The Weekly Rewind

Howdy, welcome to another Weekly Rewind. Number 22 we’re up to now and I can’t think of any good jokes for that number, sorry. Apart from maybe some Bingo lingo “two little ducks… twenty two” and all that. Anyway, lack of jokes aside, let’s get into what happened this week:

On Monday we got back to recording the first regular Linux Outlaws episode in a while, about 3 weeks actually. Damn, it was a long one at 2 hours running time! We had lots of technical problems before starting and so were pretty delayed. It was fun as always though and luckily lots of people came to join us live in the IRC and on Ustream. I’m thankful for all the support and I hope everyone else had as good a time as I did. On Tuesday I did a lot of work on my DanLynch.org website. I sorted out the Drupal install a bit, upgraded to 6.13 and made sure all the modules were up to date. This blog actually runs on Wordpress but it’s a sub directory of the main Drupal site. The master plan (if you can call it that) is to have one place where everything I do resides. A proper hub for all my activities online where you can find music, podcasts, articles and assorted gubbins. The site is making progress very slowly, I’ve got it to the stage where it pulls in podcast items automatically and at least has a list of the latest blog posts in the sidebar. There’s still a hell of a long way to go. The structure of the Drupal nodes and flow is pretty much done but I need to fix up one design that works for the whole site, including this blog. I have an idea and I’ll be digging into some XHTML/CSS stuff in the near future. It’s been a while so it’ll be good to get back to it. If anyone has ideas or suggestions of what you’d like to see on the site feel free to chip in with a comment or email.

On Wednesday I continued development work and also found time to write a bit about the latest developments in the Mono saga. I won’t go into the details again here, you can read the post. Some people didn’t like what I said and I’m always up for a healthy debate about these issues. I also developed quite a bad cold this week. This isn’t a man-flu thing and I’m not usually one to complain about these things, honest. I’ve had chronic sinus trouble since I was a kid and I’ve been advised recently to try a Neti pot. It’s an Indian thing and part of the whole Ayurvedic medicine movement. It’s like a small tea pot in many ways and you use it to pour salty water through your nose. It’s supposed to help clear blockages and generally promote health. I figured it was worth a bash, I’ll try anything once. They say in the instructions it’s a “warm pleasant sensation”, is it hell!! Whoever wrote that is a lying git, it makes your eyes water and it’s not what I would call enjoyable in any way, but having said that it’s not really painful and I shall perceiver for a while to see if it works. I’ve done it 3 times so far and I’m sticking to once a day. I’ve included a video below so you can see what I mean.

Later in the week my laptop started playing up a lot. Strange lines on the screen, flickering display and other intermittent faults. I figured it was just a quirk in Fedora but I now think it might be a hardware problem. I moved very briefly to PCLinuxOS 2009 which I wanted to review. That didn’t help and I ended up installing an old image of Mint 7. I’ve been running that a couple of days and since yesterday it hasn’t had any display problems. I thought perhaps it was the faulty Nvidia card which has caused a lot problems for Dell. They’ve even extended the standard warranty of this machine by a year for this issue, it’s been quite high profile. I was convinced I’d have to send this laptop back to Dell for repair until yesterday, but if it keeps working as it is I might be lucky. It could have been a loose connection that I inadvertently knocked back into place. We’ll see.

I spent the rest of the week nursing my cold, working on websites, writing, moaning and preparing my playlist for the next Rathole Radio. As I write this it’s actually very early Monday morning and I did the show live a couple of hours ago. It went really well I think. Many people turned up and I’m pleased with the results. You can hear the podcast very soon. I’ll publish it tomorrow, between other work.

Upcoming:

Next week I’ll be doing Linux Outlaws as usual, we had a chat to Bradley Kuhn of the SFLC about the implications of the recent Mono patent promise by Microsoft. You’ll be able to hear that on Wednesday hopefully, I’m editing this week and I hope to get the bulk of it done on Tuesday. I’ll also be working a lot on my presentation for Manchester Free Software on Tuesday July 21st. It’s at 7pm and more details can be found here. I’ll be talking about audio production on Linux, it should be a lot of fun. If you’re in the Manchester area come down and say hi, I’d be pleased to see you. Who knows maybe the talk will even be interesting, I’m planning all kinds of live demos which could go horribly wrong. I’ll release this new Rathole Radio tomorrow, keep working on the website and many other things during the week. So I’ll see you next Sunday I hope. Take care till then

Dan

P.S – Can you smell salt? … I can, everywhere I go

The Mono Project

There’s been a lot of controversy and argument over the use of Mono in the Linux world rightly or wrongly, and this long running issue recently reared it’s head again when Richard Stallman (founder of the FSF) chipped in. Now, the controversy may be over thanks to a surprising move from Microsoft themselves. It’s been talked about everywhere in the the technology press I know, but just in case you don’t know the situation, I’ll give you a quick outline. The Mono Project is an open source implementation of Microsoft’s popular .NET development framework. It enables developers to code in C# – a language developed by MS – and run their applications on a variety of platforms: Linux, Mac OS X and the iPhone amongst others. I was a professional ASP developer at the time .NET arrived on the scene, and it certainly held a lot of promise. I originally thought the idea was to enable cross-platform development in .NET by using the CLi in a similar way to the Java Virtual Machine. I even asked when there would be a CLi released for Linux and other platforms at an official Microsoft training course. My question was met with muffled laughter and it seemed the intention was not to open up .NET to other platforms. Miguel De Icaza, the creator of the Gnome desktop and well known Linux developer decided to try and address this problem with Mono. It enables .NET developers stuck on Windows to port their applications to new platforms and expand their horizons. This is all a good thing, nobody would argue against this, not even RMS himself. On the Linux desktop many popular applications have been developed with Mono such as Banshee, F-Spot, Tomboy and Gnome-Do. The problem for Mono has been a fear in the Linux community that Microsoft would wait until it had worked it’s way into the Linux desktop (and Gnome in particular) significantly, then pull their software patents out and go to town. Some people saw this as an attempt to attack Linux by stealth. This is probably exaggeration and I am no doubt that Miguel and the team would never intentionally hurt Linux at all, as some have intimated.

Alan Cox's Rather Fine Beard

So, this rather long preamble brings me to the dramatic news ; late on Monday night (UK time that is) Microsoft released a statement confirming that they were putting C# and the .NET CLi under their Community Promise. This is effectively a promise not to sue anyone developing with those technologies over patents held by the company. C# and the CLi were already ECMA standards, but many people within the software industry don’t put much stock in ECMA from what I’ve heard. We’ll have to wait for a full legal analysis of what this statement means, but it appears to be legally binding and cannot be withdrawn by MS. It only covers the 2 technologies already listed as ECMA standards and not all of the .NET framework it should be noted. Certainly not all of Mono like the Winforms API and ASP.NET implementations. It seems that the Mono team approached Microsoft some months ago to ask for a legal clarification of the patent situation, and MS has delivered. There’s certainly no danger of me becoming a Windows fanboy, and I don’t believe we’ll see the folks inside Redmond towers walking around in GNU t-shirts or sporting Alan Cox beards, but you do have to give credit where it is due. They didn’t have to do this and I’m pleased they have.

Miguel De Icaza in a fetching hat

For his part Miguel has announced that they will split Mono into 2 packages; one containing only the ECMA components covered by the patent promise, and another with the extra parts of .NET Mono includes. This should hopefully make it easier for developers worried about patents to pick only the parts guaranteed as safe. I think this is a great idea and it should appease most sceptics. The really good news is that Banshee, F-Spot and other popular Mono apps are covered by this patent promise. Queue the dancing elephants and the music! I hope this will mean an end to the “mono wars” as I like to call them. We can now move on to finding something else to lose sleep over in double quick time. You know what though? If this whole saga has taught us anything, maybe it should be that we can’t live our lives in fear. Yes it’s sensible to take reasonable measures to protect yourself and be cautious at times, but our overriding concern as a community should be to develop better Free Software, not become lawyers.

I’m pleased for Miguel and the Mono team at this news. We spent about an hour chatting to him on Linux Outlaws not so long ago and he’s a very likeable guy. I think he just wants to develop better software, something that we can all agree is a laudable goal. I’m also going to say something that you won’t hear often around here but it needs to be said. Thank you Microsoft, you did a good thing here and I for one appreciate it. It’s only a step in the right direction though, let’s keep it going. Right, I’m off to commence washing my mouth out with soap… I’ll never feel clean again

Does this bring an end to Mono wars? Let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks for reading.

EDIT: I forgot to say, I want to see what the SFLC says about this document. People say it’s legally binding, I’d like too hear some confirmation.

The Weekly Rewind

Hi ho, it’s another Weekly Rewind and this time we’re up to the symbolic number 21. Key of the door and all that. The legal drinking age in the US of course, something I’ve never really understood. I’m not trying to extol the virtues of alcohol for teenagers by any means, but I do find it a bit odd that you can drive a car or by a lethal weapon (not the Mel Gibson type) at 16 over there, while drinking a beer suddenly makes you a deviant. Anyway, I’m sidetracking things here already. There’s no exotic location this week, I’m not on a plane or in some exciting foreign country, I’m just sat on my couch. I’ve still had an interesting week though, so let’s get into it:

On Monday I spent a lot of time online as usual and did some bits of work, but tried to take it a bit easier overall. This was due to a very busy previous week jetting around, I’d only arrived home from Manchester Airport late the night before. On Tuesday I did bit more development work and general admin stuff. I also did some research on Fedora 11 and found time to write up a quick post about the release of Firefox 3.5, my open source web browser of choice. I was quite busy with various things on Wednesday and I’m sorry to say I missed the Liverpool LUG meeting in the evening. It’s the first LivLUG I’ve missed in about a year, and I wasn’t happy about it. My hitherto unblemished appearance record is now officially blemished. I also missed a talk by Tim Dobson about his group DFEY, but I’m told it was recorded which is good.

Steve Holden's Keynote

On Wednesday morning I headed down the M6 in my battered old Ford Fiesta towards Birmingham. My destination was the EuroPython 2009 conference, an annual meeting of Python hackers from all over the continent. I spent the whole day there and had a really great time chatting and meeting people. I’m not a Python guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like the language and I’ve done some web development with Django, a Python web framework. Some of the technical aspects of the talks were a little over my heard I must confess, but it was still entertaining. I took my Zoom H4 and recorded about 5 or 6 interviews at the event. I talked to many Python developers, some of the event organizers, Bruce Eckel the well known technical author, and Steve Holden the head of the Python Software Foundation. They were all very gracious and hospitable. Hopefully you’ll hear some of those interviews in future episodes of Linux Outlaws, and if we can’t fit them all in, I’ll be sure to publish them here. I would like to give a big hearty thanks to John Pinner from Linux Emporium and Richard Taylor of Qinetiq for looking after me so marvelously on the day. John gave me a EuroPython t-shirt which I will wear proudly, and the majority of interviews I got were down to Richard’s kind assistance and keen eye for nabbing people. It seems the Python community is strong, vibrant but most of all, friendly. I’m very happy about that.

EuroPython Lightening Talks

On Friday it was time to hit the keyboard (not literally) and get this 3000 word Fedora article written. I duly did that and published it yesterday, after a lot of editing and formatting work. I then went on to edit the next Software Freedom Law Show in the evening before bed. You’ll be able to hear that on Tuesday when Bradley releases it. Today I’ve been upgrading and working on a Drupal site of mine, I’ve also been setting up AdBard and ditching Google Ads. AdBard is 100% FSF approved and only shows FLOSS related adverts. I feel much happier with it, we’ll have to see how it works out.

Upcoming:

At the time of writing I don’t know if there will be a live Linux Outlaws show tomorrow night or not. I’ll have to speak to Fab and find out. We’re getting ready to release our 100th episode very soon and he’s been working hard editing the backlog of shows all week. He has released both episode 98 and episode 99 in the last few days. Nice work!! There’ll be a live Rathole Radio show next Sunday at 9pm but I hope to get another article in before that. I’m not sure at this moment what else I have planned for the next 7 days, but no doubt something will come up. Why not join me next week to find out. Same time, same channel…

The Fedora Desktop

Today I thought I’d report back in detail on my experiences with Fedora 11, the community distribution release from perennial Linux giants Red Hat. It’s a distribution with a reputation for being close to the cutting edge, some would argue too close. Many people have complained to me about bugs, but is this fair? I haven’t looked at Fedora in depth since version 8 or 9, so I wanted to see for myself. I have some history with Fedora, but I felt it lost it’s way a little a few years back. It was time to put past experiences – both good and bad – aside, to really see what Fedora 11 could bring to the table…

Vital Stats:
Distro base – Red Hat
Packaging – .rpm (Managed by YUM)
Linux Kernel – 2.6.29.5-191.fc11.i586
Default Desktop – Gnome 2.26.2

Introduction & Background:

Boot screen

Although I downloaded Fedora 11 a few weeks back, I actually installed it while at FUDCon (the Fedora conference) in Berlin; surrounded by Fedora developers and Red Hat employees. Now that’s what I call support. I first installed Fedora way back in 2003 when it was called Fedora Core, it had just been split from Red Hat Linux. It was even one of the first distributions I managed to convince my employers at the time (the National Health Service) to try out. It wasn’t my first Linux experience by any means, but it was quite early in my adoption of the platform. I kept coming back to it over the years but felt increasingly disappointed as it got more experimental and felt less usable. The last version I used properly was Fedora 8 and that left something of a sour taste in my mouth. YUM (the package management tool) kept locking up for no apparent reason and the system wasn’t really stable enough to use as a proper desktop. I’d briefly looked at other releases of Fedora in the meantime, but going into this Fedora 11 install, I wasn’t sure what to expect at all.

Installation:

Setting Time Zone

Although I downloaded a copy of Fedora 11 before leaving for Linux Tag in Berlin, I picked up a nicely packaged Gnome LiveCD from the Fedora stand at the conference. I decided to use that for the install. Back at my budget hotel (sans Internet) later that evening I set about wiping my system and installing Fedora. My test machine as always was my trusty Dell XPS m1330n, and interestingly enough I noticed the display machines on the Fedora stand were all m1330’s. This could only bode well for my the compatibility of my hardware. I booted up a live session using the CD and everything seemed to work out of the box, I was also struck by the impressive look of the system. The desktop background particularly. I’m not usually a visuals guy, but I did study Art History along with Computer Science for my University degree (what a combination that was), so I like to think I have something of an eye for artwork. Clicking the icon on the desktop I launched into the install wizard. I like the Anaconda installer, I’ve always found it works well on any of the Red Hat-based systems I’ve used. It asks you all the usual questions you’d expect: keyboard language, network hostname, time zone, yada yada and it was all straightforward, until I hit disk partitioning. This is where things got a bit more interesting. As you’ll know if you’ve read many of these reviews I favour a particular partitioning system.

12gb / (root)
5gb swap
142gb(ish) /home

Partitioning On VBox

With Fedora though I had to change that. I chose custom partitioning and was informed that my root partition would have to be formatted as ex4, not a problem. I’m told this is because the LiveCD image it copies over is ext4. However, after hitting the confirm button to continue, I was informed that the system can’t boot from ext4. This means you need to fence off some extra space to use as a /boot partition, and format that as ext3. Apparently this is a GRUB (bootloader) problem; versions lower than 2 can’t boot from ext4 I’m told. This has been fixed in Ubuntu by applying a patch but it’s very pervasive and the Fedora developers apparently didn’t feel happy using it. As a distribution not really known for caution in using new software this seemed strange, but they must consider it a significant threat to stability. I used about 300mb for the /boot partition which seemed to work well. After that I was able to carry out the actual install, this took about 20mins to complete. You have to reboot the system and remove the CD manually after install, which seems a bit odd to me. You might consider this nit picking, but almost every other distro prompts you to reboot and remove the disc these days. It seems a basic oversight. Not a major one by any means, but still something that could easily be polished up.

Upon rebooting the machine you’re asked to complete a few further steps; such as accepting the software’s license, creating user accounts and setting date/time. You’re also asked to submit your hardware profile to help the developers diagnose any bugs, I dutifully did this. It seems a bit odd to me that you have to do this after a reboot, wouldn’t it make more sense to just do all this in the main install? I know Anaconda has worked like this for a while, but it still seems counter intuitive to me. Anyway, the installation was complete, easily enough and in a respectable time. Next it was on to configuring the system and making it feel like /home.

FULL INSTALLATION SLIDE SHOW >>

Tweaking Things:

Nvidia Driver Details

I should point out that I did most of this setup work while sat on the floor of a corridor at Linux Tag, surreptitiously stealing power, I needed Internet access to download packages and this couldn’t be done at the hotel. Wireless was already working for me out of the box, so I just connected with Network Manager. Fedora only ships with 100% Free Software and loaded the Nouveau drivers for my freedom hating Nvidia card. Nouveau is a project to try and implement free drivers for Nvidia cards. I applaud the intention and most things worked well but I couldn’t seem to get any 3D acceleration, which makes it kind of pointless having a posh video card. Another problem I found was in suspending the machine to RAM, it simply wouldn’t wake up the display again with the free drivers. A lot of people tell me they don’t think suspend and resume matters, but I use it a lot and so do many others. I also found the machine would overheat a lot with the free drivers. So I quickly decided to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers, a GNU lots it’s horns that instant, I’m guilty. It’s not as difficult as you may first think to add the restricted drivers though, you simple have to add a software repository called RPM Fusion. This also offers access to restricted media codecs and other software such as Skype, more on that later.

I found this guide very helpful in enabling 3D acceleration and Compiz effects. It tells you how to install the RPM Fusion repos with YUM. Once you’ve done that it’s simply a matter of installing the appropriate driver.

“yum install kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia”

Enabling 3D Effects

You need to log out and back in for the changes to take effect, this is because the X Server needs restarting. If it’s worked you should see an Nvidia splash screen on startup. After that you can install the Compiz packages as detailed in that guide. You enable the 3D desktop with the little widget on the menu under “System / Preferences / Desktop Effects”. Compiz was fully working. I also ticked the box to enable wobbly windows, I’m a sucker for wobbly windows. A lot of distributions come with Compiz enabled out of the box, so I couldn’t describe this as my easiest Compiz experience ever, but it certainly wasn’t hard to set up either. Most of the work is done by YUM, no hacking in config files or other such shenanigans.

The PackageKit GUI

Fedora 11 comes with a reasonable selection of software. Most of the things you could need, but no OpenOffice.org or Mono interestingly. I found installing all the multimedia codecs was easy once the RPM Fusion repositories were enabled. I installed all the Gstreamer plugins (good, bad, ugly), VLC, Deluge, Skype, Gpodder, Tasque, Gwibber, Audacity, EasyTag, Bluefish and much more with ease. The software repositories seem really deep and very up to date I must say. 10,000 packages was the figured quoted to me by Max Spevak, and I can believe it. The GUI tool for managing packages (gnome-packagekit) reminds me very much of Synaptic, which is no bad thing. I do think they could make some improvements to the interface by adding simple things like a progress bar, so you have some idea how long it’s going to take to finish. I also tweaked the Gnome layout a little to suit my tastes, removing the bottom toolbar and installing the Avant Window Navigator. I had to change the default behaviour of Nautilus (the file manager) to load in browser mode and display items in list view. These are all personal preferences, but I don’t get how anyone can use Nautilus with browser mode off, it makes things so much easier. After a couple of hours discovering things and tinkering I was very happy with my Fedora 11 desktop.

The Sweet Sound Of Music:

Sound Mixer App

One feature I’d like to highlight in F11 is the new sound mixer. Sound is a subject close to my heart as you may know, but I’ve had mixed success with Pulse Audio to date (no pun intended). The concept is brilliant, it’s like JACK for human beings (I just stepped on someone’s trademark…) but it never quite hit the spot. I found it buggy and unusable mostly. Fedora was one of the first distributions to implement Pulse with Fedora 8, and they’ve made a much better job of it than Ubuntu. The new mixer which ships with F11 is great, it makes Pulse so easy. Unlike with a lot of systems still using plain ALSA, you can have multiple applications using your audio card at once and pipe audio between them. You can even mix the output levels of each application and set up internal recording easily. I expect we’ll see this mixer tool crop up in future releases of a few other distros. It seems that the Fedora team have a close interest in PulseAudio, as Paul Frields showed me his new PulseCaster application last week. It’s in the early development stages but anyone interested in making podcasts or just recording phone/voip interviews should keep an eye on it.

Conclusions:
Ease Of Installation & Use: 3/5
Stability: 4/5
Speed: 4/5
Community & Documentation: 4/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 4/5

My Perfect Desktop

As I said right at the start, I wasn’t sure what to expect with Fedora 11. I’ve had mixed results in the past, but this feels like a really good release. I’m not just saying that because I’ve had a chance to spend time with some of the Fedora team lately either. If I didn’t think it was any good, I’d tell you straight. It’s improved a lot in the time I’ve been away. It boots up really quickly which may be due to the Plymouth bootloader, I can’t confirm that 100%, but I can confirm that speed is not a problem with F11. The Fedora Project have taken a strong stance on Free Software and while I respect and support this, I was a little worried how easy it would be to get the desktop working as I needed it to. Once I enabled the RPM Fusion repositories however, my fears quickly dissipated. The amount of software available in the repositories is amazing, and there wasn’t one program I couldn’t find. You can’t say that about many distributions. F11 shipped with a beta version of Firefox 3.5 but it’s now been updated automatically to the release version. This happened just a day after the official release, that’s pretty impressive. It was before Arch and at the time of writing Ubuntu still haven’t packaged the upgrade yet. If you want the latest software this is a good distro to try I’d say. I noticed a few quirks here and there as I went along, but nothing compared to what I was led to believe by other reviews. I had no issues with stability and I haven’t noticed any show stopping bugs in well over a week using this full time. Perhaps I’ve just been lucky, but I doubt it. They do use some testing software and I think a lot of people fear they’re just getting a beta (or perhaps even alpha) version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I’ve even thought the same myself in the past, but this is unfair to Fedora and the people who work hard on making it. They do push the envelope at times and try things other distributions wouldn’t, but they seem to see this as leading the way and developing the whole Linux desktop. The amount of stuff pushed back into upstream projects by Fedora is a testament to this spirit.

Compiz 3D Effects

People ask me who exactly Fedora is aimed at, and that’s a tough question to answer. I’m not sure I know, but it’s definitely become more community driven in the last couple of years. This is now bearing fruit and F11 benefits. When Fedora (or should I say Fedora Core) was originally spun out of Red Hat, it didn’t seem to have a lot of differences in the early releases. It increasingly got more experimental and unstable for me and that’s why I felt they lost their way slightly. That’s just how it seemed to me, but Fedora 11 is right back on track. Would I put Fedora on a production server? Probably not, but I don’t think it’s meant for that anyway. That’s why we have CentOS. It’s not particularly hard to use, not on the Arch or Gentoo scale, but I wouldn’t feel confident giving Fedora to a complete Linux novice. There are probably better distributions for that. For people who know a little bit about Linux and want to experiment, I think it’s perfect. It’s also good for developers and anyone who wants to learn about Red Hat systems. No matter what you may think of Red Hat as a company, you can’t deny that in the business Linux world they completely dominate. I’d encourage anyone after a serious Linux job to take a look at Fedora (and probably CentOS too) as a way to learn more. It will stand you in good stead in the long run. I can see why so many distributions are based on it, the tools they have for making your own respin are formidable.

To sum up then, I think F11 is a good release and well worth a few days of anyone’s time. I’ve never really felt comfortable with Fedora on my home desktop until now. I have everything set up as I need it and I’d be happy to stay here longer. The community has grown in strength, there’s lots of help available out there. I think things are really looking up in the Fedora world. They have lots of innovative features and things that will no doubt end up in future releases of other distros. This is where they see themselves, the ground breakers or pioneers who explore new things on behalf of the rest of us. The developers have done a great job on Fedora 11 and I encourage you to take a look at it and let me know how it works for you.

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD FEDORA 11 HERE

Where to next?
To be honest I haven’t fully decided yet. I have a few ideas but nothing concrete. I’ve enjoyed my time with Fedora a lot but I’m a wanderer as you know, and it’s time for me to move on again. If you would like to suggest a Linux distribution, or even perhaps a BSD you think I should visit please let me know. You can leave comments here or send me an email to dan AT danlynch DOT org, I’m always interested in hearing from you. You’ll have to join me next time to see exactly where we end up, mystery is half the fun right? I look forward to seeing you on the next adventure…

Firefox logo

Just a quick post to let you all know that Firefox 3.5 was launched today. In case you somehow missed the discussions about it all over the web, it’s supposed to be a lot faster than Firefox 3. I’m running Fedora 11 at the moment, so I’ve been using a beta of Firefox 3.5 for a few days now. It seems fast enough to me, but then I didn’t have a speed problem with the older versions. I hear a lot of people complaining that Firefox is bloated and slow, but it’s always been fine for me. Maybe I’m just more patient, or perhaps I have a faster computer, who knows.

Private Browsing:

Enabling Private Browsing

There are a few new features in 3.5, private browsing is now built in. I’ve been experimenting with this and I must say it works really well. Dubiously dubbed the “porn mode” by some – not Mozilla of course – because it doesn’t leave any footprints of the sites you visit, it’s actually a really handy security feature. I used to use a plug-in called Distrust for this kind of thing, Internet banking and so on, but I found it could be a little slow and it bogged the browser down sometimes, especially when trying to clean up your session. The inbuilt private browsing is lightning quick and it will even remember when you have multiple windows open, not just tabs. Selecting private browsing closes all open tabs and instances of Firefox, it then presents you with a blank browser ready to go. Once you’re finished you simply switch off private browsing, and all the previous windows and tabs are restored seamlessly. Very quickly too, as I said.

Speed Bump:

Speed claims

I referred to the speed improvements earlier but it seems this is what Mozilla wants everyone to focus on from the release notes. Many people have said the only reason Mozilla are even concerned with performance now, is because they had their asses handed to them by Google’s Chrome browser. The Javascript engine in Chrome is supposed to be the fastest around. This may be true and many Windows users tell me how much they like Chrome, but as there isn’t a Linux version, it doesn’t really concern me yet. I find it mildly ironic that an open source web browser wouldn’t bother with a Linux version. You can get Chromium (the open source sister project) to run under Linux but I haven’t tried that yet. I’ll endeavour to do that soon for comparison.

So there we go, my browser of choice Firefox has a new version. There aren’t a lot of ground breaking changes from the last release, but it’s definitely been tweaked and improved. No matter what you think of Firefox, it did change the browser game a few years ago in taking on MS Internet Explorer and eating into their market share. We now have many choices in the browser world, no matter what platform you run on. It’s a positive step and hopefully competition will improve them all over time… well maybe not IE, but that’s just waiting to be put out of it’s misery, in my opinion.

You can track the global downloads of Firefox 3.5 here

The Weekly Rewind

You may recall from my last Weekly Rewind that I’d travelled to Bonn, Germany to visit my Linux Outlaws co-host Fab, and his girlfriend Katy. They came over and stayed with me last year for LugRadio Live 08. So to use a footballing analogy, I suppose you could say this was the return leg. This article finds me in a different location, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam actually. I’m in some kind of cafe/bar to be precise, and I’m waiting for my flight back to Manchester. So let’s recap the events that led me here:

On Sunday night after I wrote my last article we had a bit of a party. Some of Fab and Katy’s friends came over for beers, and it was great fun. I ended up doing a bit of an impromptu gig with Fab’s acoustic guitar. I can’t resist a chance to show off. The gang seemed to enjoy it though and I wasn’t booed off, so I consider that a victory (again with the football analogies). On Monday I had a walk around Bonn and saw a bit of the town, ably guided by Fab. It’s a really lovely place I must say, very relaxed; lot’s of trees and open space. Not your typical big city by any means. The people seem pretty cool as well. In the evening we recorded and streamed Linux Outlaws 98, but we didn’t have a chance to edit and release it yet, at the time of writing. Quite a few people watched live and got involved. You’ll hear it very soon, in the next few days I promise. On Tuesday we drove to Berlin and got ready for Linux Tag 2009.

Don't You Know Who I Am?!!

The first day of the show was Wednesday, and we got off to a good start by recording a long interview with Paul Frields and Max Spevak from Fedora. They were really nice guys and we spent a fair bit of time with them in the coming days. Max also suggested we have a chat to Mo Duffy, the head of the Fedora art team. She was very nice too and we chatted about her role at Red Hat. Later on we met up with a listener of the show, Ryan. We enjoyed some beer and pizza (a theme is developing) in the evening with him. On Thursday we hit the show floor again, talking to many more folks and heading around the stands. It really was quite a big show; they reckon there were 10,000 visitors across the 3 days, and I can believe it. We also met up with another listener Zahnersatz from Identi.ca and he interviewed us for his new Linux podcast. It’ll be in German and I’m afraid I don’t know the name right now, but as soon as I find out more details I’ll pass them on. From there we went to the Drupal stand, where we had a bit of a party and were furnished with free beers. Yes, that’s free as in beer. What truly lovely folks they were! We stayed for quite a while and had a great time talking to everyone. We then discovered we couldn’t find our way out of the Berlin Messe. Honestly, that place is so big you could see it from space. We wandered around for a while in the grounds and eventually found a way out, but it was like being in some sort of adventure game, or perhaps even Resident Evil. The whole place deserted. I was waiting for the zombies to appear, but thankfully I think they got lost too.

After a short break, I’m resuming this article from the plane. Offline of course. I’m looking out of the window over the clouds, it’s quite bizarre. I think we’re somewhere over the English Channel but I couldn’t say for sure. Back to business. On Friday it was the first day of FUDcon, the rather strangely named Fedora conference. It was just over the way from Linux Tag and tied in well. We met Jan Wildeboer from Red Hat at the event and spent some time with him. Really nice guy. He’s an open source evangelist for the company, and does a lot of work to refute the claims of Microsoft and others in pushing software patents. I also interviewed Joe “zonker” Brockmeier the OpenSuse Community Manager, back in the main building. We talked about all things OpenSuse an Novell related. You’ll be able to hear all of these interviews in episode 99 of Linux Outlaws, which I expect to release some time later in the week.

Outlaws and Jan Wildeboer

Finally, on the Friday night we hopped on the S-Bahn and went a few stops along to the FUDPUB party. There was free pizza and we had a great time with everyone there. Fab and I had the pleasure of hanging out with Ade Bradshaw of LugRadio fame, and we spent most of the party laughing and drinking with him. He also brought up an intriguing game called “Dirty Gamble”, but I’m not at liberty to reveal any details sorry. You’ll have to keep wondering A really great night was had by all, and upon returning to out hotel Fab and I recorded some stuff for episode 99. We were a bit the worse for wear (not from drink, just tired mostly) and perhaps you can hear that, but it’s authentic field reporting *ahem*. On Saturday we nipped into FUDcon again for a chat with Max and Paul. Then it was off down the autobahn again towards Bonn, we drove most of the day. I then prepared and released a new episode of Rathole Radio in the evening. Obviously I can’t do a live show as it should be on right now, and I’m on a plane!! The pre-recorded show features an interview with Professor Kliq though and it’s something a little bit different I think. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it. Fab kindly drove me back to Amsterdam this afternoon, and so that brings us up to date. I’d just like to take a moment to thank everyone we met at Linux Tag for being so warm and welcoming, we really had fun. The organizers gave us shiny press passes and we were able to use the private press facilities. It almost makes me feel professional… almost. I hope I can visit Germany again soon and catch up with friends old and new.

Upcoming:
There won’t be a live episode of Linux Outlaws tomorrow as we already have 3 already waiting for release. They should all be out in the next week, with the last one next weekend I expect. I’m running Fedora 11 at the moment, after some encouragement from the Fedora crew, and I’ll write up a review this week I hope. I also have some audio editing to do and I hope to get to at least one day of the EuroPython event in Birmingham. I’m thinking Wednesday or Thursday, if my body survives that long. It’s been quite a week, but I really should get down and support the event. We are listed as media partners after all. I’ll fill you in on what I get up to next Sunday. I should be landing in Manchester soon, the pilot just made an announcement, ooh exciting.

Take care till then everyone and I’ll see you soon,

Dan

The Weekly Rewind

Guten Tag! Oh sorry, I mean hello. Welcome (wilkommen) to the 19th Weekly Rewind, and as you might guess I’m in Germany. I’m visiting my Linux Outlaws co-host Fab in Bonn. Feeling a bit tired after a long trip yesterday but looking forward to Linux Tag in Berlin next week. So let’s get into what led me to this point earlier in the week.

On Monday I released the 2nd episode of Rathole Radio, it’s had a good reception. I’ve had some really nice comments which I appreciate and someone even described me as a cross between Phill Jupitus and John Peel. I’m not sure about that but 2 guys I like a lot and if I can get close to that it would be cool. I’ll keep trying. I also edited a rush episode of the Software Freedom Law Show on Monday afternoon. Then it was on to Linux Outlaws in the evening. It was quite a day, to say the least. Hectic but rewarding.

I had a rest mostly on Tuesday but did a few jobs. On Wednesday I recorded and interview with Professor Kliq and his manager for Rathole Radio. I’ll be away when the next show is due on Sunday the 28th, so I’ve cheated and pre-recorded a load of content. I’ll edit that together in while in Germany and release it before I head for the plane next Sunday. I also finished and released my Linux Mint 7 review on Wednesday. On Thursday it was the Liverpool Tweet Up and I had a lot of fun. It was really great to meet some new folks and catch up with some old friends I hadn’t seen in years. On Friday I recorded more content for the next Rathole Radio and packed for the trip to Germany. The weekend has mostly been taken up with travel. Which brings me to lovely Bonn. So there you go, you’re up to date.

Upcoming:

It’s gonna be a very busy and interesting week. We’ll record an epeisode of Linux Outlaws in the same place tomorrow. On Tuesday we drive to Berlin and get ready for Linux Tag 2009. It’s a massive show and I’ve never been before, so hopefully we’ll record lots of good content there. We also plan to record our episode 100 special in the car on the way. There’ll be no mention of Linux really and we’ll just ramble, answering questions people post on Identi.ca and Twitter. On Saturday it’s back to Bonn and then I’m back to Amsterdam to catch a plane on Sunday. No rest for the wicked. I’ll try and post some pics or updates from Linux Tag as things progress. Take care everyone and I’ll catch up with you soon.

Dan

P.S – I almost forgot since it’s Weekly Rewind 19, we have to have this video. N-n-n-n-n-nineteen!!

Default Mint Desktop

Time for another distro review, and this time I thought I’d look at the latest version of  a distribution I’ve enjoyed a lot in the past. Linux Mint 7, AKA Gloria. I’m tempted to make references to Van Morrison here, but I’ll restrain myself. The last version I reviewed was actually Linux Mint 5, so I’ve missed a release. At the time I said it was the best Linux distribution I’d seen for new users, better even than the hallowed Ubuntu (upon which it is based). Would I still feel the same?

Vital Stats:
Distro base – Ubuntu (itself based on Debian)
Packaging – .deb (Managed by the mighty Apt)
Linux Kernel – 2.6.28-11-generic
Default Desktop – Gnome 2.26.2

Installation:

Disk Partitioning

I downloaded the standard Gnome edition installer CD. I’m pleased to see they’ve cleaned up all the editions on the website and organised things. It used to just list every possible variation in one go, I know that confused some people. “Which version do I download?!” was a query I heard often from poor souls I’d badgered to try Linux. Thankfully it’s much simpler now. Armed with a fresh CD and my trusty Dell m1330n laptop, I set to work. The installer is very much the same as the Ubuntu one, the only real changes I can see are some green paint over the Ubuntu brown. This release is based on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, and as I always seem to say when it comes to the Ubuntu installer, it’s very polished. I can’t think of many areas where it could be improved. It does it’s job well. I entered all the usual information: time zone/location, keyboard layout, disk partitioning and user details. Choosing my traditional disk partitioning scheme:

• 12gb / (root partition)
• 4gb swap
• 140gb (approx) /home

It's Installing

This way I could keep my data intact on the large partition and just format the system drive. It saves a lot of time for a distro hopper like me, provided you remove any settings files from your home folder before switching. The install itself was quick and painless, it took about 20mins. Although I had plenty of prior experience to call on, I don’t think new users would have much trouble getting to grips with this. Possibly a little more description of what you’re doing at each stage and animated demos would help complete novices, but I suppose we have to be careful to balance accessibility to all with a complete dumbing down of the system.

INSTALLATION SLIDE SHOW

Settling In And Configuration:

Welcome screen

One of the great strengths of a distribution based on Ubuntu is the amount of software readily available. Fans of other flavours of Linux will be quick to point out that this isn’t unique to Ubuntu. It isn’t. I accept that point, but the sheer volume of software already packaged in “.deb” files for Ubuntu, and the array of information on how to use it, is amazing. Mint benefits from the deep Ubuntu repositories, and I found installing anything I needed was trivial. One of the reasons I’ve often said I prefer Mint to Ubuntu for new users, is the inclusion of codecs and restricted software by default. Not something Free Software advocates will be happy about, but I think you have to take it one step at a time. Let people get onto Linux and use restricted software at first if that helps, then graduate to a 100% Free Software system later if they want. A hard line approach only scares people away. It’s almost ironic in a way that Ubuntu was created as “Debian without the setup work”. I’m paraphrasing there I admit, but that was the sentiment. Now Mint has become “Ubuntu without the setup work” for me. Granted it doesn’t take a long time to set up Ubuntu, but unless you know about things like the Restricted Extras meta package, it’s not as straightforward as it could be. I talked about this issue at length in my Ubuntu 9.04 review, so I won’t go into it all again.

The MintInstall Tool

I installed the restricted drivers for my Nvidia graphics card when prompted, then got into installing the extra software I needed. You can use Synaptic the tradition GUI (Graphical User Interface) to Apt (the package manager), or you can use the simplified tools in Mint. MintInstall is one area where I can see a massive improvement from previous releases. You can now browse the software, get descriptions and reviews, all in one interface. They brought in the screenshots and extended MintInstall with Linux Mint 6, but I found it had some teething problems. It took an age trying to download a screenshot for every application in the catalogue at once, and refreshing the list of software could be a laborious process. I’m pleased to say that’s been fixed here, it’s a lot more snappy and responsive. All multimedia formats worked for me out of the box as I expected, and browser plugins like Flash were ready to go. It really is a hell of a lot easier than setting up a new Windows system in my opinion, but maybe I’m biased.

Custom Tools:

MintBackup

I’ve talked about MintInstall already, but this is only one of the unique tools in Mint. They stripped out the Ubuntu update mechanism long ago and replaced it with MintUpdate, a more secure tool in the developers eyes. It gives risk levels in clear 1 to 5 ratings next to each update. You can even filter updates automatically based on this. So for example you could set it to only install updates under level 3 if you wanted. By adjusting these settings it’s nice and easy to choose how close to the cutting – or should I say bleeding – edge you want to live. Other Mint flavoured (no pun intended) tools include: MintBackup, MintDesktop, MintAssistant and now MintNanny. The first 3 have been around for a while, but MintNanny is a little newer on the block. As the name suggests – someone’s been watching to much Mary Poppins – it aims to protect your kids online, by allowing you to restrict access to unsavoury sites. You just enter the addresses of the sites you want to block. It’s a small and simple feature but some parents may appreciate it. Another tool I’ve neglected to mention so far is MintUpload. You’re given 2gb of free storage space “in the cloud” as the marketing men like to say. That basically means on a web server where you can get at it from anywhere to you and me. Nevertheless this is quite useful and the ability to just right-click a file or folder and send it to the web is very cool. Little features like this are what gives Mint it’s polish.

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

My finished desktop

I found Mint 7 or Gloria as she prefers to be called, a very solid release from the Mint team. I’m not sure why they choose these bizarre code names, the sound like call girls to me, but you can’t argue that they produce a nice Linux distribution. As I mentioned, the little touches like the welcome screen that pops up with help and guidance at login, all add to my feeling that this is THE distribution for newcomers to Linux. Yes it might be standing on the shoulders of Ubuntu, but then doesn’t Ubuntu stand on the shoulders of Debian? That’s how the Linux eco-system works. I think it’s all the richer for the collaboration, and occasional friendly competition between distributions. In many ways it’s the ultimate Free Market, which economists seem to think can cure cancer from the way they talk, but I’ll spare you a lefty rant. I found speed, performance and stability on Mint were on a par with Ubuntu. Some Gentoo and Arch users will scoff at that, but I think on a mid range computer or above it’s not an issue. It certainly wasn’t for me, and if you are on a lower spec you could try the XFCE edition of Mint, or even Fluxbox if you’re hardcore. Installation was quick and easy, almost everything I can think of worked out of the box. It was just a matter of adding a few of my favourite programs such as AWN, Gwibber, Audacity, Deluge and Tasque. All very simple with the Software Portal. The new theme and slight change of look works well I think, and the new wallpaper is very popular with most people I know. I did rearrange the toolbars a little and put AWN (Avant Window Navigator) at the bottom of the screen, you’ll be able to see that from the screenshot. I also like the fact they removed the code name from the menu button. It’s a stupid thing to complain about I know, but I did get a bit sick of people asking me who Felica or Elyssa were. “Is that your login name?!” queue strange looks.

Sexy Notifications

To sum up. Whether you’re new to Linux and looking to experiment, or you’re a hardened kernel hacker who just wants an easier life now and then. I think Mint has a lot to offer. They’ve taken Ubuntu and improved on it, which isn’t as easy as some people would have you believe. The custom tools are excellent, there’s a friendly and vibrant community to help, and of course because it’s 100% compatible with Ubuntu you’ve got all of their resources to draw on too. For any fan of Debian-based distributions (like me) Mint is well worth a spin. It won’t be for everyone, but I guess it’s a case of suck it and see… sorry, that’s awful but I couldn’t resist. Try it for yourself and let me know what you think. I’d happily recommend it to anyone.

YOU CAN GET LINUX MINT 7 HERE

Up next…
I’m off to Germany for Linux Tag in a few days, but before I go I intend to have a quick look at Fedora 11. I’ve been planning that for a while and their delayed release probably did me a favor. It seems they’ve removed Mono and they’re really pushing the 100% freedom angle. How will that affect usablity? We’ll find out together, if you’d care to join me for another adventure…

The Weekly Rewind

We’re up to Weekly Rewind number 18, the legal drinking age in the UK, though you wouldn’t know it looking at the state of the 14 year olds around here on a Friday night. That’s British culture for you I suppose, and I can’t really criticise them as I started drinking at 13. In fact by the time I hit 18 and could legally drink I was bored with it. Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked here, and in the opening paragraph. So let’s get into what happened this week.

On Monday we recorded and streamed the 96th episode of Linux Outlaws. It was a lot of fun and despite our attempts to record a “shorter show”, it ended up at nearly 2 hours with the interview. I always intend the show to be as close to an hour as possible but it very rarely happens. It just goes to prove the old statement, time files when you’re having fun. The show was well received and everyone seemed to enjoy it, which I’m grateful for. I’m also grateful for all the kind donations we’ve had recently, massive thanks to everyone who’s sent us money. We’ll put it to good use, I promise. On Tuesday night I went to Manchester to see Bill Bailey live at Salford Keys. I’ve always been a big fan of his and I’ve even seen him live before in Liverpool. He didn’t disappoint and I had a great night, despite having some trouble finding our seats initially. That Lyric Theatre is a bit of a labyrinth I can tell you. On Wednesday I interviewed Borys Musielak the creator of Filmaster.com, a new AGPL licensed social network for film fans. I used that information to write and publish an article on Thursday.

Bill Bailey

Then on Friday the tables were turned as I became the interviewee, which was nice. I talked to Karunya Keshev on the phone about my new show Rathole Radio. We talked about Free Culture and what it all means in this day and age. I waffled away like a good’un as I normally do, but I hope I answered at least some of the questions clearly. I have a tendency to go off on tangents while answering questions; perhaps a career in politics would be a good idea, though with recent events maybe not. I also edited the next Software Freedom Law Show as a rush job for Bradley. I can’t reveal the contents of the show, but they wanted the upcoming guests too hear what this show’s guest had to say before recording. It sounds good and I suppose you can expect to hear that a week on Tuesday. Over the weekend I’ve been preparing for Rathole Radio tonight. Practising the live songs which I’ll give the listeners a chance to vote on. The show will be at 9pm UK time tonight over at ratholeradio.org/live. I have some great music to play, a funny little spoken word piece, and there should be some interesting chat going on in the chat room. All are welcome!

Upcoming:

Quite a week coming up. It looks like there’ll be another special episode of the Software Freedom Law Show tomorrow, which I will attempt to edit before recording Linux Outlaws in the evening. You can join us for Linux Outlaws live as always at 7pm UK time tomorrow night. There’s another Twitter event happening in Liverpool on Thursday night. A Tweet Up they’re calling it, rather than a Twestival. I’ll be heading along to see what that’s all about. Next saturday I’m off to Germany to see Fab and also attend the Linux Tag event in Berlin. I can’t wait and it should be a lot of fun. I don’t know how I’ll get on with updating this blog while I’m away, but I’ll try. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some pictures from the event if nothing else. I’m taking the laptop so I’ll do my best, I promise.

Hope you all have a great week, I’ll see you soon and don’t forget to check out ratholeradio.org later, ch-ching Take care

Dan

filmaster.com

I’m a big fan of Free Culture and free open source web services too, licensed under the AGPL. The example I use most is probably Identi.ca, because I’m a noisy git and I like talking to people. I also wrote about the creation of Libre.fm a little while back, and I think we could really use more of these truly “free” web services. So when I heard about a new AGPL social network for film fans, I was very happy. The site is called Filmaster and I was lucky enough to have a chat with Borys Musielak (the site’s creator) about how it all came to fruition. Borys is also involved with the popular website Polish Linux, which you may have heard about.

—————–

Dan: What exactly is Filmaster and how did it come about?

Borys Musielak

Borys: So, it got started in my mind something like March last year. I was pretty tired of existing film websites. IMDB – couldn’t stand its looks, rottentomatoes didn’t provide good recommendations, Criticker provided ONLY recommendations, and Flixter… well, is just a myspace for movies. Anyhow, it felt like there was some room for something different. And this is the English Internet, in Polish web it was even worse. Only one big film website, where you could not even discuss with people without being insulted. So in general I wanted a user-generated film website where people who love film could blog, talk and get some cool social features, like personalized recommendations based on taste / taste comparison with other users and more.

Dan: So how does it work technically? What platform or language do you use?

Borys: We use a whole range of free software to run it. The key ingredients are python (language), django (framework),  postgresql (database engine) and apache2 as a web server. But there are lots of other tools and libraries that we used on the way. Subversion for version control, pootle for translation management, pinax project to get some free (in both senses) django libraries. Eclipse IDE / vi to develop, and probably more that I can’t remember right now.

Dan: Do you do all the development for Filmaster yourself or does anyone else help out?

Borys: No, thank god no. Otherwise I’d be still coding and we would not be talking right now. I started coding with Adam Zieliński, a guy who I worked with on other web projects before, like OSnews.pl – an IT citizen journalist website. We worked together from, say, August 2008 till January 2009 when first public beta of Filmaster.pl (Polish edition) was unveiled. Then when the website started to be recognized and had some 1000 users, we decided to publish the code on an AGPL license. Well, this is a bit of a lie because we planned it beforehand, but we wanted to release something that were not overly ashamed of I think it was in March 2009, 2 months before releasing Filmaster.com. It turned out to be a good move as a couple of developers started contributing from day 1. Some cool features like IMDB/Criticker imports, more reliable search engine and more was developed by contributors. Namely turin, bolo and mrk. The content is also published on Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

Dan: Was it important to you that it be open source and promote free culture?

AGPLv3

Borys: Yes, well… it’s user’s content after all, right? I don’t like the fact that companies set up websites, lure users to contribute and then take their content and can do anything with it, leaving the users with nothing. By making it free, all those restrictions are non-existent. Everyone can use the content and it’s a very cool thing. Especially when you think of some external projects that can now, e.g. use the content from Filmaster in their… I don’t know… media players for instance? It would be cool if VLC or some other free software project integrated with Filmaster to provide their users more information.

Dan: Filmaster has Polish and English language versions, you can use the same account in either language and it’s all integrated. Did this add to the development overhead at all?

Borys: No, not much overhead, as we planned it from the very beginning. the data structure assumes localization of the content but the metadata is common, its all nicely described on the wiki: http://filmaster.org/display/DEV/Localization

Dan: Could you add more languages? Would you want to do that?

Borys: Sure! Take a look here: http://filmaster.com:6666/projects/filmaster/. Catalan version is 22% done. Just today we’ve got two people who want to translate it to Spanish and Norwegian. A Turkish friend was mentioning a Turkish version, but nothing certain yet. So yes, there are plans to expand. What is important is we do not want to be taking care of all the local versions, we can host it and have it integrated but it has to always be a team of 2-3 people who would like to take over the maintenance of localized versions. This is not as easy as just translating the labels and deploying, there is a lot of work to actually get the potential users to hear about the website and start generating content. It’s the hardest job in a social media project.

—————

I signed up to Filmaster shortly before talking to Borys, and I must say I’m very impressed. I like films but I can’t claim to be  an expert or know a terrific amount about them. Even so, the snappy design of the site and open ethos make it very easy to get involved. It was obviously carefully planned, and the ability to add more languages is a prime example of this. I wish more web applications were as well thought out. The project has great potential and I hope it will go from strength to strength in future, building on open standards and strong community development to flourish. If you’re interested in film, get over there and give it a try.

You can read the full text of our conversation here if you’re interested