now since the beta release of Fennec (the codename for Firefox Mobile). The N900 is the first device to get Firefox Mobile but it should also appear on Google Android phones in the near future. There is talk from Mozilla of an iPhone version too, but Apple are so draconian with 3rd party software I’m not sure that’ll happen. I just can’t see them allowing another browser on the iPhone to compete with Safari. (correction: According to Fab the iPhone has allowed some 3rd party browsers already, see link in comments) Anyway, here’s my thoughts upon testing Firefox Mobile for some time.

Facing The Critics:
It seems fashionable with some people to bash Firefox right now and use it as the butt of their jokes. I think many of them are too quick to forget the great work Mozilla have done for us in spreading Open Source software to the masses. Many users get their first exposure to the wonderful world of FOSS through the likes of OpenOffice.org and Firefox. Sure it’s not perfect, it has it’s bugs and it can be slow at times too. But I think the emergence of real competitors like Google Chrome has and will continue to improve Open Source browsers in general. I like Chromium but Firefox is still the browser of choice on my desktop. Weave is also an interesting prospect and I’ll talk more about that in a minute. I was curious to see if I would like this new compact Firefox quite as much as I like it’s big brother.

What’s Weave?

Weave At Work

I mentioned Mozilla Weave earlier, it’s a new web service designed to make syncing your browsing history, bookmarks, tabs, form data and even passwords easy over multiple installations of Firefox. Imagine you have Firefox installed on a few different computers around the house, a laptop and a desktop perhaps. Having them synced up and sharing data means you’re always up to date whichever machine you’re on. There have long been extensions to share bookmarks but this takes it to a whole new level. Add in the fact that Firefox Mobile supports this on your phone and it becomes a much more interesting prospect. Wherever I happen to be a quick click on my phone brings up all the tabs I have open on my laptop. This is all achieved by syncing the data to a remote Mozilla web server and then sharing it between devices. You have to sign up for an account with Weave which is free, but a lot of people will have serious security concerns about it. According to Mozilla the data is all encrypted locally before it’s sent to their server, so even they can’t access it without your permission. I still don’t trust it with precious things like passwords and form data though, perhaps I’m paranoid. I use Weave to sync browsing history, bookmarks and tabs. It’s very easy to change these settings and it doesn’t share your passwords by default, which is a good thing I think. It’ll be interesting to see if it takes off as the browser spreads to more devices.

UI Design:

A drag to the left...

Obviously mobile devices have much less screen real estate for developers to use and the last thing you want is to have your page blocked out by copious toolbars, “tool” being the operative term in that sentence. The N900 has a pretty respectable 800×480 screen resolution but I’m still pleased to see the Mozilla guys have thought about using it wisely. They’ve done this by hiding extra controls to the left and right of the main display area. You can expose them by dragging the page left or right with you finger. To the right you have forward & back buttons, a “bookmark this page” shortcut and access to the app settings.

...and a drag to the right

To the left you have tabs and access to Weave integration. I have to admit I was dubious about this interface design at first and I didn’t think dragging the whole page to the side would work. It actually becomes second nature pretty quickly and the ability to have multiple pages open in tabs is very cool. I also like the fact that the “awesome” bar works the same as its desktop counterpart. If you start typing part of an address you’ve visited before it will narrow down helpful suggestions. This actually speeds up browsing a lot and in my laziness I use this feature far more than bookmarks. Having it integrated with your other Firefox installations through Weave makes this much more powerful too. Firefox Mobile helps you fill out forms quicker and jump between fields which is handy. Overall the adapted UI works well, despite my initial reservations I got used to it very quickly.

Performance:
This is the area where most people have issues with Firefox and on a mobile device your patience tends to be even shorter. I have two browsers on the N900 right now: Micro B which is the official Maemo browser, and Firefox Mobile. There’s no doubt that Firefox takes longer to start up and performance is generally slower. The really odd thing about this is that both browsers are Mozilla based so they should be similar. I don’t know what they did to speed it up Micro B but they need to pass that knowledge back so Firefox can be improved. If only Firefox was under the GPL they’d have to pass it back (edit: Possibly not, see comments), but that’s another matter. In fairness the final 1.0 release saw a speed improvement over the beta and RC. Once the browser is loaded it runs quickly enough but does occasionally bog down and crash. I can hear the Firefox haters laughing in the distance. It still needs a little work in this department I feel.

Extensions, But No Flash:

Managing Extensions

Unlike Micro B I don’t seem to have support for Flash in Firefox Mobile. This may be because Micro B comes pre-tweaked as part of the OS, I don’t know. I have my issues with Flash but I do still find support for it important in browsers. Hopefully that will change as HTML5 takes off, but right now I still want Flash support sorry. I tend to switch to Micro B to use YouTube and other sites. Mozilla don’t want to distribute proprietary software and this is probably the main reason Flash isn’t pre-configured, a position I respect. It’s also possible that I could install it myself with a little hacking. Trying to do that automatically in the browser or via a .deb package didn’t work though. On a positive note you do have access to extensions in Firefox Mobile, which many people have become used to on the desktop. I have a few installed and the selection is growing all the time, right now the main one for me is Weave, I don’t use a lot else.

Conclusions:

The Awsome Bar At Work

I enjoy using Firefox Mobile, particularly in conjunction with Weave and I think there’s much to commend about it. However, I’m afraid the overall impression it leaves is of performance problems which still need to be fixed. Slowness and random crashes are not something most users will put up with, especially on mobile devices. I use Micro B a lot more on the N900 because it’s quicker and more stable. There are some interesting features in Firefox Mobile and I do think it has great potential for the future, it’s only just come out of beta so I don’t want to be too harsh. How it will fare on other platforms like Android I’m not sure. The N900 has pretty quick hardware and I shudder to think how slow it might be on a G1 or other handset.

At the moment the browser situation on the N900 is similar to the one I see on my desktop, and at the same time completely different. Bear with me I haven’t lost my mind. It’s great to have a choice of browsers and competition is always good. On the desktop I use Firefox 80% of the time and Chromium the other 20%. On the mobile though it’s Micro B 80% of the time and Firefox 20%. Once the performance improves and I fix flash support that balance may shift. For now though my verdict on Firefox Mobile 1.0 is nice try, I really like the potential, but come back when it’s a bit more polished.

You can download Firefox Mobile here.

Also check out the full slideshow for more pics.

Welcome to an incredibly late Weekly Rewind. I was hoping to get this out on Sunday but with all the preparation for Rathole Radio and that fact is was my good mate Will’s 30th birthday, things got away from me. It’s number 52, a whole year’s worth of rewinds. Although actually we passed the first anniversary a couple of weeks ago and I missed it, doh! People asked me what “special stuff” I was going to do for this fifty second edition but to be honest I can’t think of anything that special to do. I could look back at some highlights of the previous editions, but then I did that only recently in my review of 2009. So I’m just going to stick with the usual format in the arrogant belief that this is “special” enough. We’ll see if you agree by the end

I’m very busy with event planning at the moment and sponsorship stuff, a lot of which I’m not really at liberty to talk about yet. So if this update seems brief rest assured there has been plenty of OggCamp business and you’ll hear about it soon. It all began last Monday with another recording of Linux Outlaws, a recording which would become episode 136  “Make Love, Not Proprietary Software”. Following this blog announcement by Fab earlier in the day, we were experimenting with a new slightly leaner format. I think it worked well and the show was still 75mins long, hardly too short by any means. A lot of people told me they preferred it and we’ll keep trying to do that in future. Having said this on the last recording for episode 137 this Monday we went well over time. So I guess it’s a learning process. Personally I’ve long said that 60-80mins is the ideal length of show for me. That’s not to say I haven’t played my part in derailing shows and making them longer; I’m as guilty of that as anyone, but I do try to push us on and keep to some semblance of schedule. Some people completely disagree with my view and think the show should be 15 million hours long every week, which is cool, it’s nice that they feel they enjoy it that much. The amount of work this entails for us is what causes the problem though. Beyond about an hour show time the editing gets very time consuming and tiring. It’s a weekly show after all, so it’s not as if people don’t hear plenty of us anyway. Listenership has shot up lately which is fantastic, but I’m convinced keeping the show closer to an hour each week would make it much more accessible to a wider audience. I’ve now spent ages discussing not going on too long, oh the irony. Anyway, let’s move on (my catchphrase).

In the last 10 days or so I haven’t gotten any real distro hopping or writing done. Other things have overtaken that and I’m still trying to get back on track. Hopefully you’ll see a substantial article in the next 2 days. My February blog stats could certainly use it, there hasn’t been much to draw people to the site this month. I’ve also been a bit ill the last week and that’s slowed me down, I’m still trying to get back on a more even keel. Other things I’ve been up to in the last 10 days include: hacking Drupal sites, recording a new Rathole Radio, doing gig preparation and trying to sort out tickets for sale, constantly emailing and phoning people with OggCamp business and much more.

One particular highlight was last night, I attended my first Wirral Tweet Up event. I’ve been to many in Liverpool but missed the first Wirral one. I caught up with some good friends from the Scribblepool writing group and also met some interesting new people. It was an informal event held at Cromwell’s restaurant in Irby. Lot’s of hard work was put into making food and also making everyone feel welcome by proprietors Kay and Kate. I’d like to thank them for their work and also everyone else involved in setting up the event. It was a lot of fun. Many of my freedom crusading friends wonder why I go to these Twitter events and don’t just stick to Identi.ca only. I can see their point of view but the vast majority of the general geek community, not even the general public just techy types, use things like Facebook and Twitter heavily. I like to engage with them and help spread the word about Open Source, Linux and other things in a friendly sociable manner. The FOSS world can be incredibly insular and while I love my friends within it, there’s just no sense in preaching to the converted all the time. You have to get out and engage with others, get other points of view and expand your horizons, rather than just have your old views reinforced by a group of friends who agree. A good example is the fact that I was surrounded by iPhones last night and I casually worked the conversation onto the sat on the table N900 between them; what’s cool about it, Android, Linux and other mobile things. Not in a preachy way but just in general conversation. A lot of people had never heard of these things and took a genuine interest. I don’t expect all of them, if any actually, to run home and install a Linux distribution on their computer, but it’s a start. I’ve noticed the tendency within Open Source to think we are a bigger part of the tech crowd and society in general than we actually are. It’s good to get some perspective from people outside and bring that back to the group. It gives ideas for how we can engage with more people and improve what we do. It reinforces my beliefs in the principals of FOSS rather than weakening them. Enough rambling about that though.

I released a couple of albums on Jamendo last week. One of Kagnee, my old ska punk band, and another from an even older project called The Shed Collective. You can download, share and copy the music under the CC BY-SA license. It also prompted me to sort out my main site a little. If you look at danlynch.org/music you can see this starting to take shape. The list of tracks is easier to read and more compact but the RSS feed still works like a proper blog with full posts. My mastery of Drupal Views knows no bounds… ok, maybe a few. I’m going to keep working on that and making the content more useful as and when I get time. Eventually I’ll redirect shedmusic.net to it, as the old music blog is largely dead right now. Stay tuned for more on that.

Upcoming:

So in the next few days I should be off to Chester LUG tomorrow night with any luck. I have an interview booked with former OpenSUSE community manager Zonker for Linux Outlaws tomorrow, there’ll be another Software Freedom Law Show, more celebration of Will’s 30th (mine is looming in May) and a whole lot more OggCamp business. I hope I won’t be so late with updates next time but please bear with me, things are hectic. I’ll be in touch again very soon. Until then take care of yourselves and stay lucky,

See ya,

Dan

Evening everyone, it’s Sunday and you know what that means? It’s time for another weekly rewind. I’d like to start off by apologising for the lack of substantial articles in the last couple of weeks. Event organisation and other things have kept me so busy I just haven’t managed it. I’ve been meaning to get the distro hopping and reviewing under way again for a while. I even went as far as trying to install PC-BSD, only to discover it needs more disk space than I have available with my normal system partition layout. Luckily it warned me and I didn’t get as far as wiping my system. I’ll have to think about how best to fix this. I have some other things to write about, I’ll focus on those next week. So, let’s talk about what actually did happen.

We began on Monday with another live Linux Outlaws show as always. It was great fun and Fab released that later in the week as episode 135 – “So Good They Tried To Patent Him”. I also released a new Rathole Radio in the afternoon. I finally got around to making a Facebook page for the show as well. I don’t use Facebook much, but it seems the rest of the world does and I want to spread the word. Hopefully it will help get some new listeners on board.

Dave Lee - Drawing not be to scale

A lot of time this week has been taken up talking to various potential Oggcamp10 sponsors. I’m pleased to say we’re finally making good progress on that and I might not have to go bankrupt after all, which would be nice. I’ve also been working on some Drupal stuff and trying to organise my home site a little. It’s still a work in progress and it looks like crap, but the information is improving. I looked at some old albums I did as parts of various bands and other projects. I’ve uploaded some of them to Jamendo and if they’re approved I’ll post the links here soon. I’d like to get some of the music I’ve made over the years out there for others too hear, and with Jamendo I can do that under a Creative Commons license. Cool hey? I have some ideas to work on new music this year, but it may have to wait until the Oggcamp madness dies down. I’ll let you know.

On Friday night I tuned into The Bugcast live recording. The host Dave Lee was kind enough to play one of my songs and it was good fun chatting to everyone. Dave does a great job and I believe his wife Caroline usually co-hosts but sadly she was ill this week. They play some great music and make a really good show. Go and have a listen.

Ok I’m gonna keep this update a little shorter than normal, but there isn’t a lot else to tell at this time. I hope to announce some more Oggcamp related news very soon I promise. One of the most important things to remember is please book your accommodation now if you want to come. I’ve been saying this for a month but I’m still hearing from people who are taking their time. It’s a busy weekend, if you keep waiting you’ll have trouble finding anything. Head to laterooms.com and search Liverpool on the relevant dates. It’s the best resource I’ve found. I hope to see many of you joining us at the event for fun and Free Software.

Upcoming:

As I mentioned at the top, my distro hopping has stalled at the moment, hopefully I’ll fix that this week. I plan to write about my experience of testing Firefox Mobile and Weave in the meantime. There will also be another Linux Outlaws live show tomorrow night and I hope you’ll join us for that. Don’t forget Rathole Radio next Sunday Feb 21st at 9pm too.

Take care everyone and have a nice week,

Dan

Greetings all and welcome to Weekly Rewind number 50. The big “five oh”, I’m referring to the number there and not using ghetto slang for the police. I do listen to a lot of hip hop but it hasn’t completely taken over my brain just yet. I once got a royal ripping (Liverpool slang for skitting) from my band mates for using the term “five oh” as a police car drove past. We laughed hard about that. Anyway this is all by the by, so let’s get into it.

On Monday we recorded another Linux Outlaws and streamed it live as usual. Unfortunately Fab has been ill this week so best wishes to him, despite this he still got the show out on Friday though. Nice work! On Tuesday I worked on some audio stuff along with many other jobs. I put some stuff together as an audio trailer for OggCamp10 and released that here later in the week. I also got a chance to catch up with some good friends on Tuesday night which was nice. On Wednesday I attended LivLUG where we had a fascinating talk about ZFS and BtrFS from Tom Hall, a storage and filesystems guru. Tom’s a good speaker and it was very entertaining. One of the LUG members (Neil Bothwick) later described it as a bit of a Jim Bowen moment though. For those who have no clue what I’m on about there, ZFS is under a license not compatible with the Linux kernel, so it’s doubtful we’ll see it in there any time soon. Jim Bowen is a British game show host famous for saying “…and here’s what you could of won”. Jokes are always better when you have to explain them aren’t they? I wasn’t sure Jim Bowen’s fame had spread from far from these shores yet, but it made me laugh anyway..

Thursday was pretty quiet and I got on with jobs but on Friday I went over to Liverpool on the train. I had a meeting at the Bad Format Social Club, the venue for my Rathole Roadshow gig and sorted out some arrangements for that. I then walked up to the FACT building for lunch with some friends and potential sponsors. I have some good leads there but we could always use more. If you or your employer would be interested in sponsoring OggCamp please drop me a line. Finally, I popped into the Black-E to sort some stuff some out with them before hopping on the train home. I used the N900 to keep up with emails and everything else during the day rather than taking my laptop, and I got a surprising amount done on the device. It did affect the battery life a little as I used it much more heavily, but it was a good test. I don’t normally go out for the day like that without a laptop if I have work to do. I listened to some teenage lad on the train trying to convince his mum he “really needed an iPad”. “It’s not a toy it’s for serious work, I’m going to do spreadsheets on it” he pleaded. I resisted the strong urge to jump in with a comment like “Spreadsheets my arse, it’s a big iPod Touch!! You can’t even install software on it. Get a proper computer you idiot” but it wasn’t easy. He kept looking over at the N900 to try and work out what it was I was using. Some sort of iPhone he hadn’t seen perhaps? Thankfully not. I engaged “smug mode” and remained quiet.

On Saturday I was interviewed for the Open Source Musician podcast which was a lot of fun. I was honoured to be asked on the show but felt like a bit of a fraud. I still have a dual-boot setup on my studio machine. I use Ubuntu Studio a lot but it does also have Windows XP on there which I occasionally use. It’s not a secret, I’m open about it, but it’s not something I’m proud of either. I’ve been “in the process” of going 100% Linux in the studio for about 18 months now. I never seem to get the time to actually concentrate on it with so much else going on. I’m proud to say I do all of my podcast production on Linux, but music is still a work in progress for me. I’m only 70% there. Must try harder, as it would probably say on my school report. Finally, today I streamed and recorded another Rathole Radio show which was great fun. I played a wide range of music and had a lot of fun as always. I’ve processed the audio just now and will release it tomorrow. It’s getting too late to do it tonight.

Upcoming:

Not sure exactly what I have planned in the next week but I know something will take up my time. I’m not 100% sure if Fab will be fit enough to do Linux Outlaws tomorrow night either, but hopefully so. I didn’t get chance to install a BSD and test it this week. I still need to do that for a review. I’ll also be doing much more Oggcamp business and trying to move all that forward. We made good progress on sponsorship this week and that’s my major focus right now. There’ll be another Software Freedom Law Show to produce and much more besides. Join me next week to find out what unfolds.

Take care,

Dan

Evening all, I just wanted to share with you something I’ve been working on this week. It’s an audio trailer for our OggCamp10 event on 1st-2nd of May 2010 in Liverpool, UK. I threw this together quite quickly with a short script and some sound effects. It came out well though and I hope you enjoy it. Obviously this is licensed under Creative Commons, as with all my other work. So if you’d like to use it in any way feel free. It’s a promo after all so I hope too hear it everywhere!!

Ogg Version (1mb)

Mp3 Version (1mb)

FLAC Version (3.5mb)

The work contains some samples taken from FreeSound.org and in keeping with their CC license I’d like to thank dobroide for the pedestrian noise, and rutgermuller for some extra footsteps. The music is an old track of my own which isn’t actually released yet. I’ll get the full version uploaded as soon as I can. Oggcamp business has me very busy right now. I will also be making a shorter 30 second cut of the ad very soon.

That’s all for now, take care out there,

Dan

Welcome to another Weekly Rewind. It’s been a little quieter for me in the last 7 days, but only marginally. This update finds me sat at home in the kitchen, contemplating what to make for dinner. Fried rice is looking favourite right now, but I’m sure this sort of riveting information is not what you’re hear to read. So let’s get on with it.

On Monday we did a Linux Outlaws live show as usual, streaming video and audio as we went. There was some confusion when someone in the IRC channel told us Max Spevak (Fedora Community Manager) had left his post. It turned out they were “thinking of someone else”, but I guess the lesson is don’t always trust the wisdom of IRC, especially on a live show. They’re generally right on most things though to be fair, and having the stream has actually cut down the amount of email corrections we get. If we say something outrageously wrong someone will usually pick us up on it and we can fix it immediately. It’s nicer than getting 20 emails telling you the same thing for the next week. Somehow we ended up doing some pretty poor impressions of Shabba Ranks at the end of the show. Quite how these things occur I’m never sure, but if you want to find out you should join us live on Monday nights at 7pm GMT. I processed the audio from the show the next day and Fab released it as episode 133 “Shabba!” on Thursday. I also released a new Rathole Radio on Monday afternoon. It featured an interview with Creative Commons metaller Jono Bacon and it’s been pretty well received. A few people only tuned into the show because of Jono’s presenc,e but said they liked it and would come back in future which is nice. I need to build up the listenership a bit. Moving to Libsyn has meant I get far more accurate stats, and they don’t make as pleasant reading as I’d hoped. Perhaps it’s because of my very eclectic music taste that a lot of people don’t “get” the show, I don’t know. But I shall persevere and win them round eventually. Speaking of which, I received a very nice review for Rathole Radio from Peter Cannon. He’s not a man to mince his words and despite only catching the show by accident I think I may have won him over. If I can manage that then I’m sure more will follow. If you listen to Rathole Radio and enjoy it please help spread the word to other music fans you know. Go on, I’ll be your best mate.

Kryten (from Red Dwarf)

I spent a fair amount of time writing my long N900 review this week. I published that late on Friday night, technically Saturday morning but who’s counting. I’m enjoying the device a lot and today I discovered how to sync the internal calendar easily with my Google calendar which is nice. I’ll write some tips on that and post them during the week, it’s actually very simple. I’m also going to get hold of the Maemo SDK and see what I can do with it. I’ve mentioned my Python darts scoring program before. It actually runs on the N900 pretty well already, but I’m curious to see if the VM included with the SDK makes development quicker. I also want to investigate packaging that for the device. It will all make good experience for future writing. I’ve been called into action a few times in the last 7 days as family geek. You know how it is, you’re the one in the family who knows about computers so you end up fixing them for relatives, friends and sometimes people you’ve never even met. I wrestled with an ailing Vista laptop but discovered the hard drive was actually failing in the end. For once it wasn’t Windows fault, who would have guessed. On Thursday night I went to Chester LUG and bored everyone senseless with the N900. They seemed pretty interested actually and there was even excitement as I installed Vim on it in the pub. How geeky.

I’ve continued to email up a storm with Oggcamp organisation and progress is good. Next step is hitting the sponsorship trail with a vengeance. We’ve had some false starts on this but with a large bill for the venue and other things hanging over my head, my mind is pretty focused. If by some chance anyone reading this wants to help out with sponsorship please drop me a line. We’d be very glad too hear from you.

Yesterday I edited the next Software Freedom Law Show and you can hear that on Tuesday. It includes my friend Bradley Kuhn trying to impersonate Fab and mostly failing to be honest. It’s very funny though. Check it out. In other business I also found time for a trip to Bolton this week and to make myself look stupid on Wii Tennis. The two are unrelated however hehe.

Upcoming:

So, tomorrow there will be more Outlaws live in the evening. I’ll be doing much more work on Oggcamp and I’ll prepare another Rathole Radio for the weekend. I also intend to get distro hopping again on my main laptop and I’m thinking it might finally be time for a BSD. I’ll report back on how that goes and also on my many adventures with the N900. It’s Liverpool LUG on Wednesday night and I know at least one other member has an N900. So we can both “engage smug mode” as Kryten would say, and piss everyone off. Take care of yourselves and I’ll see you next week.

Dan

Nokia N900

It’s been a while since my last substantial review but I’m back with something a little different for you today. I’d like to talk about the Nokia N900 Linux-based phone I’ve been testing for the past 6 weeks. It’s the first Maemo powered device to feature phone functions. Does this move signal a new direction for Nokia? Nobody seems quite sure just yet, but the hardware and software are causing a lot of interest in the Linux community. Here’s my thoughts on the experience so far.

• Processor: ARM Cortex-A8 600mhz, PowerVR SGX graphics
• RAM: 256mb
• Storage: 32gb internal memory, 16gb MicroSD slot for expansion
• Camera: Carl Zeiss, Tessar 2.8/5.2, AF 5MP
• Operating System: Maemo 5 (based on Debian)
• Kernel: 2.6.28-omap1
• Connectivity: GRPS, EDGE, HSDPA, HSUPA, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, DLNA, Infra red, microUSB v2.0
• Other Features: FM Radio transmitter, GPS, TV-out

Back of Device

In the interests of full disclosure I should start off by pointing out a couple of quick things. Firstly this handset was sent to me for trial by Nokia, I didn’t buy it and it has to be returned at some point. I’ve had it 6 weeks at the time of this writing. Secondly I’m no phone expert. I haven’t used a lot of smartphones, so I can’t compare this directly to Android devices or others. I’ve only used them in passing. I do know a thing or two about Linux though and hopefully that will balance this out.

With Google Android making weekly headlines at the moment it’s an interesting time for Nokia to bring out their first proper Linux-based phone device. Of course you’ll never hear them refer to it as a phone. They strictly only call it a mobile computer and they’re keen to differentiate between this and their Symbian smartphones. Exactly where a smartphone ends and a mobile computer begins I’ll let you decide, I’m not sure I know. Whether Nokia like it or not though people will compare the N900 to the iPhone, Palm Pre and various Android handsets on the market. I’m not convinced this attempt to brand it as a mould-breaking device will work for them. However, the thought of Debian on a proper working phone certainly excited the kilt wearing geek within me. I’d seen a lot of N900 reviews online and I was very keen to get my hands on one. They’re quite expensive handsets at £500 from Nokia Direct in the UK. The best deal I’ve seen on contract here was £35pm for 24 months on Vodafone (handset included), but it did come with a good amount of phone minutes, SMS and “unlimited” data. As much as any of these contracts are ever truly unlimited. Vodafone is the only network officially carrying the N900 here in the UK right now. There are rumours that it will be available on other networks in future. I guess we’ll find out.

Keyboard Open

Let’s begin by talking about the hardware you get for your money. The handset is heavier than most other similar devices I’ve tried but only slightly, and it does include a slide out hardware keyboard. It’s solid and well built. It feels very similar to the HTC G1 in form. You get a pretty impressive 32gb of internal storage and this can be expanded to 48gb with a MicroSD card slot. The card slot is located under the battery cover though, so you can’t swap cards easily which isn’t ideal. In practice this hasn’t been a problem because I tend to just put a card in and forget about it. With 48gb of memory to play with it’s not as if I’m going to run out any time soon. It’s a generous amount by any estimation. The processor is an ARM Cortex-A8 which runs at 600mhz and there’s also 256mb of RAM. Even when running 4 or 5 applications at once it doesn’t seem to struggle. You do get the occasional slowdown when a particular application hangs, but think is a software error in those applications rather than hardware. The experience has been very smooth and slick overall.

End View

The main data connection is through a MicroUSB port on the top of the phone. If you’re on Windows you can install the Nokia PC Suite software for syncing your calendar and contacts, but I’m not keen on that. Besides I’m a Linux desktop user anyway and there’s no Linux version. Perhaps this is a blessing as much as a curse. I am pleased to say the device works perfectly as a mass storage drive on any platform via USB. You can also charge it from this port using the standalone wall charger or a computer. The 5 mega-pixel camera seems very good for a device of this kind. It’s a Carl Zeiss optic and while I know nothing about photography, I’ve been assured by friends that this is a good make. The way I take photos I need all the help I can get. There’s also a standard 3.5mm mini-jack connection which is a must for me. I hate proprietary headphone connections with a passion. Then there are the usual power, volume, camera and lock buttons you’d expect around the periphery of the handset. You also get a stylus tucked away at one end. At first I expected to hate using the stylus, but it’s actually quite grown on me. The touch screen is good enough to use with your fingers, which I do 90% of the time, but occasionally when doing something that requires more fine accuracy I pull out the stylus.

Size Comparison

I’ve heard many friends complaining about the battery life on their G1 or Hero and I wasn’t looking forward to charging my phone every 8 hours. This hasn’t been the case at all though. I don’t use the device heavily for phone calls but I am always using data for email and other things, playing music and even using the FM transmitter. Despite all this I get well over 24 hours out of one charge. I’ve been very happy with that. I get a solid and quick 3G connection with O2 UK. I downloaded a 52mb podcast file over 3G to test this. It came in at 600kbps all the way. That’s almost as fast as I get on wi-fi, impressive! You can also use WLAN, BlueTooth and even the Infra Red port for connectivity if you want.

The GPS seems pretty good but the mapping application is let down by the lack of decent maps for me. OVI maps don’t contain the same amount of data as Google Maps from what I’ve seen. You also don’t get turn by turn directions when using the GPS in the car. This may well be fixed by software updates in future. I’ve heard more 3rd party GPS apps for Maemo are in the pipeline.

Overall, the hardware is one of the most impressive things about the N900 for me. I love being able to jump in the car, start a podcast and then just press the FM transmitter button to play it back through the radio. You could of course use an external FM transmitter with any device, but having it built in just feels cool. Every time I switch it on I half expect Q to pop up and say “pay attention 007”. Nokia have always made good hardware and this is certainly true here. Most people’s issues with them over the years have been more with their software. So let’s discuss that next.

One Of 4 Desktops

As I mentioned earlier, the N900 is the first Maemo device from Nokia with phone features. More precisely it comes with Maemo 5, the latest iteration of their Debian-based operating system that won many fans on Internet tablets like the N800 and N810. I’ve only used those devices in passing, but I’ve always heard good things about Maemo from friends. I’m a big Debian fan, and the ability to install a .deb package on your phone has always appealed to me. There are many Maemo repositories containing thousands of packages Linux fans will know well from their desktops. Gpodder, Pidgin, Firefox and Vim to name just a few. Ok, so maybe Vim is more for the hardcore geek I admit, but it is in the repos along with QEmacs, which made me laugh. You can get root access to the N900 any time by typing one command in the X terminal window. A handy feature which in turn means you can run “apt-get install <package>” to install things. A feature to make any Linux fan need a change of trousers if ever I’ve seen one. Of course the first thing I did when I got the N900 was jump into a terminal and install Nano with Apt-Get. That’s pretty damn cool on a phone.

Multiple Apps At Once

The Maemo 5 interface works well with the touch screen and proper multi-tasking is a big bonus. A lot of other phones will run more than one app simultaneously these days (iPhone users look away now), but this is really well implemented. Switching apps is easy and the visual effects on the desktop are almost Compiz-like. The menu system is intuitive enough but I do have one slight problem with it. There’s no obvious way to close some things at first. You have to tap on the desktop outside a menu to go back a screen. It’s easy once you learn how but some clearer instructions would be nice.

The only really negative experience I’ve had so far with the N900 was updating to a new firmware using Nokia’s NSU software. I wrote about this at length on the blog, so I won’t go over all that again. For me the update process needs to be significantly improved if Nokia want ordinary users to buy into the N900, both literally and metaphorically. There are some other areas that could use a little polish. The built-in email client for example isn’t great, it needs to be improved. You can supplement it with other 3rd party apps but this isn’t a long term solution. The dialler on the other hand is very good and has pretty much all the features you would expect. It’s cool to have Skype and Google Talk integrated too. You can call people on Skype directly from your phone book if they’re online, or to a phone if you have Skype Out minutes. I don’t know many other phones that do that at the moment. The included web browser is also excellent. You get full flash support and the full web experience on the device. Nothing is missing. You can also install Mozilla Fennec and have a choice of browsers, which I’ve done.

My Python Gtk App Running

One of the most common digs I hear from Android users is that the N900 is tied to the Ovi Store for new software. I certainly wouldn’t argue that the Android Market is a lot bigger and more popular, but the N900 is in no way tied to Ovi for getting software. There are 1000s of packages in the Maemo repositories and you can also run any Python software with a Gtk or Qt interface. Pretty much everything on the Linux desktop then. I was even able to run some Gtk applications I wrote myself just by copying the source code over to the device. The next stop is to look at packaging this into .debs for easy sharing with other N900 users. For hackers and Linux geeks alike I think this could make a very interesting prospect. The software is still evolving though and I’m keen to see what’s planned for Maemo 6, the odd rough edge is apparent at times. For the average person in the street the convenience and simplicity of the Android Market is probably a winner right now, I can’t argue against that. One of the big buzz phrases you hear from all these companies is “developer mind share”. Basically this means getting developers excited about coding on your platform. I suspect giving these devices to developers and sending them to bloggers like myself is intended to achieve that. For a developer wanting to make a living purely from selling mobile apps it’s hard to see the attraction of the N900 right now. Ovi doesn’t have the user base of the iPhone App Store or Android Market. With so many handsets already running Android and more in the pipeline, I think this is the place for mobile developers to be right now. I really like Maemo 5 and there are already plans for Maemo 6. It has the solid base you would expect from Debian and they’ve built well on this in adding polish. If Nokia put more weight behind it we may see it grow, but with only one device running Maemo 5 and only one more planned for 2010, it’s not going to be easy.

Getting A Feel For It

This has very much been a Linux users experience of the N900, rather than a phone expert or an average end user. But then I think this is precisely the core market for the device. In many ways it feels like what we all hoped the OpenMoko project would become before it petered out. A really good Open Source Linux-based phone with slick hardware, root access and the ability to run your own code without restrictions. It’s not quite as open as the Freerunner admittedly. You can’t get schematics for the hardware but this is as close as I think you can get right now. Lots of people tell me they can do the same things on their Android devices and this may well be true. I’d need to compare how much effort it is to jailbreak an Android phone.

The biggest barrier for the N900 at the moment my well be Nokia itself. Many people disagree with me on this point, but I think they should be pushing it more. It’s an exclusive hacker device right now both in price and visibility. It’s still new so perhaps it’s a bit early to judge their promotion efforts yet. Developers may get excited by the full Python implementation and ability to use familiar Linux toolkits. My advice to Nokia right now (not that I doubt they worry about my advice) would be to release a rapid application environment for Maemo. Something akin to Quickly on Ubuntu. You could even port Quickly over to the device. It would speed up the appearance of new apps and fuel demand for the handset. An easy to use virtual machine for testing your applications on any desktop would also be very handy. It all depends how much effort they want to put into it. Android developers can already target their apps at devices from within Eclipse. (EDIT: Apparently the Maemo 5 SDK includes a VM, I haven’t tried it yet though)

Threaded Conversations

The question everyone is asking me now is “will you buy an N900 when you have to send that back”? I honestly don’t know for sure yet. I use a lot of Google applications and the integration offered by Android is appealing to a freedom hater like me. I’d like to try an Android device properly for a few weeks to really compare them. £500 is a lot of money for a handset, but then this no ordinary handset. I can almost see why Nokia insist on calling this a mobile computer now. It’s half netbook and half smartphone, whether there’s really a market for that we’ll have to see. If the next model (presumably the N910) makes as much forward progress I think Nokia may yet surprise a few people who’ve written them off. The hardware is excellent and the software feels 90% there, it just needs to cross that final hurdle.

If you’re looking for a consumer-ready, fashionable Linux-based phone platform with a big app store I’d direct you towards Android. However, if you’re a Linux user interested in trying something more like the desktop platform you know and love, the N900 is perfect. I’m really happy with the N900 and each day it moves a little closer to the centre of my heart, is there a doctor in the house? I hope we see many more devices running Maemo in the near future and much development. That’s what it’s going to take for the Android crazed public and media to notice it in the wake of things like the Nexus One.

I’ll continue to test and write about my experiences with the N900 of course, but I should really get back to distro hopping on my laptop. It’s been a busy start to 2010. I do have a few potential targets for the next hop in mind. If you have any suggestions or requests please feel free to send them to me or leave a comment. Also if someone wants to send me an Android phone to compare with the N900 feel free, it’s not likely but no harm in asking hehe…

It’s another Sunday afternoon and that means I’m sat with my laptop typing away as usual. Not what most people would call a relaxing Sunday, but it seems to work for me. I’m preparing for another Rathole Radio tonight and doing a few other things. Allow me to update you with recent events in my life. Here comes Weekly Rewind number 48.

It began as weeks often do for me with a live Linux Outlaws show on Monday. Much fun was had, much geeky talking was done and I’m pleased to say many people joined in. I also did more ringing around and emailing as Oggcamp organization carried on apace. I’ve been doing a lot of Drupal hacking and coding for a website project this week too. I finally got past chapter 2 of my Drupal Pro Development book after about a year, and I’m starting to understand writing your own modules as well. I’ll try to write more about that as time goes on. On Tuesday I processed the audio from Linux Outlaws and sent it back to Fab for editing. He released that as episode 132 “The Denty Dent Client” on Thursday. I also sorted out my vote for the Open Rights Group board elections and posted that off. Any other members should have a read through the candidates information and get their ballot papers in before February 15th.

I wrote about my trials with the N900 in great detail and published that on Tuesday. It seems the information has helped a couple of people and I’m very glad too hear that. I finally got the Oggcamp hotel booking site sorted with the Tourist Board but sadly the results aren’t as great as I’d hoped. The hotel rooms seem quite expensive and I found I could bring up many more options just by searching myself. They have been helpful, but I think perhaps they’re expecting a more corporate conference where everyone stays at expensive hotels and bills it to their employer. Oggcamp is a community event and our attendees are different. I’ve spent time researching and compiling travel and hotel information for the website myself. I’ve also put a nice image of the venue on the front page. You can see all that at oggcamp.org of course. If anyone has problems finding somewhere to stay or they need travel advice I’m happy to point you in the right direction. My email address is on the website. I’m taking my self-appointed role as “Open Source Ambassador For Liverpool” quite seriously. The big tray of Fererro Rocher is on order.

Severed Fifth Album Cover

Despite organisational work and PHP code I’ve also moved my mobile from Orange to O2 this week. I have a much better contract and data allowance to use with the N900 now, and as soon as I switched to the O2 SIM I got a full 3G connection. It seems the best option where I live. Orange weren’t happy obviously but I found their tone and attempts to dissuade me a little insulting. The told me that they could offer me a massive 50mb of data per month for £15 and proceeded to tell me how massive this allowance was and how I would never use it all. That’s one podcast to me or a few big email attachments. I’d already told him I was Linux journalist and I’d been sent this phone by Nokia to test. Despite this he seemed to think I didn’t know what a megabyte was and could educate me. It was very condescending and didn’t help his cause. I’ve been a loyal Orange customer for nearly 10 years, never missed a bill, ever. In return I at least expected not to be treated like I’d just had a lobotomy. He didn’t even know what Linux was, which led me to wonder just who the computer expert in this conversation actually was. Anyway, enough complaining it’s done now. The PAC code arrived in the post after a couple of days. I expected it in an email or SMS instantly as other companies do, but at least they sent it in the end.

I’ve been collecting tracks and preparing questions for tonight’s Rathole Radio most of the weekend. I’ll be joined live by Jono Bacon of Ubuntu and Severed Fifth fame. I plan to chat to him about Creative Commons and the options available to musicians online. There’ll be plenty of metal in the show of course but I also have some electro, some baggy indie and even some ragga music to keep it varied. It’s gonna be good. To round the week off yesterday I heard that my interview with Def Net Media had been published, and it came out really well I think. I rambled on as I normally do, why use 2 words when 15 will do hey. Let me know what you think if you read it.

Coming up:

There’ll be more Linux Outlaws live tomorrow night which you should come and join us for. I’ll also release the Rathole Radio podcast from tonight and write a long review of the N900. There’s much to talk about. I also expect there’ll be more OggCamp news, Drupal hacking and other shenanigans going on. I’ll report back next week. Till then, take care of yourselves.

Dan

In my last Weekly Rewind I alluded to a dramatic episode I suffered with the Nokia N900 at the weekend. I wanted to tell that story in full and I figured it deserved it’s own post. I’ll also try to offer a little advice about flashing Maemo devices from a Linux desktop, based on my relatively limited but successful experience. There are already very good guides for this around though, so I don’t want to just duplicate them.

N900 - Keyboard Open

I was lucky enough to be sent an N900 for testing and review purposes by Nokia before Christmas, a lot of you reading this will know that already. Lately some software updates to Maemo 5 (the N900 operating system) have been rolled out, and of course I wanted the latest greatest versions. I received one update about a week ago over the air, which means there was no need to do anything more complex than press “yes” on the phone and let it do it’s thing. It all worked beautifully and I was very impressed. However, when I was prompted about another available update later in the week the process was anything but smooth. Little did I know it but my problems were just beginning. I tried to apply the second update on the phone in the same way but was told I needed to connect the “Nokia Software Updater” tool via a PC. It seems this happens if you have certain testing repositories enabled on your Maemo device like I did, it can cause package conflicts. I’m not averse to using the official software to perform an update if needed, but what I am averse to is the fact that this software is only available for Windows. I’m a full time Linux user as most of you will know and considering the the N900 is a Linux device you’d think they’d have a Linux updater too.

Nevertheless I managed to procure a machine running Windows XP and install the update software. I connected the phone and ran the process as instructed. At first all seemed well, it downloaded the new firmware image and rebooted the phone into what I believe is known as R&D mode. After a while though I noticed the progress bar had stopped moving and I became worried. I left it for over an hour and still no movement. Obviously I wasn’t about to pull the plug out and permanently kill the phone, not without a gun to me head anyway. I waited and waited, then I waited some more. It must have been 2 hours in the end but finally a message came up on the PC screen telling me the update had failed. I closed the program down and looked at the phone, it still seemed to be locked in R&D mode. An attempt to reboot it manually did nothing and I was starting to believe I’d royally screwed the thing for good. I removed and replaced the battery to see if this would reset the device. It didn’t, by this time I was pulling out the little hair I have left.

Figure 1

It seemed as though the Nokia update software had wiped the phone and then promptly crashed before copying over the new firmware. I was wondering how I could explain all this to the company when when sending the device back when I hopped on Identi.ca to talk to people about it. The wise and good friends I have there seemed to know a lot more about this and suggested I try to reflash the device and perhaps revive it. There’s a Linux tool for that I was relieved to discover. I was keen to try it ASAP but the Maemo dev website was actually down for server migration over the whole weekend. This was Saturday night and I was facing a long Sunday without knowing if I still had a phone or not, good timing on my part. I transferred the SIM to my old handset so I could still make calls and twiddled my thumbs. Actually I did do something useful as I read on this guide how to set the phone into R&D mode ready for flashing. It involves some pressing of keys and secret hand shakes which I’ll describe in more detail in a second. With this done I was able to see the device on my laptop by running an “lsusb” command in a terminal. To my huge relief it identified itself as “Nokia e61 (Firmware Update Mode)” and I was starting to believe I could pull this one out of the fire. Hopefully it would be receptive to reflashing.

The following day my good friend Andy (@oscillik) from LivLUG kindly offered to upload the latest N900 image and Flasher 3.5 tool (yes it’s really called Flasher, I had a giggle as well). Here’s the process I went through to flash the device.

• Firstly I installed the Flasher-3.5.deb file Andy sent me on my Linux Mint desktop. You can download it here, now the server is running again.
• Next I opened a bash terminal and tried running a “Flasher-3.5″ command to see if it had worked. I also checked in the Synaptic Package Manager (see figure 1)
• In the terminal I ran “sudo flasher-3.5 -F imagefile.bin -f -R”. You need to replace imagefile.bin with the proper location and name of your image file obviously.
• The terminal prints out “Suitable USB device not found, waiting”.
• Next you need to unplug your phone from the computer if it’s connected and open up the internal keyboard. Hold down the U key on there while reconnecting the USB cable to the device. The phone should now enter R&D mode and the computer will see it.
• The Flasher will now start doing it’s thing and copying the firmware to the N900. (see figure 2)
• Wait a few minutes and the phone will eventually reboot into the newly installed firmware.

Figure 2

It’s not that hard to do but it does involve a few steps. To my huge, HUGE relief this actually worked and my dead N900 came back to life. Like a phoenix from the flames. I’ve never been so happy to hear that annoying Nokia tune in my life. My phone desktop came up pretty much as it had before but with some app icons missing and sporting the original blue N900 theme. I’d made some backups of the data on the phone and also used the internal backup application to store contacts, settings and other things. I restored the backup and it rebooted the phone once again. All of my music, videos and other data were still intact on the device. That was about 12gb of data that I didn’t really want to have to transfer over again. It seems the N900 has some fairly sensible partitioning going on internally. When you wipe the device firmware it only clears the OS partition and leaves the rest alone. That’s very cool. I still couldn’t restore all my applications from the backup though because the repository server was down, the same server it seems. The backup just stores the names of your installed packages and reinstalls them from the repos, like any good Debian system should I suppose.

As of today the repository server is back up and I restored all my applications in one go. The phone is exactly as it was before I broke it and I now have the latest firmware too. It was an emotional journey but I made it in the end. Thanks to the help of friends online, for which I thank them. I’m not sure what happened with the Nokia Software Updater (NSU) and I’m told this is not uncommon for NSU to break by people who’ve used Nokia devices a lot more. If that’s true then Nokia really need to sort this software out, I was convinced I’d bricked my phone and any novice user would be totally lost. I’m hoping the updates will be “over the air” in future, with a solid wifi connection there’s no reason for them not to be. I suppose it shows us one thing, that the N900 while being a lovely device still has some way to go on the software front. If it’s going to be used by Joe Bloggs in the street then the updating processed needs to be… well… updated. Excuse the awful pun.

I hope perhaps this information is useful to others who’ve suffered failed updates and broken phones too. I’ll be steering well clear of the NSU in future and as a bonus it means I don’t need to deal with Windows either. Result!

Dan

As a great rapper (Rakim) once said “It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t ‘ve left you…”, ok so it hasn’t been that long but I did miss my last Weekly Rewind. Things have been pretty hectic lately and something had to give. It’s not a great a start to the New Year, but it is only the 2nd week I’ve missed in almost a year now. So I’m not doing too bad. Anyway, I should get on with telling you what’s actually been happening since last we met. Let’s do this.

On Monday we recorded and streamed another Linux Outlaws as usual. It was a really long show in the end but we had fun and hopefully everyone listening did too. Fab gave his thoughts on the Motorola Milestone, which he’s been sent for review. It sounds cool and I’ve had my own phone drama this week. More on that in a future post, it’s too big a story to fit in here. I was also busy making phone calls and talking to people about planning for OggCamp10 on Monday. We officially announced the date and location on the microblogs and caused something of a storm. If you didn’t see the blog announcement I also slipped out on Tuesday here’s the low down. May 1st-2nd 2010 at The Black-E in Liverpool there’ll be a weekend festival of Free Software, Free Culture and fun. There’s also the Rathole Roadshow gig that I’m planning on the Friday night (April 30th) to kick the whole thing off in style. It’s going to be epic and you shouldn’t miss this weekend if you’re within travelling distance. I know some overseas readers obviously can’t make it, I’ll try not to bore you with endless OggCamp news in the coming months.

The Black-E

On Tuesday I released a new Rathole Radio from the previous Sunday, did some writing for the blog and also did some work on a Drupal site. That programming and admin work has been quite frequent in the last 2 weeks and I’ll give you more details of that in good time. At the moment the site isn’t finished and I can’t really direct you to anything substantial. Soon my pretties, soon. I noticed later in the week that the Rathole Radio downloads were slow and erratic. It seems I’ve outgrown the temporary solution I used to get the podcast up and running initially. I’ve been hosting the media using Dreamhost because its cheap and easy, but the speeds are so slow now and downloads are failing mid way in some cases. I finally bit the bullet about bought some space on Libsyn, then moved over the latest episode and updated the links on the main site. We use Libsyn for Linux Outlaws and it’s always been really good for us. It also means I’ll get better stats and I can see just how popular the show is. Overall the move is a good sign really, it means enough people are downloading the show that it needs more capacity now. As problems go, it’s a good one to have I’d say. I’ll move the older episodes over too, as and when time allows.

Let’s fast forward a little to Friday. I went over to Liverpool for a meeting about the gig I’m arranging at the Bad Format Social Club in town. It went well and I also got some other business done. I visited The Black-E again and took lots of photos of all the rooms we’ll be using. I also got floor plans and other details to help us work out where things will go. I sent this information to the rest of the planning ground and in time I’ll share pictures with everyone on the main OggCamp website. Linux Outlaws 131 was also released on Friday. A little late due to the fact that both Fab and I are very busy, but he did a great job of editing as always. Over the weekend I’ve edited the next Software Freedom Law Show and done a few other jobs. I did have a major disaster where I thought I’d killed the N900 completely with a failed software update too. With a bit of hacking and some help from my friends though I’ve brought it back from the dead. It was touch and go for a while there. I won’t write all the details here because they’re too long and the story deserves its own article. Expect that tomorrow or Tuesday.

Gifts From Greece

Another thing I’d like to mention from the last couple of weeks is a package I received from Greece. It was from Rod C Johnson, a listener of Linux Outlaws and valued member of the community. As you might have guessed from the name he’s not actually Greek but an American who moved over. We affectionately nicknamed him Ramrod on the show and luckily he doesn’t seem to mind that. He sent me a package containing a bottle of olive oil made on his farm and also a load of other amazing things. I was delighted and humbled by the gift. I’ve already used a little of the oil in some cooking and it’s beautiful, so thanks very much Rod!! You can see a picture of the package to the right. I should also point out that the green stuff in the bags is tea, before the swat team knock my door down. The generosity, grace and good will of our fans never ceases to amaze me. So thanks to everyone who makes our community so great.

Upcoming:

Tomorrow there’ll be another Linux Outlaws live in the evening. Why not come and join us live in the IRC chatroom and get involved, it can be a lot of fun. Visit linuxoutlaws.com/live and hop into #linuxoutlaws on Freenode at about 7pm GMT tomorrow. I’ll write up my adventure with the N900 and publish that soon. I’ll also try and get back into distro hopping and reviewing as things calm down a little. There’ll be more hacking with Drupal and god knows what else. So stay tuned and I’ll report back. Thanks for reading and take care till next time.

Dan

P.S – The quote at the start is from “I Know You Got Soul” by Eric B and Rakim, in case you didn’t know. Listen to it, it’s a classic piece of hip-hop.

Something awesome this was comes…. yes that’s right we’re going to do another OggCamp this year. The first one was such a success and we all enjoyed it so much that we just had to really. It’s a bit earlier in the year this time and it’ll be in Liverpool rather than Wolverhampton, but we sincerely hope you’ll come and join us. I’ve been very busy since the New Year putting all this in place. I’ve braved the ice for meetings at various venues, set the phone alight with negotiations and I’m pleased to say things are really coming together. We announced the dates and other details on Linux Outlaws last night. They’re also all over the microblogs, but for anyone who missed it here goes…

Don’t forget to get here on Friday the 30th and attend my Rathole Roadshow gig to kick the weekend off in style. It’s a Free Culture music gig featuring David Rovics, Attila The Stockbroker and myself, all playing live along with other guests to be announced. I’m working with the hotel arrangements with Liverpool Tourist Board right now. More details to come very soon. It’s a popular weekend being a Bank Holiday though and a popular destination, so book early! Keep an eye on the website of follow us on Twitter and Identi.ca for updates. For those who might be curious about the name, Ogg is a free and open media container format, it’s a barcamp style event and the 10 has a double meaning, it’s the year 2010 and also it’s a binary joke for all the geeks.

The venue is massive and the building is incredible, it’s going to be an epic weekend and it’s in one of the best cities in the world. Ok so I’m biased, but trust me. We need as many people to fill up this place as possible. Come and see us!!! …or I’ll come and find you

You can also sign up on Facebook if you’re a Facebook user.

Regular readers will notice I missed my Weekly Rewind this week but I’m afraid I’ve been so busy I can’t fit it in. I’ll do one next week when things calm down a bit I promise. Thanks for reading.

Dan

Greetings everyone and welcome to the first Weekly Rewind of 2010. It feels weird to me saying 2010, where does the time go? Usually it takes me most of the year to start putting the right date on things, and then when I finally remember they change the bloody year again just to thwart me. Anyway, it’s been a reasonably quiet holiday week for me but there are still some events to relate.

For once the week didn’t start with a live Linux Outlaws session. I can’t remember the last time that happened, or didn’t happen should I say, but we took a week off and instead released a pre-recorded end of year show. It felt odd having a free Monday night but I won’t be getting used to them, it won’t happen again soon I suspect. Our end of year show included parodies of some of our other favourite Linux podcasts. They were all done lovingly and as we said on the show “we didn’t parody anyone we don’t like”, but you never know how people will take it. Thankfully everyone has been brilliant and taken it in the good spirit it was intended. The episode involved a lot more editing work than usual for Fab, even recording sound effects and all sorts. So well done to him for that. I’m waiting for someone to do a comeback recording and I’d certainly have no problem with that. You can’t take yourself too seriously. I used my free time well on Monday and released another Rathole Radio from the night before. I also did some work fixing up a website and tinkering with XHTML for someone.

Ted Hankey winning Lakeside in 2009

On Tuesday I began writing my Linux Mint review which took a few hours and I was pleased to get that published on Wednesday. It took another couple of hours gathering screen shots and formatting it for the blog. The article has been very popular and I’m glad it’s caused so much discussion, there’s 68 comments on there already as I write this. In the evening I went to the pub for a bite to eat, a couple of pints and a few games of pool with my good friend Will. On New Year’s Eve I wrote and published a big review of my year. It’s amazing looking back at what happened to me in 2009, I can only wonder what 2010 has in store. I also fixed some problem with commenting in Drupal on the root of this site. It seemed to be a bug in Akismet but I’ve sorted it out now and comments can be posted again. In the evening I went to party hosted by some friends in Wallasey and had a really good laugh. I didn’t get home till god knows what time on Friday morning but luckily felt alright on New Year’s Day, despite the lack of sleep. Yesterday I watched a pretty average Liverpool match in the FA Cup and also watched the start of the BDO World Darts Championship at Lakeside. I also edited a new episode of the Software Freedom Law Show. In the evening I worked on a website for my parents and got on with some other little jobs. Today I’ve been out fixing the wireless network at my brothers house, which turned into a much larger job than I’d thought. That brings us up to date.

Upcoming:

So for next week I’ll be doing Linux Outlaws tomorrow as usual but we’re moving the live show to the afternoon, it’s only for this week and won’t be a regular change. I realise lot’s of people who’d like to listen live will be at work at this time, sorry about that. I’ll also try to write about the N900 in detail this week. There’ll be Liverpool LUG on Wednesday night at 7pm if you care to join me, and there’ll be more Rathole Radio at the weekend. Outside of that I’m not sure what’s happening but you can be sure I’ll share it with you here next week. Till then, take care of yourselves and Happy New Year everyone!

Dan

Brian Likes The Source

I thought I’d finish off the year by sharing some of my favourite memories of 2009 with you. It’s been quite a year for me and included many new experiences and acquaintances. I hope 2010 turns out to be as good. I’ll try not to go into detail about every month or we could be here all day, but I have been back through the blog archives to note some of the big events.

Back in January of this year I finally got my act together and set up this site. When I say “got my act together” that’s debatable because the site still isn’t anywhere near finished. It’s still got the “temporary” (ha ha) design that I launched it with. I’m working on that as I’ve said all year, but I hope 2010 will herald a new overall design linking the main Drupal site to the Wordpress blog more tightly, building on that foundation. The date I actually moved everything here to danlynch.org/blog was January 17th 2009. I haven’t regretted the move to self-hosting and it’s something I should have done long ago. There’ll be more consolidation and development around DanLynch.org in 2010. I also began my regular Weekly Rewind articles in February and I’m pleased with how they’ve gone so far. People seem to enjoy them but they actually prove very useful for me too, just being able to read back what I’ve done takes a big burden off my shoddy memory.

A big development this year has been public speaking. I have no trouble talking, in fact I have more trouble stopping. no doubt some of you have suffered at the hands of that from time to time, but being more focused and talking in front of people has been brilliant. In March I spoke at the first ever Think Visibility event in Leeds and had a great time. I then spoke again at Manchester Free Software in July. I hope to do more of that in 2010. Our podcast Linux Outlaws has gone from strength to strength throughout the year, seeing record download figures this month. I’m very grateful for that. We started doing the show live sometime around March and that’s been a real addition to the whole experience. Interacting with the listeners as we go has had a big effect I think. The list of the guests we’ve spoken to in 2009 is incredible. Just take a look: Randal Schwartz, Jeremy Allison, Bradley Kuhn, Miguel De Icaza, Jono Bacon, Stuart Langridge, Max Spevak, Paul Frields, Mo Duffy, Jan Wilderboer, Allison Randal, Chromatic, Greg Kroah-Hartmann, Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, Pat Davila, Dann Washko, Chad Wollenberg, Matt Lee, Bruce Eckel, Steve Holden, Steve McIntyre, Christina Haralanova, Campbell Barton and more. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few there, so apologies to anyone I missed off.

Outlaws and Jan Wildeboer

I took part in Script Frenzy in April and wrote my first ever screenplay, I also made some lovely new friends that I’ve kept up with since. As I write this to you now I haven’t done anything with the resulting screenplay. It needs a lot of work and once I’d finished all the long nights of writing I didn’t really want to look at it for a while to be honest. I will do that soon and see what can be done with it. I’ve since had another idea for a book/tv series which I might explore in the New Year. In May I turned 29, one step close to the big three oh. Looking forward to that milestone next year. I also started doing Rathole Radio at the end of the month. It’s taken off in a way I couldn’t have imagined and given me a real appetite for radio work, which I hope to investigate in 2010. I’ve enjoyed playing some of my favourite music for people, performing live and again interviewing some amazing guests. I talked to Professor Kliq and David Rovics in previous shows and I’m looking to step up more guests in the coming year. I think Creative Commons is gaining some recognition from the wider public now and we’ve seen many mainstream artists using it. That has to be positive and my New Year’s wish would be for the music industry to wake up and stop criminalizing the Internet. They should be using it for what it is, the single greatest advancement in human communication for a very long time. It’s now possible to distribute your work globally with very little cost and people are willing to pay for it if you treat them fairly and charge a reasonable price. I don’t think this wish will come true, but then I suppose it wouldn’t be a wish otherwise. In June I visited Germany to stay with Fab and his lovely girlfriend Katy in Bonn. We travelled to Berlin for Linux Tag and met some very cool people on the way. Some listeners of the show, some who’d never heard of us and others who probably wished they hadn’t. It was a very hectic but satisfying week. We also recorded episode 100 of Linux Outlaws as we sped down the autobahn in the car. That was pretty memorable to say the least.

Linux Outlaws Saw

In July Professor Kliq played a live set on Rathole Radio and I was immensely proud of that. I think he’s got a big future and I hope I can help him along the way. I’m going to skip forward now to September as I said I wouldn’t ramble on for hours and I already have. In September I was incredibly lucky to visit Portland, Oregon for LinuxCon 2009. I met so many famous people from our little Linux world that I can’t name them all. I was really happy to finally meet Bradley and Karen from the SFLC in person. Such lovely people and good friends too. I also really enjoyed Portland, it’s a great place. I later discovered it’s where David Rovics lives, but I didn’t know that at the time. Back in England in October I went to London and saw Kevin Smith live for the first time. He’s a big hero of mine and it was great to see him in person. This all brings us lumbering towards probably my biggest event of the year. It’s tough to pick the biggest event out such a good year, but there’s one that really sticks in the memory. OggCamp!!!

Oggcamp 2009

Yes we somehow pulled it off, with help from our friends at the Ubuntu UK podcast the event went brilliantly. Everyone who came seemed to have a good time, the people who helped us out on the crew were fantastic and the whole thing was just a blast from start to finish. I enjoyed LugRadio Live 2009 the day before too and I just hoped OggCamp could live up to it. My biggest memory of the weekend has to be seeing Tony’s face as he returned from a trip downstairs. He looked white as a sheet and I said “you alright mate?”, his reply “there’s people queuing 3 floors down just to get in here”. We were all a bit shocked by that. A big thanks to everyone who attended and made it such a great weekend. We hope to have news on another OggCamp very soon. You’ve been warned.

In November this humble blog passed 200,000 visitors since the move to Wordpress. Not bad going in just over 10 months. At the moment it’s closing in on 250,000 and I aim to break that landmark by the 1st anniversary on Jan 17th. In December I received my mystery box from Nokia and was delighted to discover it contained a new N900. Very cool! It looks like I’ll get to keep that a few months and play with the new system. That was something of a shock, but a pleasent one obviously.

I’ll stop now as I’ve gone on long enough. There’s so much stuff that’s happened in the last year I haven’t even covered. Thank you to everyone who’s been so good to me and I hope I’ve returned the favour at least in part. Look out for more podcasts, music, articles, FOSS antics and god knows what else from me in 2010. I can’t wait to find out what’s in store and I hope you’ll all join me. I’ll leave you with some quick 2009 stats:

• 58 episodes of Linux Outlaws
• 24 episodes of the Software Freedom Law Show
• 16 episodes of Rathole Radio
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Have a great New Year and take care of yourselves. I’ll see you back here very soon for business as usual next week, if you’re not too hung over that is

See ya,

Dan

Default Mint Desktop

I’m a bit late with this review I know, but the distro releases have been so thick and fast lately I just couldn’t keep up. Today I’d like to talk to you about Linux Mint 8, AKA Helena. I’ve said this many times before, but the codenames still sound a little tacky to me. The distro itself is anything but tacky though and it’s been one of my firm favourites in the past. How would this release stack up? Well, I’ll tell you…

Vital Stats:
Distro base – Ubuntu (itself based on Debian)
Packaging – .deb (Managed by the mighty Apt)
Linux Kernel – 2.6.31-14-generic
Default Desktop – Gnome 2.28

Installation:

Setting Time Zone

I began by downloading the standard Linux Mint 8 install CD, foregoing the Universal version. For those interested in the differences between the two, the Universal version is actually a much larger download and contains support for a lot more languages. I suppose the name should have made that obvious really, but I always thought there must be more technical differences. Firing up the LiveCD worked like a treat as expected and I was soon loading into a live session, from which I could install the new system. The look of Mint is always very nice and they seem to take a lot of time over the desktop themes, wallpapers and so on. This release is no exception in that department and it looks beautiful. Clicking the install shortcut located on the desktop I wasted no time in getting into business. If you’re new to Linux or just the whole LiveCD model in general, don’t be fooled by the slowness of a live session. This usually bears no real reflection on how the final install will perform on your hardware. It’s just that constantly loading data from a CD is much slower than a hard drive, so don’t panic.

Disk Partitioning

The Mint installer is inherited from Ubuntu 9.10 and they don’t seem to have modified this much, I guess it didn’t need it. The Ubiquity installer is one of my favourites and one area where Ubuntu has really done a lot for the Linux experience. That’s not to say that other distro installers aren’t good, they are. I just think the work on Ubiquity has been a catalyst for overall installer development, which is a good thing. I proceeded through all the usual stages of set up, time zone & localisation, user details etc. I also chose my normal partitioning scheme of 12gb root (/), 4gb swap and remaining 140gb(ish) as /home. It only took a minute or two to configure the installer and I set it on its way. You are now treated to a slideshow during the Mint install, a feature I noticed in Ubuntu Karmic. It’s a nice touch. The install process itself took about 10 minutes all together, and you really couldn’t complain at that. I was then prompted to reboot and remove the disc to boot into the new system.

All in all the installation was quick and painless. I think the Ubiquity installer has to take most of the credit here, but it’s good that the Mint devs realised not to mess about trying to change it. Concentrating instead on other areas of the distro which actually need attention.

FULL INSTALLATION SLIDE SHOW

Customising The Desktop:

My Finished Desktop

Much as I love Mint, there are a few things about the default desktop layout I’m not crazy about. These may be purely personal preferences but I’ve never understood why there’s no workspace switcher on view by default. I’ve speculated before that perhaps this is meant to make the desktop more recognisable to fresh Windows exiles, but being able to use multiple workspaces is something I’ve loved about the many Linux desktop environments I’ve used over the years. Apple even added this feature to OS X themselves quite recently, about 10 years after us. So one of the first things I do with any new Mint install is to modify the desktop configuration. It only takes a few minutes, but I’ll share this process with you now. Firstly I move the bottom toolbar to the top of the screen, making it more like a traditional Gnome set up. That’s simple. I then add a workspace switcher and dock it next to the notification area on the bar. Next I install the Avant Window Navigator and configure that at the bottom of the screen. I’ve skipped a step here which I should point out. Before you can install AWN you need to have working 3D graphics drivers. In my case this involves installing the restricted and evil Nvidia drivers, which is really simple on Mint. The Restricted driver manager prompts you to do this if you have a freedom hating card. With AWN installed I set it to start automatically on login and add all my shortcuts. You can see an example of my finished desktop layout in the screenshots. Mac fans will be quick to point out this looks much more Mac-like and that’s a fair comment, I do like having a dock at the bottom of me screen. As I said, these changes to the default set up are quick and this is the most work I ever have to do with Mint. Codecs, Flash, Java and all the other things you often need for a home desktop are already installed. Adding software yourself is also a simple process. Let’s look at that in more detail.

Who Made Who?

Shoulders Of Giants

Mint is based on Ubuntu Linux and because of that some people have dismissed it as nothing more than Ubuntu with added media codecs, proprietary apps and a green paint job. I’ve long countered that assumption and I believe there’s a lot more to it as a distribution in it’s own right. That fact just gets more and more evident with each new release. Mint benefits from a lot of Ubuntu development of course, but Ubuntu in turn benefits from Debian development, Gnome development and Kernel development if you want to analyse it down to that level. The accusation is a bit unfair. Mint has many custom tools such as the Software Manager, MintUpdate, MintAssistant, MintUpload, MintBackup, MintNanny and more. If you haven’t tried it before that’s worth keeping in mind.

The Software Manager:

The Software Manager

One of the big changes made to Ubuntu with 9.10 was the addition of the Ubuntu Software Centre. I commented at the time that this was oddly reminiscent of the tool developed for Mint a long time ago. Despite some initial hesitation I actually liked the Ubuntu Software Centre very much, so I wondered if Mint would abandon their own Software Manager tool and adopt this new offering. They haven’t, instead they’ve made improvements to their own Software Manager and strengthened it. A big change is the ability to mark and install multiple programs in one action. This was sorely needed and it speeds greatly things up. I also noticed the “featured applications” button and I think this could really help newcomers to the platform. It offers a list of the most commonly installed packages and even some things you might not expect to find in the repositories, such as Skype and Google Earth. I like that it gives you user reviews and a whole wealth of of other information on each application right in the installer. I did find it a little odd that you can’t right-click on items in the list to get up a contextual menu though, perhaps this is just a bug. The Software Manager has come a long way since it first appeared in Mint a couple of years ago and it’s one area where perhaps the pupil has taught the master a lesson, in respect to the Ubuntu/Mint relationship at least. I like both the new Ubuntu tool and the Software Manager in Mint and I’d really like to see them work more collaboratively to produce one really stellar tool, but I won’t hold my breath. People have often asked me why these Mint innovations don’t make their way back upstream into Ubuntu and I can’t explain that. The same question could be asked about the lack of Ubuntu tools making their way back into Debian I suppose. I know they’re working hard but it would be nice to see more collaboration from all parties. One slight downside to the Mint Software Manager is that it doesn’t list all the available packages you could get with Apt-Get or Synaptic. I’ll illustrate this point in the screen shots. Here’s the result when I search for Gwibber in the Software Manager…

Gwibber search in Software Manager

Gwibber search in Synaptic

…but if I open up Synaptic and do the same there it is. This could confuse some new users and it would be good to consolidate. I’m not sure of the exact solution but it wouldn’t seem that hard to me to make Software Manager display all the results of an “apt-cache search” command somewhere. Perhaps they could be colour coded to differentiate, or even put into another panel if that’s easier. It would make a lot more sense to unify the process and could give Mint a real edge. Just a suggestion.

Conclusions:
Ease Of Installation & Use: 5/5
Stability: 5/5
Speed: 4/5
Community & Documentation: 4/5
Features: 4/5
Overall: 5/5

Chromium Installed From PPA

I went into Linux Mint 8 with high expectations from previous releases and I wasn’t let down. I like the custom tools they’ve added on top of a solid Ubuntu base, and I’ve said many times this is the best distribution for anyone new to Linux. I see no reason to alter that assertion. This release has added a few little features like the OEM install options and many improvements to the Mint Menu, but it seems to be mostly a consolidation of previous work. There’s nothing wrong with that. For me it gives by far the most complete home desktop experience of any distro out of the box. Everything you could need is here, and if you do want to add something else the Software Manager makes it easy. For more advanced users the benefit of Ubuntu compatibility means you can still add PPAs and get involved in the Ubuntu community if you like. It not a distribution for freedom crusaders though, and if your primary concern is Free Software values I’d advise you to look elsewhere. Perhaps Fedora or something off the FSF approved list would suit those people better.

Mint Menu

There seems to be a fairly strong community around Mint and this will only be improved by the development of a new website. It’s in the early stages but the idea is to provide a kind of social networking platform for Mint users, where they can post ideas and rate the suggestions of others. I’ll be very interested to see how that develops. The size of the Mint following isn’t close to Ubuntu in sheer numbers at least, but once again the Ubuntu compatibility means that most guides and tutorials will work the same here. I’m a big fan of Mint and I make no secret of that fact, but as always I’ve done my best to assess it fairly and objectively. Some people will disagree with the 5 star rating I’ve given it I’m sure, but it’s as close as I’ve ever seen to distro perfection. For my own taste at least, I find it very comfortable and easy to settle into each time I stop by. It will continue to be the CD I give to people when they come to me and say “what’s this Linux business about then?”. I think that says it all. Truly advanced users and kernel hackers may find something else suits them better, but for the rest of us this is a great option.

Don’t take my word for it, try out Mint for yourself and let me know what you think in the comments. You might think I’m completely wrong and you’re welcome to say so. All I ask is that you do it in a reasonably civilised manner.

YOU CAN GET LINUX MINT 8 HERE

Up next…
Just before Christmas I was fortunate enough to be sent an N900 Linux-based phone from Nokia. It’s my first real smartphone (a fact that shocked many people) and while I can’t compare it to the iPhone or an Android device directly, I would like to give you my assessment of it. The Debian-based Maemo operating system is very interesting, coupled with the fact that you get easy root access and it even runs my own shoddy Python code. Join me for that in the New Year. If you have any suggestions for other things I should look at please feel free to send them to me or leave comment. I’ll see you all back here in 2010 for more adventures…