Some Ubuntu Stuff

Hey folks, I’m going to break the habit of a life time here and actually tell you about an event in enough time to make plans for it. Usually I’m a failmeister and only announce these things at the very last minute but I’m trying to fix that, so here goes. Next month there will be a release party for the new version of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope, terrible name if you ask me) at the BBC in Manchester (UK), Friday 24th April at 7pm. I’ll be attending, barring any natural disasters and if you’re within easy traveling distance we’d love to see you there too. Perhaps even if you’re not within easy traveling distance but are ridiculously committed you could also come, don’t put yourself out too much though. Read the rest of this entry »

The Weekly Rewind

Another week, another dollar. Ok so that’s not the exact saying but you get the idea. It’s been quite a packed and interesting few days; there’s much to report and reflect on, and I hope you’ll find some it interesting. So here we go:

Monday we recorded and streamed Linux Outlaws episode 83. Nothing unusual about that you might say but you’d be wrong. It was the first time we did live video broadcasting from both ends, a “double-ender” if you will; regular podcast listeners will get that joke. It’s fun doing the show live but there’s a definite adjustment with the live element because it’s easy to get distracted while talking in IRC, talking (audibly), getting music lined up to play next and also monitoring the video as it goes out. We held it together well I thought and everyone who participated said they enjoyed, so that’s the main thing. If you’d like to join us it’s Monday evenings over at linuxoutlaws.com/live and you’re more than welcome. We don’t have a set time at the moment but we’re working on that, so it’s easier for people to plan around. Last time it was 7pm in the UK and it will usually be something similar. Come see us and for the first time ever, I do actually mean see us.

I mentioned our new poster campaign and also wrote a quick post on the Outlaws blog. It basically involves downloading the PDF, printing one off and sticking it up somewhere for us. If you’d like to help out with that we’d both really appreciate it. Thank you! Read the rest of this entry »

Gnome Do

Just a quick post to clear up something we recently discussed on Linux Outlaws. I’m a big fan of Gnome Do, the little tool that makes launching apps on your desktop faster and easier. In recent versions – 0.8.x and above – they’ve added an animated dock which is imaginatively called Docky. I often use another dock on my systems called Avant Window Navigator and I like docks in general; the software ones that is, though the places where ships tie up are ok too I suppose. I do live near Liverpool after all and my granddad was a docker; I’m not sure what he’d make of Docky but we’re getting off the point here. I found that while AWN worked well for me Docky would freeze and the animations just didn’t work.

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25th March 09

You may already know about this but I thought I should give you a quick nudge – admittedly a last minute one -  in the direction of Document Freedom Day. Tomorrow, 25th of March 2009 will be the 2nd global Document Freedom Day; “but what exactly is Document Freedom Day?” I hear you ask, I did myself. Well, here’s how they describe it on their own website:

“Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for document liberation. It will be a day of grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of Free Document Formats and Open Standards in general.

Complementary to Software Freedom Day, we aim to have local teams all over the world organise events on the last Wednesday of March. 2009 is the second year that Document Freedom Day is being called for, and we are again looking for people around the world who are willing to join the effort. Read the rest of this entry »

The Weekly Rewind

A quick look at my watch tells me it’s Weekly Rewind time again so here comes a round up of what I got up to this week.  It all started on Monday when I recorded an interview with Matt Lee of the FSF for Linux Outlaws. We talked for about half an hour and it came out really well I think, you can hear the results in episode 82 of the podcast. One thing that came out of the discussion was licensing and it really made me think. I’ve tended to just use the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commerical Share Alike 3.0 license for everything in the past and never thought too much about it. It seems though that the NC clause makes it incompatible with the GPL and it’s not considered a free license by the FSF. This came as something of a shock to me but I suppose it’s my own ignorance for not really considering the implications. I was worried about people charing money for my work when I release it for free and I’d like it kept that way. The NC clause does protect from that but in practice this isn’t really how it works. It prevents anyone who has a commercial interest of any sort from using my material, not necessarily just selling it as such but perhaps playing one of my songs on the radio or including something I’ve done in a magazine. In light of this I’ve re-licensed this very blog under BY-SA and I shall use this license for most of my future works. It was quite a learning experience and I suppose the main thing I’ve realised is not to just choose any license quickly, instead put proper consideration into it. Anyway, we recorded and also streamed the rest of episode 82 that evening. Read the rest of this entry »

brewed to perfection

Ok it’s time for another distro review and I’m a bit overdue with this one but I’m a big fan of Debian and the dedicated community who develop it I make no secret of that. When I reviewed Etch (4.0) last year I declared that if I were to finally grow up and settle down with just one distro this would be the one. I like the fact that it’s not backed by any commercial entity and sticks closely to it’s Free Software principals. After some delay version 5.0 Lenny was finally released this Valentine’s Day, how appropriate but would it still be true love? There was only one way to find out…

Vital Stats:
Distro base – Itself, Debian is the mother of a lot of modern distros
Packaging – .deb (Managed by the mighty Apt)
Linux Kernel – 2.6.26
Default Desktop – Gnome 2.22.1

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