Category Archives: Linux

My involvement and discoveries relating to running Linux. Written by an active Ubuntu and ex-Gentoo Linux user and fan, me.

BBLUG in Review

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Ok, so I didn’t expect BBLUG to go off without a hitch.  However it doesn’t seem like a Linux or BSD-only tech group is all that interesting.  I’m still debating whether or not to continue this LUG experiment.  Maybe we can start a computer group, but that is really not my interest nor do I have a ton of spare time for organizing a general group.  I blame it partially on my lack of advertising.  But also maybe the FOSS environment is not as exciting to others as I thought.  KDE 4, Compiz, Maemo, Linux are all interesting technologies, and is interesting to see the how FOSS newcomers react to seeing alternative computing ecosystems.  However computing is at the end of the day an enabling technology.  The technology itself while interesting, doesn’t look as interesting as what you can do with it.

Still… thanks to Rudy and Ryan who came out yesterday.  I’m glad I wasn’t the only person at the meeting.  Next time, lets just go out somewhere to chill.

The First Brampton BLUG Meeting Tomorrow!

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Eugene and I decided to start up a Brampton BSD-Linux User Group (BBLUG!).  This will hopefully grow into a community of open source enthusiasts in the Brampton and Mississauga region.  While we are competing in theory with the folks at GTALUG and WGTALUG, this is more of bring something to Brampton.  I know there is a Brampton LUG group on Facebook.  However I tried contacting them, but it doesn’t look like they are all that active.

So tomorrow @ 8PM, we plan on meeting up in the Coffee Culture for 2 hours.  If you are an enthusiast of Linux or BSD and live in the Brampton area, feel free to drop by.

OK, I should of announced this meeting much earlier.  I’ll try to do a better job of advertising the meetings next time.  I planned on putting up ads for this but… I kept putting it off.  Sorry. 🙁

Open Source Gamer Goes to Ontario Linux Fest 2008

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Last, last weekend (October 25) I attended my first conference, Ontario Linux Fest 2008. And what an awesome event it was! The event turned out be a somewhat low key event. Not a huge number of exhibitor booths, but the Eclipse, Fedora, FOSSology, FSF, OpenStreetMap and Drupal people had setup shop there. The event featured 4 tracks, and a number of great speakers. Got to meet Jorge Castro from Canonical, Ross Turk and Daniel Hinojosa from SourceForge, Jon “maddog” Hall, Jeremy Allison from Samba, Ian Darwin and Bradley Kuhn from the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC). It is always an amazing thing to meet the people “in the flesh”, who make a difference in the FOSS community, and read from blogs. The seminars were fantastic and inspire me to further my own open source/free software involvement.

One of the organizers, Richard Weait tried to convince me to start up a Brampton LUG. I might try it out, once I have a little bit more time. Nothing fancy mind you, just one night a month at the Coffee Culture, a few ads and a mailing list. We will see how it will go.

Also I got to go out to dinner with Bradley, the Red Hat and FoSSology folks. And thanks to Google for providing yet another free service in life, in the form of free drinks at the reception/ after-party.

So thanks guys for the awesome time. Sorry for not blogging earlier. Life keeps me busy as always. And lets make the 2009 event even larger!

An Invitation to a Party

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Somewhere out there in Wolverhampton, UK, four large gents and there large group of friends, followers and groupies are having one helluva party. Unfortunately I’m not with them. As Aq pointed out on a previous blog entry, Toronto is a bit of a ways. And in days of stellar expensive flights, I couldn’t afford such a trip. 🙁

I did listen to the last studio recorded LugRadio podcast. On my N810, a device which first heard about in LugRadio. Or was it from Bert & Ernie on LAS? I keep on mixing up my muppet shows. 😀 And whats up with the melon?

Anyways, thanks again to the entire LugRadio crew, for the crazy banter and great times. You will be missed. And if I ever meet you guys in the flesh, I’ll be buy ya a beer. Or more if necessary. 🙂

I’m Hating it!

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Humanity has a love-hate relationship with technology. Geeks like to take it to the extreme. Take the recent hub-bub in the blogosphere about the aptly named: Linux Hater’s Blog. In that blog, the anonymous blogger (or bloggers) rants about how BAD Linux is. Its entertaining and educational! Entertaining because rants and rabble-raising is fun… in a perverse sort of fashion.

This is not just a simply a rehash of Microsoftian propaganda; a machination of an ingenious marketing machine feeding FUD to an ignorant public. Rather the Linux Hater’s Blog (LHB) looks at the issues that Linux suffers from. Just like the Unix Hater’s Guide (thanks LH) before it, LHB satires the attitudes of the community, developers and companies in the Linux landscape. And hopeful as satire has done before, maybe better the Linux, Open Source and Software Libre ecosystem as a whole. Don’t be fooled. The Linux Hater is most likely an experience developer in the Linux world, and knows damn well what he is talking err… ranting about. And deep down inside he loves it.

I read both of the Linux Hater’s Blog and Unix Hater’s Guide in their entirety. It changed my perspective. Linux and UNIX are not perfect. The design and implementation of both of them aren’t the shining gems of computer science. And for historical reasons, and laziness on the part of Linux/FOSS developers, just doesn’t cut it anymore.

I admit it. I still prefer Linux. I’ll continue using Linux with all its wrinkles and weirdness because it’s still the best OS out there. I’ll still think freedom in software is paramount. I’ll still advocate open source as the most ethical and efficient way of doing business in the software industry. And I’ll still write in C, C++ and its spawn Java. Cause Lisp is way too hard to do in my head.

Thanks Linux Hater.

A New Hope

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Ok, I just had to take that title. While I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, light sabers and X-wing fighters are cool. So why the title? And why the enthusiasm?

First, I have a job! Thats right, I now work as a software consultant for VisionMAX Solutions. I get to build neat web applications in Java for clients. Its not exactly open source, but the mode of work is very similar. I am pretty excited about the job. I just need to get used to the new schedule.

Second, I started writing again! Yup, I am working on a science fiction novel. First chapter done in rough, and the second chapter progressing well. Lets see if I can keep it up to finish the novel.

Lastly, Ubuntu 8.04 came out recently. I have been running the KDE 4 desktop on it, and its fairly stable. Recently I’ve had some issues with the performance KDE 4. So its back to KDE 3, which is still rock solid. I might get into KDE 4 development and help progress KDE 4 towards the same stability as KDE 3.

Kubuntu Dev Tips?

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Decided that I want to get more involved with the Kubuntu project. Filling bug reports and answering forum questions is one thing. Being involved with the desktop you will be using is another. Besides I want to get my hands dirty in some KDE coding. Maybe gleen off a few tricks on how to create an environment where developers, and the community in general contribute.

I am a firm believer that developers should eat their own dog food. So for starters, I am making room to install the new KDE 4 version on Hardy Heron. After that I guess I will try to become a Kubuntu developer. Any tips on how I should get started?

Spreading Linux as a Scientific Endeavour

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I just read Vlad Dolezal’s blog entry about why Linux doesn’t spread. The debate about the reasons why people don’t adopt Linux and a free open source desktop, has gone on for years. Vlad just dredged up the old its free therefore not useful argument. An easy counterexample are what mobile providers: get a free cellphone, pay for the service. Most Linux/open source companies make money from Saas (software as a service) too. In fact most large scale enterprise deployed software firms, do SaaS or SOA (service-oriented architecture). So while I wish Vlad luck with selling copies of Linux, a far more interesting comment turned up.

One commenter on Vlad’s site mentions their luck with “selling” the idea of a free open source Linux desktop as a scientific endeavour. Linux and software libre started off as ventures of interest only to computer scientists. Look here is a neat little OS I wrote on top of Minix (Linus Torvalds). And look here is a way we can run a UNIX system without NDAs, and restrictions of proprietary vendors (Richard Stallman). It was only until Eric S. Raymond started working on convincing developers and business decision people, that free software named as open source, that Linux started into its present course of wider adoption. A good chunk of open source projects are initiated by academics in computer science and communication fields.

The term open source was invented to defeat the argument which Vlad reiterates. Read Eric Raymond’s book, The Cathedral and the Bazaar for more about the idea behind “open source”. Removing the word “free” helps to lift the semantic confusion around the term free software. And treating the open source eco-system as part scientific community, part computer hobbyist club, and part client-oriented commercial paradigm, will all help remove the negative aura that sometimes surrounds Linux and the open source desktop.

The idea of getting involved in a grand experiment in science, appeals to some individuals. But probably only to those affiliated with academia, or in love with the romantic vision of science. Neither this idea of Linux a child of “computer science love” or any one thing will increase Linux adoption overnight. There will not be any mass exodus from Windows to Linux. However we can lower the cost of entering into the world of Linux.

Far more difficult issues face Linux and the open source desktop other than what Vlad mentions. The open source desktop lacks in ease of use, marketing and third party support. Dealing with these issues, will lower the cost of entry to the open source desktop for more computer users. More about this in future articles.

KDE & Linux: An Explanation for the Uninitiated

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One of my friends after reading my last blog piece commented: “English please.”

So here is the English summary translation of my last blog post:

The short explanation would be:
I occasionally review new Linux software. KDE is a window manager for Linux. And the new KDE4 rocks my world!

Long explanation without too much techno-babble:
Linux is an alternative to Windows for computers. Now KDE is a window manager for Linux. A window manager handles the drawing of windows, various widgets, keyboard input, mouse input, etc. (Yes, KDE/Gnome users I know that window managers often do more than that.) Basically all the things you see (and hear) on a computer, are all handled (for the most part) by a window manager.

The KDE developers also make a number of additional programs (file browser, web browser, IM client, office suite, image viewers) that work closely with the basic KDE system programs. In the new KDE 4, the KDE developers basically rewrote most of KDE, letting them experiment with new and interesting ideas.

Now, you are probably thinking so what? Well unlike Windows or Mac OSX, Linux is free. KDE is also free. Free as in speech.

You see Linux, KDE and hundreds of other such programs are open source software or software libre. Software libre is a movement to give back freedom to both computer users and developers. (For the most part I use the terms free software, open source and software libre interchangeably. My apologies to RMS & the FSF for continuing the confusion.)

Open source software is licensed in such a way that you can download it legally, run it, look at the source code, whatever you want to do with it. The only restriction is that if you change the source code and plan on releasing it, you have to release your modified source code under the same license. (Extreme simplification here since I am talking only about the GNU General Public License version 2 or GPL 2. But nothing written as a binding legal document is simple. Fortunately GPL 2 is the most popular open source license.)

Now most people think that nothing of value is free. You might think no one would want to work on something that is free. Except there are probably a few hundred thousand open source developers including myself out there. Except that Fortune 500 companies such like IBM, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, Asus, Google, Dell, Sony, etc. often run their business on open source software, and pay developers to contribute back to open source software projects like Linux.

Case in point: Yesterday, Sun Microsystems bought out MySQL AB, a company that produces free open source and extremely popular database for $1 billion USD. Google, Yahoo, Facebook all use MySQL as their database platform.

Back to my last story, the new KDE 4 is cool. Cool because its open source. Cool because its beautiful to look at. Cool because it works. Mostly. Cool because it will only get better.

So I hope that explains why I get excited about things like KDE 4.

Ubuntu Toronto Meeting @ the Linuxcaffe

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Today I went down to a small, cosy cafe called the Linuxcaffe on the corner of Harbord St. & Grace St. in downtown Toronto. Other than the fact, that the Linuxcaffe is way cool with organic coffee and free wireless; its also cool that the owner advocates Linux and free software. But what got me to go, was a seasonal meeting of Ubuntu Toronto.

I got to meet a number of enthusiastic Ubuntu users, and I may have helped create a new one by installing and configuring Ubuntu “Gutsy” 7.10 on a laptop. Thanks guys for the great afternoon. And even the weather cooperated by not dumping snow until much later.