Ubuntu UDS Videos – 2008
So UDS is taking this week in Prague. For those who aren’t familiar with what UDS is, it’s a working summit for developers to discuss, and develop existing and new applications to further the development of Ubuntu. Below are some video podcasts from the event.
Travis Watkins, Jono Bacon, James Westby, and others have been conducting interviews and posting them on the yourtube channel. Since there doesn’t seem to be any other resources available for streaming /flickr stream, this is the best we have thus far. This is an open invitation for Canonical to feel free to fly me out anytime to do photo / video / streaming media for the events
Fsckin is now writing for Ars Technica Open Ended!
So as a blogger / podcaster, I read a lot of other peoples blogs, listen to their casts, so on and so forth. Usually everyone has a top 5 or 10 favorite sites, and usually those are used as mental benchmarks for a level of enthusiasm, and professionalism that one tries to maintain. Well, Wayne Richardson has been one of those bloggers that I have in my RSS feeds and pay attention too often. He writes incredibly rich content, with screen casts, pix, and all the resources necessary to follow instruction. It’s awesome to see that a Linux enthusiast / blogger is now writing for Ars Technica Open Ended.
Congrats Wayne!

Introduction to Ubuntu 8.04 Beta Release

According to the Ubuntu Wiki the Hardy Heron 8.04 beta release is available. If you would like to download one of the images for the release, you can grab it from here. For those brave souls wanting and upgrade, you can find the upgrade instructions here on the Wiki as well.
So far my personal experience with Hardy Heron has been good. The last release I tried on my HP nc6400 laptop was the Alpha 5 release. I have been hoping for better power management features with the newer release as to extend the battery life from my laptop.
Some of the new features in the Hardy Heron release include:
Xorg 7.3
Linux kernel 2.6.24
GNOME 2.22
PolicyKit
PulseAudio
Firefox 3 Beta 4
Transmission
Vinagre
Brasero Upgrade
World Clock Applet
ActiveDirectory integration
And many others.. See a full list of exciting new features, updates and enhancements on the wiki page.
Pictures form Florida Linux Show
Torvalds pans Apple with ‘utter crap’ putdown
Reading an article in the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ Linus Torvalds speaks at the linux.conf.au conference about Mac OSX versus Windows Vista. He is quoted “I don’t think they’re equally flawed – I think Leopard is a much better system,” he said. “(But) OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary.” He goes on to discuss that woes with new proprietary operating systems being bloated and taking control over how the system is being used, rather than being transparent.
I definitely have felt that way with my experiences using Vista. I haven’t honestly used Mac OSX intensely enough to speak about a comparison, although I have many closes friends and collegues that us OSX. Their general consensus is that yes it can be bloated in some areas, but that is usually due to the applications and how they are utilizing the resources of the system. I personally like OSX because it’s a beautiful blend of a powerful stable core kernel, with a magnificently designed interface that’s functional as well as sexy and gorgeous.
There is no denying that if you “go Mac” that you will end up drinking the kool aid from Steve Jobs’ hands simply because convenience generally outweighs quality. This isn’t to say that Apple doesn’t make quality products, it just means that you are trapped into the Apple world of software, online market place, and portable devices that they developed and manufactured by them.
All in all, it’s nice to see that the open source operating system distributions and applications have matured enough to a point where they are being considered for server / mobile computing over Windows or Mac, and that GNU/Linux developers can be a bit sassy / arrogant now because let’s be honest… Linux is a freakin’ beast.
p.s. I still think Mac is sexy as hell though. Mac is the high priced call girl you bring to the 20th high school reunion. Linux is who you marry
LC Podcast Episode #005
Why Linux will not displace Windows! mmkay, sure pal.
So I came across this article on Zdnet, as I’m sure most “digg” users have. I really didn’t know what to think of it. It seems as though the writer didn’t do any due diligence before slamming the keys of his keyboard obviously attached to his PC running Windows. The article was written by a one “ jerryleecooper” and I would have to fire him for being so inaccurate. It amazes me that people who have no credentials on the subject get as much attention as they do.
Now granted, this was under a blog posting, but I still think that in today’s day of “tech” one would at least understand that Linux or GNU/Linux is an operating system from beginning to finish. He notes in his article about drivers, and how Microsoft spent 9 billion dollars to develop Vista. Well, that should say something right there. There is value in open source software. The last time I checked, Vista was one of the worst operating systems released to date. There has been article after article of general “non geek / techie” consumers complaining about the resource utilization of the Vista operating system.
Jerry says: “Its just not possible that a freeware like the Linux could be extended to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of windows. Not possible.”
Did I read that correctly? What is a “critical part of Windows”? I’ve google’d it and I’m not finding anything on it. I’m a little concerned because I run Ubuntu and CentOS and I’m a little concerned because I might have left out some “critical part”. If anyone can help me I would surely appreciate it as I just realzied by his article that my system must be incomplete without these so called “parts”.
If you get a chance, please go comment on his article.
