I' Been to Ubuntu

Wyse Technology Prepares Ubuntu Linux Thin Clients -- The VAR Guy

2010-03-09T12:17:00.001+07:00

Wyse Technology, the prominent thin client company, is preparing a “completely new product in the consumer and enterprise space” that leverages Ubuntu Linux, The VAR Guy has learned. Our resident blogger is nearly sworn to secrecy… Still, here are some preliminary details about the emerging Wyse-Ubuntu effort. Plus, the implications for Canonical (Ubuntu’s chief promoter) and channel partners that focus on thin clients.

See the full article. Really exciting stuff. I love thin clients as a solution and have used them in several businesses and educational settings. While they aren't a solution to every problem, there are many situations where using thin clients will save money on hardware and reduce admin time.

Oh, and I'm going to be in Austin in time for the Texas Linux Fest, but it is scheduled at the same time as my other interviews. I'm going to miss both that and the Thai DebCamp going on in Khonkaen next week. Meh!

The Ubuntu One Music Store is Over-Engineered and Will Fail

2010-03-04T18:16:00.000+07:00

The Ubuntu One Music Store is probably one of the most awaited new features of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid. An integrated music store is something that many people have been waiting for for years. As the details come out, though, it's obvious that the store isn't going to work out as implemented. I'll cover the main points, but if you want the fine details, you'll need to read Getting Ready for Ubuntu One Music Store Beta.

Let's look at the process you need to follow to buy music, shall we?

Register for an Ubuntu One account if you don't already have one.
Confirm your e-mail address.
Enable file-sync in Ubuntu One.
Set up access to your computer for Ubuntu One.
Open Rhythmbox.
Go to the store and buy music.
The music is sent directly to the Canonical servers.
Wait for your music to be sync'ed to the Ubuntu One folder.
It's been reported that Rhythmbox will automatically pick up the music from the Ubuntu One folder.

That process in itself is so long that few casual users will go through it. Think, though -- We still haven't touched on the problems with Ubuntu One storage capacity. Your music is sent to Canonical and is automatically sync'ed to all your computers, which is great, yes? Well, that's only great if my Ubuntu One account has room for the new music. What happens if it's full? Do I get an e-mail notification? Do I have to "clean out" my Ubuntu One account? It appears so, if you read the comments on the above linked article.

More importantly, I can't buy more than 2GB of music at a single time, less if my account already has files backed up. Worse, the 7Digital site doesn't tell me the size of the download, so I can't be sure whether I have space in my account or not. Sure, I can guess that the 320kbps MP3s come out to a little over 200MB, but that means I've got room for nine albums without paying Canonical $10 per month for more storage. What if I want to spend 160 pounds and buy the top twenty albums? I guess I'll be doing that in three shifts.

Canonical needs to change something. Maybe it shouldn't count Music Store purchases against your Ubuntu One total.

It all would have been easier if the "Ubuntu One Music Store" were just a link that opened the 7Digital (or Amazon) page with a referral link and customers downloaded what they wanted from there. Over-engineering at its finest.

Why the New Xubuntu Logo is So Good

2010-03-04T17:42:00.000+07:00

Take a look at the new Ubuntu logo.

Now look at the new Xubuntu logo.

This is a nice little logo which is similar and different enough to be very interesting (though I think the circle XFCE logo should be the same size as the ubuntu one). Now imagine if the other projects followed suit (my very quick visualizations are not up for criticism since the font is still in development and not available now).

See? A nice, unified look. What do you think?

Ubuntu Gets a New Look: What a Mess

2010-03-04T16:16:00.000+07:00

Ubuntu got a new look today, and it's been covered widely, so I suspect you've seen it. If you haven't, take a look at the Ubuntu Wiki Branding page.

I like the new desktop theme. I like the new logo. The branding, however, is a mess. Take a look at the pictures below and count:

The number of different color schemes
The mix of old logos and new
The mix of the old Ubuntu font and the new one.

From a branding standpoint, it's a mess. I hope that this problem is solved before April.

On the other hand, I think that Xubuntu has done a great job in creating a logo that's similar enough to be recognized as part of the brand but unique enough to differentiate the project form its mother ship.

I hope that the other projects follow the same style in their logos.

The dark theme is better than the light one. I hope it's the default. The light theme is a little to Mac-alike for Ubuntu to go with. Speaking of Mac, nearly every review has panned the left-side widow controls. It's definitely different for the sake of difference.

What's Up With PCManFM2?

2010-02-28T20:57:00.000+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

PCManFM has been a popular replacement for the Nautilus file manager on the GNOME desktop because its light and fast, though still featureful enough to handle automatic mounting of hotplugged drives and other modern advantages. The file manager is probably best known for its placement in LXDE and, by extension, the new Lubuntu. I've written about and praised LXDE many times before for its ability to revive Win2000-era laptops.

Well, Hong Jen Yee has decided that several prominent bugs cannot be solved without a major rewrite of the file manager. He has chosen to break out the basic file management functions into a separate library in order to make embedding into other applications easy.

What are Hong Jen Yee's goals?

Support glib/gio and gvfs but still keep the original performance and memory usage.
I know many people don't believe this and think using gio/gvfs from gnome will make it slower and heavier. Indeed many program using gio/gvfs/gnome are slow, but trust me our PCManFM won't be one of them. Many people said that GTK+ programs are slow and not lightweight, but as you know, PCManFM already prooved that they are wrong.
Seamless access to remote file systems such as sftp, smb, and ftp (provide by gvfs)
Trash can support (provided by gvfs)
Separate the core functionality to create an independent library named libfm for use in other desktop applications and make it a seperate project
Better drag and drop handling and supports XDS (X direct save)
Smaller code size and better structure
Better compatibility with other programs (Due to use of glib/gio)
Make best use of the new features provided in the latest gtk+
Better desktop and volume management
Use the file manager widgets provided in libfm to replace the default file dialogs in gtk+ by preload the lib with LD_PRELOAD
Gvfs dependency is only optional. If the dependencies of gvfs is not acceptible, we would like to fork gvfs and provide a stripped down version without gnome dependency. (long term goal, low priority)

PCManFM version 2 is still under heavy development but is now available in the Alpha3 of Lubuntu, available now. You can try it out there. The final version should be out by the end of March, in time for a Lubuntu 10.04 release.

I'll put up a review of the file manager and LXDE desktop soon. Until then, see the screenshot from OMGUbuntu (link below under "related").

Making Myself Clear About Ubuntu Development

2010-02-21T20:14:00.001+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, I posted about the differences between Microsoft's, Apple's, and Ubuntu's "Getting Started for Developers" pages. I didn't comment a lot on the pictures, though maybe I should have.

My points are/were the following:

Both Windows and Mac OS X development is easy to get into with tutorials and videos for the preferred development environments. They actively recruit and help new developers. Beginning programmers would feel comfotable. Ubuntu doesn't talk about development, but discusses packaging. No tutorials or videos are available from the "developer" page. There's little chance someone is going to write a first program on Ubuntu.
Windows prefers Visual Studio and .NET development (C# and Visual Basic are heavily promoted). Apple highly recommends Objective-C and XCode. Mark Shuttleworth stated in 2004 that Ubuntu would be targeting Python, and the standard desktop is GNOME (signalling a preference for GTK+), but there aren't really any links pertaining to these decisions ... or even acknowledging that these decisions were made. All three platforms have many options available with regard to languages available. Of the three OSes, only Ubuntu refuses to give guidance on where to start.
Ubuntu distinguished itself from virtually every other distro by "making opinionated choices" about applications instead of installing seven text editors, three desktop environments, and five word processors. Those opinionated choices have been missing for application development, though.
Ubuntu 9.10 introduced Quickly as the rapid application development method for Ubuntu (making opinionated choices), but this isn't mentioned on the development page, either. Also absent are mentions of more recent development like Lernid and Ubuntu Developer Week, Ground Control and projects, and Launchpad PPAs.
Ubuntu appears to be saying that packaging is equivalent to development.

Dell interview of Mark Shuttleworth

2010-02-21T19:50:00.000+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Mark Shuttleworth discusses the following topics:

Ubuntu's relationship with Dell.
UEC's innovation in the cloud computing arena
Jane Silber's role as upcoming CEO. Discusses her experience with large companies.
Lucid's new features, including new desktop bling and styling (a new 5-year color scheme)
Netbooks, dead for Ubuntu or not?
Looking toward Lucid+1
Ubuntu on mobiles, ARM machines, and other form factors
Thoughts on Meego, Android, and Chrome

Take a look.

"Getting Started" with Ubuntu Development

2010-02-19T18:31:00.001+07:00

Look at the following screenshots and guess what's wrong. Any ideas?

Getting Started With Windows Client Programming

Visit site

Getting Started With OS X Client Programming

Visit site

Getting Started With Ubuntu Client Programming

Visit site

How easy is it to get started with Ubuntu development?

The MS site has featured books, introductions, guided tours, videos, blogs, howtos, and presentations on programming for VS and .NET, making writing software for the platform as simple as possible.

The Apple site has overviews, guides, sample code, and tours for Obj-C and XCode, again making writing software simple.

The Ubuntu site has a description of the political process and details on packaging existing software. It does not, however talk at all about how to develop for new software for Ubuntu. They are pretty much just interested in bug fixes.

Ubuntu needs a developer community. Canonical is promoting that hard for 10.04. It's still too hard to learn to develop for Ubuntu.

The Rhythmbox Music Store Plugin Has Arrived (Kinda ...)

2010-02-19T16:09:00.001+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Phoronix reported that the RB plugin for the Ubuntu One Music Store had been uploaded to Launchpad. Earlier this week, I was pessimistic about the possibility of the plugin beating the Lucid feature freeze. There are several projects in that predicament, donchaknow?

I searched for and downloaded the plugin. It requires a daily snapshot of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and two extra packages (libubuntuone and python-ubuntuone) from the libubuntuone project, but everything can be installed if you are patient.

After enabling the plugin in Rhythmbox, the store appears under the Jamendo and Magnatune store entries. Choosing the Ubuntu One Music Store notifies you that you need to install MP3 codecs and offers to do it for you, apparently signaling that OGG will not be an option. This functionality is not yet complete so pressing the button does nothing.

Enabling the Universe and Multiverse repositories and installing the Fluendo MP3 codec allows us to see the actual store.

I was a little let down. Just kidding. ;) Keep your eyes peeled for updates. I'm sure a real store will appear soonish.

UPDATE: What will it look like?

Forget Google Buzz -- Promote OneSocialWeb

2010-02-10T20:32:00.001+07:00

Google Buzz has been getting a lot of attention today, and the buzz (awww!) has drowned out a much more interesting piece of social technology that was announced at FOSDEM 10.

What has been the big problem with social networks? They are walled gardens. Being on Orkut didn't help you with Facebook at all, and your data was fragmented. IM has many of the same problems. E-mail doesn't, though. Why is that? E-mail is federated. Servers talk to servers, and using one important character ("@"), you can route your message to the person you want to reach. You can even set up your own e-mail server and control all your own data.

IM has had a hero called XMPP ("Jabber") for some time. IM has many of the same features that social networking does:

Identity
Profiles
Contacts / Friends / Relationships
Status updates

XMPP also offers federation ("@") capability for server-to-server communication. It lacks a few important social media features, but luckily, the "X" in XMPP stands for "extensible." Vodafone Group Research and Development has written extensions to the OpenFire XMPP server and a web client with Google Web Kit. The code works. Final clean-ups are being made so that the code can be used as a reference implementation, and it will be released as OneSocialWeb under an Apache 2 license in a month or so. Anyone will be able to set up a server and join the federation, just as Jabber servers work now.

Many years of discussion have gone into determining what a federated social network would look like, and the OneSocialWeb doesn't ignore that work.

This project has been built upon the shoulders of other initiatives aiming to open up the web and we have been inspired by the visionaries behind them: activitystrea.ms, portablecontacts, OAuth, OpenSocial, FOAF, XRDS, OpenID and more.

Thanks, team. Now let's look at the screencast.

Ubuntu Development: Quickly, Lernid, and Ground Control

2010-02-06T19:14:00.000+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

I've been kind of harping on the development situation in Ubuntu for some time now. Although I'm an absolutely terrible programmer, I'm extremely interested in both Seed and Vala, and I've posed about them several times. A couple of posts ago, I proposed that Ubuntu should make choices about the default language and IDE for developers and make learning to use those defaults as easy as possible. I mentioned Quickly at that time, but I hadn't really used it much, so I didn't comment except to say that it existed.

The Lucid (10.04) development cycle has some really interesting ... er ... developments with regard to ... uh ... the development landscape. Wow. That was an awful sentence.

Lernid

Let's start with Lernid, Jono Bacon's pet project that he developed in an amazingly short time to scratch the itch of making the Ubuntu Developer Summit as easy to join as possible. Downloading Lernid was straightforward, and starting the program gave you the option of joining UDS and that was about it. Once you joined, you were taken to the appropriate wiki page, class note, IRC channel, and slide presentation automatically and in one interface. It was a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, it didn't work that well for me, half-way around the world. I had panel problems, slides never came up, and the UDS sessions didn't start until 11pm local time, which was already past any reasonable bed time for me. Still, this tool should be very mature by the next time UDS rolls around, and it's a great way for new developers to learn about the Ubuntu Way®.

Quickly

Quickly is another new, growing project aimed at developers. The default ubuntu-project template creates a PyGTK project ready to be edited in GEdit and GUIfied in Glade. The availability of templates means that Python isn't the only language available, but Ubuntu is doing the right thing by "making opinionated choices" for new developers. Packaging the project is a simple Quickly command, as is uploading to a Launchpad PPA. It even makes sync'ing your app data via Ubuntu One dead simple by making it easy to include DesktopCouchDB in your new app. Once the stated goal of integrating Quickly into GEdit with a plugin is finished, creating little one-off applications in Ubuntu will be a snap, and you can expect an avalanche of applications similar to the VB6 Windows ones that are everywhere. Whether you think that's a good thing or not is up to you. I don't see the harm.

Ground Control

Finally, Ground Control is Martin Owen's method of encouraging "opportunistic programming" by integrating Bazaar with Nautilus. It uses contextual button clues to help you download a project from Launchpad, target a bug, edit, and upload your work, all without having to learn any Bazaar commands. Jono Bacon has added the ability to create new projects, he intends Mission Control to be able to create new Launchpad PPAs, and I hope Quickly will eventually be integrated with Ground Control in order to create a single, easy interface for creating Ubuntu applications and making them available for download. Take a look at this video.

Answering a Friend About Ubuntu on a Netbook

2010-02-05T17:02:00.001+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

This post is directed to a friend that asked about getting a new netbook and putting Ubuntu on it. Facebook ate my homework and gave me nothing but a server error in response, so I decided to put the answer up here and just send him a link.

Thinking of installing Ubuntu on a Netbook we're going to buy as I've heard it's pretty lightweight in comparison to Windows 7. What are your thoughts on this in general? Also, it is free right?

First of all, I want you to know that I use Ubuntu every day. All of the computers in my house (and there are many of them) use Ubuntu or some relative (like Debian). Not only is it free (as in liberty), it's also free ($), and it does everything that I want and more, though there's sometimes a little pain involved. My experiences with Windows don't involve any less pain, though the part of the eye the needles get stuck into isn't necessarily the same.

That said, Windows 7 Starter isn't really any heavier than Ubuntu on a netbook. Sure, Linux and Ubuntu are great in that you can pare down the OS to pretty much any level you want, and you could run a fairly functional, modern desktop using Lubuntu or Slitaz while using the same resources that Windows 98 did. If you buy a netbook with Windows 7 already installed, though, you're going to have enough resources to run pretty much any operating system you want (except Vista), you've already paid for an OS, and the OS is already installed for you. Just stick with it.

If you want to move to an alternate OS (and there are lots of reasons to do so), you'd be best off buying a netbook with Ubuntu already installed and configured for you. Installing and configuring an operating system isn't a simple process, and doing it with an OS you're not familiar with is almost certain to end in disaster. Buying Ubuntu pre-installed means that Dell or whoever did all the grunt work, and probably threw in DVD playback and other goodies, too. (Did you know that Windows doesn't come with that stuff, either?)

If you are still determined to install Ubuntu despite my warnings, here's how you go about it. Learn a little about Ubuntu first and install it once in a situation with little to no danger. Download Wubi, an application which installs Ubuntu like an application inside Windows without touching your Windows system, and is easily removable if you decide you don't want it anymore. Play around a little and see if moving this way is something you really want to do. Don't expect everything to work 100% after the installation.

Next, decide whether you want the special netbook interface or the standard panel-and-icon interface. Here they are.

A quick video overview

The standard interface

Once you've decided, head on over to http://www.ubuntu.com and download the one you want and write it to a USB thumb drive. I hear UNetBootin is a very good utility which will both download the image and burn it to a thumb drive for you. Test the finished product on your laptop by rebooting into the live USB environment, which will look like it's native, but which won't touch your laptop at all. Turn off your laptop and get ready to head outside. (Is that the place they keep the soju?)

Head on over to the store you are looking to buy the netbook from and get the salesperson to let you boot the USB key. You know the key works since you tested it at home, right? Hardware compatibility is very important. Look for a netbook based on the Intel Atom and the 945GMA graphics set or get one of the newer ones based on NVidia's Tegra chips. Once the machine boots, test the wireless -- it's in the notification area on the top-right. Does everything work and look OK? Great! You're ready to purchase.

Install the system at home by booting the USB key, clicking the "Install" icon, and following these directions. Read them before you start, but ignore the part about Vista. Once you've finished the installation, open Firefox, come back to this page, and click on the following links to install some extra software:

Flash, Java, and Codecs
Skype
Ubuntu Tweak, which will help you configure your system to your liking

You're pretty much finished because there are so many applications installed by default. If you need some other application, look in the application store (which is called Ubuntu Software Center) in the "Applications" menu on the top-left of the screen. The standard look is brown (for humanity), but the interface is almost infinitely configurable, and there are tons of themes. Here's my current desktop.

I even have four of them. ;)

p.s. You might want to take a look at Intel's netbook Linux, called Moblin. It's quite innovative.

Lucid Separates Shutdown and "Me" Menus

2010-02-05T11:44:00.000+07:00

Lucid has separated the menus used for shutdown and for "Me," a good usability move.

Google Continues to Make the Same Mistakes (Again and Again)

2010-02-04T12:08:00.000+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

A little over a year ago, Google contributed the Android kernel modifications to the Linux kernel maintainers. As of Tuesday, the driver contributions have been deleted. Why? Google used a specially modified kernel API for Android, which is incompatible with the mainline kernel, and attempts to come to an agreement over how to modify and maintain the new code failed.

Google now has two forks of the Linux kernel to maintain. You see, Google started forking and maintaining Linux for its own servers several years ago, and is now having trouble updating and backporting its forked version. Google has come to realize the problem, and is working to move from a proprietary version control system to the Git DVCS which the mainline kernel uses. Google is also trying to clean up the code a little in order to have as much of the code as possible accepted upstream so that the employees have less work to do. This is what the Linux kernel maintainers recommend to everyone.

While Google tries to fix the problem with one hand, though, the company is going down the same road with Android. Because Google can't come to grips with merging the code, the developers will have to maintain that code themselves, leading to a less secure and robust product. Good luck to them.

Google probably just needs to abstract out the parts that change the main kernel's functions and bolt those changes on top.

[Phoronix] Running Nine USB-Based Displays On Linux

2010-01-27T17:19:00.000+07:00

[Phoronix] Running Nine USB-Based Displays On Linux

This is hot. Take a look.

David Seigel on Improving Launchpad Bug Workflow, or "Developer, Developers, Developers"

2010-01-25T10:51:00.002+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

David Seigel has a great post, called Improving Launchpad Bug Workflow for Opportunistic Programmers < The Plenitude of Arboreal Beauty. It's not great in that I like the exact solution proposed, but it highlights some important points about Free software development, and the comments are equally interesting.

First, a summary for those not wanting to read the post. David proposes adding a simple link to Launchpad which will help opportunistic programmers fix simple bugs like the ones in 100 Papercuts without having to worry about setting up the proper build environment. Clicking "Quickly fix this bug" installs the proper dependencies and source, opens the preferred editor, and creates a patch when finished.

In effect, David is proposing that Ubuntu prescribe a specific method for bug fixes, including the IDE used. (He proposes using Eclipse.) While this type of policy is likely to rankle many programmers, I believe that having a preferred IDE, language, and toolkit for Ubuntu would be a big step forward. In fact, when Ubuntu started in 2004, I remember Shuttleworth stating that all new work should be done in Python, and that Canonical would be hiring based on this principle. SchoolTool was developed from Zope (IIRC) for this exact reason.

While there certainly have been many new additions to the Ubuntu project which rely on Python since then, we also have GTK-sharp, C, and ECMAScript or JavaScript (e.g. Seed or Gjs). Ubuntu has failed to have a single, defining vision for its product (which Shuttleworth claims he wants) with a preferred development method. I'm not suggesting that there be only one method for development, but both Microsoft and Apple have shown that providing standard tools and languages (VS/.NET and XCode/ObjectiveC, respectively) can create a great developer base. The easier to get involved, the better.

Ubuntu could have a special developers' release which includes all the standard tools necessary to set up and connect to a Launchpad account (for bug fixing and publishing via PPA), an IDE with Ubuntu- and Launchpad-specific plugins, and complete developer documentation. Of course, programmers can continue to use Vim or Emacs or whatever, then use Bazaar from the command line, but new developers would likely just accept the default method Ubuntu provided, and puting "Ubuntu" into the "integrated" part of an integrated development environment would lure many developers. (I had in my notes but forgot to mention that Ubuntu currently is developing Quickly, which appears to be going in the direction I'm proposing. Or it could die like so many other other projects. Wait and see.)

More interesting stuff comes up in the comments section: what is the responsibility for upstreaming? Should bugs be fixed upstream first? Should patches be preferred for upstream? I think these kinds of arguments overlook the strength of FOSS. Ubuntu should fix bugs as it sees fit locally first, and submit those patches or make them easily available (something Launchpad is working hard on). Ultimately, though, many proposed patches will not be accepted by upstream, or they might be delayed by years waiting for a release. If Ubuntu wants to progress, it needs to take responsibility for its own problems and not state that it is waiting on upstream to integrate or fix a patch.

Quick Tip: Speed Up File Transfers to External Storage

2010-01-18T15:02:00.002+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

These days, you might often copy a video file over to an external drive so that you can take that drive to someone's house. The process can run quite slowly if you drag the video file into the destination drive's window but don't close it. Why is that?

In GNOME, Nautilus is trying to create a preview of the video file every time the file changes ... which is constantly. ;) Nautilus is therefore constantly pulling data from your drive and using CPU to create a thumbnail that will be discarded the next second. Since the bus is probably already saturated with outgoing data, Nautilus is causing all kinds of problems there.

Close the drive's window, and Nautilus won't do that, saving time and energy.

[Phoronix] Google To Switch To EXT4, Hires Ted To Code

2010-01-16T11:03:00.000+07:00

[Phoronix] Google To Switch To EXT4, Hires Ted To Code: "Google To Switch To EXT4, Hires Ted To Code"

Google also happened to just hire Ted Ts'o, the widely known Linux kernel developer who is largely responsible for the EXT4 file-system work. According to a blog comment, one of the first things he will be working on while enjoying the Googleplex is EXT4. Hopefully he will be able to drive some better performance back into this file-system that's now used by default in most desktop Linux distributions.

And people always say you can't make money in open source.

Must Read: A New Approach to China

2010-01-13T20:46:00.000+07:00

You need to read A New Approach to China on the Official Google blog. No, it's not about Ubuntu. It may, however, be more important.

The Plight of Ubuntu Users in Developing Countries

2010-01-13T09:51:00.001+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Ubuntu is named after a philosophy focusing on people's allegiances and relations with each other. The Linux distribution was created by a South African to help the poor in South Africa and the whole of Africa. Sadly, most Africans are excluded from using Ubuntu because of a package choice Ubuntu made years ago.

Now, I'm not African or living in Africa: I'm a U.S. citizen living in Thailand. I don't have any first-hand experience with this situation other than the similarities between the state of rural African connectivity and rural Thai connectivity (which is surprisingly similar). I have, however, heard people around the world complaining.

Internet penetration in Africa is a paltry 6.7% of the population, compared to 27.7% outside of Africa. Moreover, Africans have very limited broadband options due to infrastructure.

Most African countries now have commercial DSL services, but their growth is limited by the poor geographical reach of the fixed-line networks. The rapid growth of Internet access has therefore been mostly confined to the capital cities so far. The introduction of mobile data and 3G broadband services is changing this, with the mobile networks bringing Internet access to many areas outside of the main cities for the first time.*

Most Africans (both now and in the future) who have a choice of connectivity (many have no choice) have two connectivity options: dial-up and 3G data. Both of these methods use ppp to connect. Many parts of the world, including some developed countries, have similar options for connecting to the Internet.

Shockingly, Ubuntu dropped wvdial and gnome-ppp -- the command-line and GUI ppp connectors, respectively -- from the distro years ago. In order to connect to the Internet, most African users must therefore connect to the Internet (see the problem?), download the appropriate packages, and configure their dial-up or 3G connection. Just about anyone who has used Ubuntu knows that it's not particularly capable out of the box without Internet access. (Edit: Jono Bacon says that 3G connectivity is included out of the box. I don't doubt him, but all the howtos I have read used ppp. 3G must be a new addition to NetworkManager.)

So ... what was gained by dropping these two packages? Space on the CD.
What was the price of excluding most of Ubuntu's target market? 250K bytes of space on the CD. About 70% of the size of Gwibber, the Twitter client set to be included by default on 10.04.

Manual for Karmic Still Not Certain

2010-01-06T16:55:00.000+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Softpedia is reporting that Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Linux will have a manual included. (Also at the LXer.)At this point, the story's not true. There has been a discussion on the Ubuntu Docs Team mailing list for a couple of weeks over the project, and despite Jono reportedly being on board, there is no official status to this project yet.

Let's not jump the gun, shall we?

Ubuntu 10.04 is on the Right Track to an LTS Release

2009-12-23T21:24:00.001+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

In Ubuntu 10.04 LTS: How we get there, Matt Zimmerman goes over the differences between the recent releases' development process and Lucid's. The major differences are:

Pulling from Debian Testing, not Unstable, leading to a more polished product from the get-go.
An emphasis on testing instead of features, meaning that there's actually less to test.
No major changes to infrastructure. PulseAudio was introduced (and lambasted) in 8.04. No one wants to see that mess again.
An early beta release (and I understand there will be two betas).
Coordination with Debian's release schedule, leading to more eyes on bugs.

I had real problems with the choices for 8.04, and several things were broken on release. I'm tickled to see Ubuntu taking an LTS release extremely seriously.

Official Google Blog: The meaning of open

2009-12-22T09:17:00.003+07:00

This is an extremely interesting view into Google's opinion of open standards, open source, and open information. Official Google Blog: The meaning of open

Open Standards

Today, we base our developer products on open standards because interoperability is a critical element of user choice. What does this mean for Google Product Managers and Engineers? Simple: whenever possible, use existing open standards. If you are venturing into an area where open standards don't exist, create them. If existing standards aren't as good as they should be, work to improve them and make those improvements as simple and well documented as you can. Our top priorities should always be users and the industry at large and not just the good of Google, and you should work with standards committees to make our changes part of the accepted specification.

Open Source

So as you are building your product or adding new features, stop and ask yourself: Would open sourcing this code promote the open Internet? Would it spur greater user, advertiser, and partner choice? Would it lead to greater competition and innovation? If so, then you should make it open source. And when you do, do it right; don't just push it over the wall into the public realm and forget about it. Make sure you have the resources to pay attention to the code and foster developer engagement.

Open Information

So while having more personal information online can be quite beneficial to everyone, its uses should be guided by principles that are responsible, scalable, and flexible enough to grow and change with our industry. And unlike open technology, where our objective is to grow the Internet ecosystem, our approach to open information is to build trust with the individuals who engage within that ecosystem (users, partners, and customers). Trust is the most important currency online, so to build it we adhere to three principles of open information: value, transparency, and control.

Shuttleworth Steps Down As Canonical CEO

2009-12-18T08:25:00.002+07:00

"In a surprise move (at least, it was surprising to me), Ubuntu founder and Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth has announced he's stepping down as the CEO of Canonical, the commercial endeavour behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution. He will continue, however, to play major role in the company and Ubuntu's future.

Jane Silber, the Chief Operating Officer of Canonical, will take over Shuttleworth's role as CEO. His stepping down as CEO does not mean, in any way, that Shuttleworth will disappear from the stage. In fact, his stepping down allows him to focus more on product design and development, his passions. He will also remain as the head of the Ubuntu Community Council and the Ubuntu Technical Board, and he wants to spend more time working with partners, especially in Asia."

...

"'This move will bring about is a clearer separation of the role of CEO of Canonical and the leader of the Ubuntu community,' Silber said, 'It will be two different people now, which I think will be helpful in both achieving their joint and individual goals more quickly.'"

See OSNews for full report. Also reported on Compuworld.

So a Man Walks Into a Bar and Asks for an Ubuntu on the Rocks

2009-12-16T22:18:00.000+07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Earlier today, I had to go to IT Square in Laksi to do some banking. Knowing what a geek that I am, and since there are ten branches closer than the IT Square one, you'd be forgiven for assuming that I went to bank there as an excuse for computer shopping, but you'd be wrong. I was required to go to that specific branch. After the baning, though, my gf and I walked around a little.

She was checking out laptop bags, and my attention went to the Acer display just outside the bag store. To my shock, there was a low-end laptop (about USD400) with a localized version of Ubuntu on the computer. There was a special Acer desktop background, and the menus were in Thai. The next computer had the same system. Hmmm. The specs described the computer as having Linpus Linux installed (pictured above), but the system was definitely Ubuntu. There were about twelve models on display, but some of them weren't on.

"Do all these computers have the same operating system?" I asked.
"These two have Windows 7," the clerk answered.

Those two computers were the high-end ones, at least 50% more expensive than any other model on display. The actual OS installed was Windows 7 Home Premium.

What's the punchline to this joke?

"But we can install Linux on those two for you if you prefer," the clerk added with a smile. "It's Open Source."

My, how times have changed! Six years ago, there were Linux computers on display everywhere, but the salespeople knew nothing about it and encouraged everyone to pay the extra money to have Windows installed.

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