Colin Charles Agenda

This is where all the rave is at, today. Guess May really is a good month :-) I’ve been meaning to write about this for quite a while (linux being pre-loaded), and this seems to be a fairly good time.

It all started with Morgan Collett’s post about Linux preloaded - useful out of the box? Its been sitting in a tab awaiting comment, and I must say the history of Linux on Dell’s is somewhat funny - desktop installation on a server! Its interesting to see that Slackware gets shipped in South Africa on a laptop. Imagine the support nightmare? And then Jerome mentions that in the Philippines he got Linpus (first time I’ve heard about it). He also mentions that Acer bundles Red Flag or older Mandriva’s.

Linux makes bundling software hard. So many distributions to pick from, everyone liking something else, different release versions between distributions, spread package management formats, and the list of differences go on. Different kernel? Oops, that might react badly to your BIOS or hardware. Shipping a cheap winmodem? There goes your Linux options.

So its with pleasure that I see Dell offering Ubuntu on some of their machines. When it came to voting in IdeaStorm, I personally picked other, and wrote “Fedora or Ubuntu”. Only because my ties with Fedora go back so many years. But deep down inside, I felt it would have been a nightmare for support - fast changing releases every 6-9 months, new features, things changing rapidly, and you get the drift - it might not be useful out of the box. Ubuntu has focused on usability, they have a mix of some binary driver offerings, and their manifesto is to have a “just works” OS. Best of all - you can get support the moment you need it. Fedora is always touted as being unsupported.

This news is great for the Ubuntu community. Training, support, certification, a lot of good things can happen around this.

Why Ubuntu 7.04? Its not a Long Term Support (LTS) release. I guess this is why its on selected desktops and laptops - I see servers being the next market (alongside RHEL and SuSE) when the next release of Ubuntu comes out.

Speaking of community, Canonical is getting some flak for gagging bloggers on Planet Ubuntu. Guess as a company, they’re also dealing with change, and moving into more of the corporate world.

In other quick news, Jerome, a friend and semi-regular IRC buddy is even co-writing Ubuntu Server in Action.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, dell, pre-loaded, book, ubuntu server

Filed in the “I wish I had done this, instead of just thinking about it and sitting on my arse” department.

Fedora Daily Package
The Fedora Daily Package is a great site. Chris Tyler, even gets to pimp his book! Its filled with nuggets of useful information, tips and tricks on how to get things going, and introduces you to some new software that you thought might not have existed. I can only wish the energy to continue, and for us to keep on getting great tips and tricks. Inspired largely from the Debian Package of the Day, one day we might see Fedora’s package count match Debian’s universe.

Full Circle Magazine
Full Circle Magazine, is touted as the free Ubuntu Community Magazine. It looks very, very interesting, but makes a few classic mistakes. Having only a PDF version of the online magazine, is a bit of a bummer - the web is largely best viewed in a web browser, so the individual articles should really be sitting as individual links, and searchable by Google, and so forth. The other mistake I think is not offering monetary rewards for article contribution - IBM developerWorks and Red Hat Magazine offer USD$500 per accepted article, and no matter what you want to say, money is always handy. In these days when one can publish so easily on their own blog, get their own AdSense dollars, it probably makes more sense to pay for content thats going into a “magazine” or being used for commercial marketing purposes (to show an active, vibrant community, even).

Here’s hoping Canonical decide to adopt Full Circle Magazine, make a web-also version, pay even USD$100 per article, and continue its success.

Low cost French computer
The Minitel is something I saw in my French textbooks, back during my high school days of learning a new language. It seems that Neuf Cegetel, a French ISP is now aiming to create a low-cost computer for folk that are unable or unwilling to buy a computer. Reminds me of the PC Gemilang. It has open source software - Firefox, Abiword, Gnumeric. It comes with very little space, but with the world moving online, thin clients seem to make more sense, everyday. There’s also a good chance this has more success than the PC Gemilang, as its ISP supported. And cheap - €167.90 buys you a computer, keyboard, mouse, camera, and a 14″ color monitor. Thats only about €50 cheaper than the PC Gemilang.

I think its safe to say that the Internet has reached everyone that matters, in most first world countries. Anyone else (with such low broadband and Internet penetration rates) is probably not into the Internet, because they’re not even wanting to get a computer. Various reasons probably apply here, but when you bring the cost of accessing the Internet down to a rate where people see it as a consumable, thats where the next wave of Internet customers are coming from. ISPs and online business folk probably should see this shift coming, soon.

Technorati Tags: fedora daily package, debian package of the day, fedora, ubuntu, full circle magazine, ubuntu magazine, minitel, low cost computer, france, pc gemilang

The other day, I got interesting Flickr mail. It was from a Wikipedia writer, who wanted to use a Flickr image of mine for an article. Whoote! I was pretty excited. One thing I found odd, was that the licensing should only be Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. You can’t have the No Deriviatives clause, neither can you have the No Commercial Use clause (why? Is Wikipedia becoming commercial?). So I went thru a little “re-licensing” process for that particular image.

Anyways, not one of my proudest shooting moments, here’s Melanie C, from the Spice Girls. You’re very nicely attributed and all, so I’m pretty happy with my image being in Wikipedia. Shot at 200mm, f/5.6, with a really beginner lens, aka the 55-200mm (yes, long before the days I had the 70-200/2.8).

Technorati Tags: wikipedia, photography, melanic c, creative commons

Its 2007, I’m tired of driving around and not being able to pick up my handset (or doing so, and looking over my shoulder), and its just so much fun chatting into blank space (to onlookers). Okay, all that’s a lie. Stewart & I were looking for a power adapter for his laptop, and we found a closing CompUSA store; Bluetooth headsets were going off for about 50% discount, so I only paid USD$30 for this baby. Go Jabra BT250V!

I hesitated in its purchase, not sure if the charger will blow up when I bring it back to Australia, but the store clerk was ridiculously helpful in finding out. The Motorola headset that was for sale was about half the size of the Jabra, but according to the store clerk, he’s received complaints about the Motorola. Plus the Jabra advertises that it performs better against wind. So I picked it up on a whim.

No returns for me (considering I was going to hop on a plane in a couple of hours after said purchase). Charged it up yesterday, paired it with my Nokia N73, and I’m a happy caamper. It just works. In fact, I can voice dial using the Jabra as well.

It comes with a Mini Gel, and that can be changed depending on which ear I want it configured for. I must say, the behind the ear design is a little odd, so it takes some time to get it on my ear, but once that’s done its a secure fit, and seems rather comfortable. It advertises 8-10 hours of talk time, I haven’t tested it yet, but with a 2 hour to full charge time, I’m kind of impressed. Did I mention, it vibrates, when you’ve got a call - so my phone can be in silent (non-vibrate) mode in my pocket when I sit in the train, and still answer my calls with great ease.

What I do dislike about the charging scenario is that I have yet another American style charger (ick! but not the Jabra’s fault), and you need the little charging dock that comes with the Jabra. You can’t just plug the charger in, which seems a little daft, so this is extra stuff I’ve got to carry when I travel.

Technorati Tags: jabra, jabra bt250v, bluetooth, headset, nokia