Colin Charles Agenda

At the top of my head now, Linux is hitting the mainstream desktop market, in many variants:

1. Xandros, on the ever popular Asus EeePC’s
2. Foresight Linux, on the new Shuttle KPC’s (USD$199), which are basically small form-factor desktops
3. Fedora, a modified variant anyway, running on the OLPC’s
4. gOS, a variant of Ubuntu, running on the gPC’s
5. Maemo, via scratchbox, on the Nokia n-series handhelds (n770, n800, n810, and presumably more in the future)
6. Ubuntu shipping on some Dell laptops, in select regions

I’m sure I’ve missed out some really amazing devices. But that’s not the point. Do you see a problem with the above?

Xandros, gOS, Ubuntu and Maemo run DPKG, using APT/DEB’s for package management. Fedora, uses RPM. Foresight uses their own Conary based system. OK, lets scratch the package manager woes, now noting that they’re all different. Let’s focus on the desktop environment.

Xandros is some form of KDE, locked down on the Asus. Foresight presumably ships with GNOME by default, as do the Ubuntu on Dell machines. The OLPC ships with Sugar (granted, its market is specific). gOS ships with XFce. Maemo uses GTK, but is remarkably different from a regular GNOME desktop. So now we’ve got different desktop environments too.

Should I then go into package managers? Or down to the nitty gritty, where the init scripts are in a different location? Or that they all use a different method to connect to a wireless network?

So what am I getting at? Complexity.

Not only from a users perspective (say, I go out and buy an Asus Eee PC because its so cheap, and I find Linux sufficient for my needs. Then I need a desktop, so I find the Shuttle KPC which is cheap. However, at this point, the interfaces are completely different, and I’m lost.) but also from a support perspective (Windows XP, Vista is down? I’ll just call my pimply 14 year old niece/nephew to fix it. Linux is down? Problematic? What do I do?).

Some of you are saying, they should be turning to their LUGs if they needed help. Sure, but LUG mailing lists aren’t the most friendly. Newbies can be blatantly told to RTFM.

Let’s then visit their local LPI certified candidate, who’s running a support business. Oh wait, he’s only certified against RPM’s and is clueless with DEBs or Conary. You get the drift…

My beef with all of this, is that there is no standard. There is the GNOME Mobile & Embedded initiative – good. There is the Ubuntu Mobile team – great. What are their aims? To standardise on something for the mobile platform (presumably, like the Eee PCs, the Nokia n-series tablet devices, etc.). Will they achieve it, without hardware vendor buy-in? Probably not.

There lies a problem with mainstream consumer hardware running Linux. Linux is getting friendlier, but all the distribution variants only serve to complicate things, for the end user.

What do you think, the free and open source community can do, to address these issues?

(remember, I didn’t even get into varying versions of shipped software and the problems that can face… or how some devices will come without basic MP3 or DivX decoding support (Fedora has vaguely fixed this with codeina/CodecBuddy, but the others haven’t caught on)… the list can go on)

Technorati Tags: linux, consumer hardware, xandros, foresight linux, asus eeepc, shuttle kpc, fedora, olpc, gOS, gPC, maemo, Ubuntu, dell, package management, desktop environment, gnome, complexity, support, lug, lpi, standards

One thing I’ve found limiting in Zimbra, is the fact that the hot backup is only available in the Network Edition (which costs money). I remember the pain in upgrading Zimbra, and it would have been great if there was a hot backup with an easy restore feature.

Now, they’re talking about voting for Hot Backups to be in the FOSS product. I suggest everyone using Zimbra, or thinking about using Zimbra, to write on the forum, or alternatively email them, so that hot backups make it into the Zimbra OSS edition. Trust me, it will come in handy when you’re upgrading.

Technorati Tags: zimbra, hot backups, oss edition, vote

I had this sudden urge to get my calendar maintained. Google Calendar is what I’ve been using, on-and-off, and its generally been a bit of a love/hate relationship I’ve had with it. Its good that its online, but that also makes it bad – i.e. what happens when I need to pen something down when I’m offline? It supports SMSing me reminders for events (good), it works via my mobile phone (good), there are Twitter interfaces to the calendar (good). It lacks integration from my main email client, Mozilla Thunderbird.

Why Thunderbird some might ask, and not Evolution? Its cross-platform. And if I were placing bets, I’d be betting on Thunderbird over Evolution, any day (in fact, I’m surprised Linux distributors haven’t figured this out as the easiest migration path – Firefox is shipped, but paired with Evolution). But I digress, lets focus on calendering.

There is the Mozilla Calendar Project, which creates SunBird (standalone) or Lightning (a plugin for Thunderbird). Naturally, I’ve chosen to align myself with the latter. My first snag was finding out that the add-on I downloaded, did not work on Linux x86_64. A little work on Google, showed me how to build it; a little further, and I found a contributor build of it, on the Mozilla site. So download Lightning 0.7 for Linux x86_64.

Thunderbird changes: Today Pane button on top-right, all right there is the option of the “today pane”, and bottom-left, there are two new buttons to toggle between email and calendering view

Once that was complete, Lightning offered to import my calendar entries from Evolution. I don’t know if on OS X, it will offer to import from iCal, but it seemed like a good enough feature to have – I however, did not use it, as I’d not been using Evolution before. When Thunderbird starts, you immediately notice options to change to the Calendar, or even bring out the Today Pane.

The secret sauce is however, in installing yet another Thunderbird add-on, the Provider for Google Calendar. Once that is installed, and you’ve read the notes on the GDATA Provider, and understand its limitations, you’re on your way to using Google Calendar, right in Thunderbird!

Lightning, in calendering view in Thunderbird

Its got limitations though. Google Calendar doesn’t support categories, so they don’t show. If you decide to edit/delete a recurring event, it doesn’t work (known bug), and you still need to login to the web interface. If you create a Task in Lightning, and so happen to tack it onto your calendar on Google Calendar, it just disappears (so make sure tasks are tracked in the local calendar); this is because GCal doesn’t do tasks. By default, all alarms are set to be popup’s, and not SMS messaging like I prefer. If you’re offline, it doesn’t show entries (c’mon, cache entries at the very least). This is something that I’d love, and there is work going on to make this happen.

Verdict? These add-on’s are going to stay in my Thunderbird install. There are quirks, I still have to hop on the web interface from time to time, but it looks like as long as I’m online and in Thunderbird, I’m going to be a happy camper when it comes to calendering.

Technorati Tags: mozilla, lightning, thunderbird, calendar, calendering, google calendar, thunderbird add-on

First off, I must apologise to my regular blog readers for all the recent politically motivated content. Its mostly over; well at least the regular pace it was at the last couple of weeks.

Malaysia made history on March 8 2008, during her 12th General Elections. The Barisan Nasional was denied a 2/3rds majority (only about 61% control now), and five states, including the most prominent Selangor (heard the phrase, Klang Valley? Its the economic powerhouse of Malaysia). The last time this happened, there was a dark day in Malaysian history, that have subsequently been written out of the history books. Don’t they learn? History is bound to repeat itself…

I was awake till past 5.30am that fateful day, chatting with the #myoss’ers, and numerous friends on various IM networks. As the results flowed in, everyone was in a state of good shock. This has to be the first general elections, where I saw so many people have a large interest, staying awake, awaiting results. It looks like the Malaysians finally decided, a change needed to happen.

Stalwarts were replaced – Samy Vellu, longest serving cabinet minister lost his Sg. Siput seat, reminding me of November 2007, when John Howard himself lost his own seat in Bennelong, during the Australian Elections.

The ruling coalition blamed the rise of the Internet and online media, for their downfall. I say they had it coming. Part of the New Economic Policy, favoured sending ethnic Malay-Muslims overseas, on a scholarship, for an education; little do they know, that they are all taught to think and started enjoying the good life (eating pork, drinking alcohol, gambling, et al) and wanted it when they had to return to Malaysia. Anwar, vows to end race-based favouritism, and focus on the NEP being there to help deal with issues of poverty (i.e. not to enrich the UMNO leaders and their cronies).

Already, there is talk about implementing a Freedom of Information Act (reported at Malaysiakini, as a statement made by Khalid Ibrahim, the new Selangor MB). I can only hope this translates to action, ASAP.

Friend, open source advocate, popular blogger, participant in NGO events (to be honest, where I first met him – Asia Source, in Bangalore) , Jeff Ooi, has also won by a great majority. I couldn’t be happier for him.

The young, who couldn’t even vote, turned up at the election rallies, and I’m proud to say, a friend from school, Shazeea Banu, was interviewed on Channel News Asia, about why she supports Nurul Izzah (Anwar’s daughter, who also defeated the incumbent with a pretty nice majority).

All in all, congratulations Malaysia. Exciting times are ahead, and here’s me tipping my glass, to you becoming the economic powerhouse that you used to be.

Technorati Tags: malaysia, elections, 2/3rd majority denied, barisan nasional, klang valley, pkr, pas, dap, new economic policy, jeff ooi, shazeea banu

Public Service Announcement: Malaysiakini’s DNS servers have been knocked off the Internet. Basically, they’re pointing to 127.0.0.1, which is localhost (your machine). Live reports of election results are still available, just access Malaysiakini via their IP address: http://122.0.17.30/.

Reason behind the DNS being unavailable is unknown, but do keep up with the Malaysiakini DNS Suspended! post.

BTW, Malaysiakini runs FreeBSD + Apache + Squid :)

There are also 6 mirrors at the time of writing… And remember, the hand that rocks the DNS, is the hand that rules the Internet (or something like that)

Technorati Tags: malaysiakini, ip address, dns

I had the opportunity to visit a school today. Not quite a school you’ll expect to roll-out a deployment of OLPCs (its a top-notch boarding school, with yearly fees that cost as much as completing a 4-year university degree), but a school in Victoria, nonetheless.

Microsoft products are entrenched in the Victorian school system. It so happens that Microsoft ISA Server 2006 is used to power mail for the students. Trying to access mail via the browser, proved to be impossible with the OLPC.

Secure Connection Failed: The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown

The error code received: sec_error_unknown_issuer. So I thought I’d try out giving an exception.

Getting an exception? You need to find advanced encryption settings

Exceptions are impossible to get, seeing that there’s no way to get to the advanced encryption settings location. After coming home, I decided to check up on this (which involves hopping on to the developers IRC channel). Turns out the ticket is #5534: Browser cannot connect to sites with non-standard Certificate Authorities.

I added to the ticket, mainly because the MS ISA Server 2006 actually had a valid certificate, signed by VeriSign. It works fine in Firefox, but just not on the OLPC. Apparently, there’s an FAQ about this too: How to ignore SSL warning about invalid security certificate? However, the idea of installing Opera, just doesn’t bode well with me – the browser itself, must work.

Time to get hacking…

Technorati Tags: olpc, olpc xo, microsoft isa server, ssl, sec_error_unknown_issuer, certificate, encryption, gecko