Want to understand the difference between free and non-free, restricted and unrestricted software? The following system notifications provide a big clue:
System notification Ubuntu Linux style
System notification Windows 7 Starter Edition style
FOSS to the rescue again. Earlier today I found myself using a pencil and paper to work out some IP address-CIDR prefix combinations required to make up an address range that I needed to add to Firestarter’s policy rules. I thought, “This is madness, there’s got to be something in the Ubuntu repositories”. There was, of course, both command line and GUI tools. I use GNOME so installed the GNOME Internet Protocol Calculator, which was written by Samuel Abels, a Debian community member (I think). What a straightforward and excellent tool this is. Wish I’d had it 10 years ago when I was supporting NT4 networks.
GNOME Internet Protocol Calculator
Quote of the week is from the French Police Save Millions Switching To Ubuntu story on SlashDot.
“Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users. Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority.”
Version status of some key web development related packages in the repositories of the upcoming Ubuntu Linux 9.04:
Languages: Groovy 1.5 (1.5.7-1) Perl 5.10 (5.10.0-19ubuntu1) PHP 5.2 (5.2.6.dfsg.1-3ubuntu2) Python 2.6 (2.6.1-0ubuntu3) Python 3.0 (3.0.1-0ubuntu2) Ruby 1.8 (1.8.7.72-3) Ruby 1.9 (1.9.0.2-9ubuntu1) Databases: MySQL 5.1 (5.1.31-1ubuntu2) PostgreSQL 8.3 (8.3.6-1build1) SQLite 3.6 (3.6.10-1) Web Servers: Apache 2.2 (2.2.11-2ubuntu1) lighttpd 1.4 (1.4.19-5ubuntu6) nginx 0.6 (0.6.35-0ubuntu1) Frameworks & Applications: CakePHP 1.2 (1.2.0.7692-rc3-1) Catalyst 5.7 (5.7015-0ubuntu1) CherryPy 3.0 (3.0.2-2) Django 1.0.2 (1.0.2-1) Drupal 5 (5.15-1ubuntu1) Drupal 6 (6.6-3) Grails --- (not included in 9.04) MoinMoin 1.8 (1.8.1-1.1ubuntu1) phpBB 3.0 (3.0.4-0ubuntu1) Pylons 0.9.6 (0.9.6.2-2) Rails 2.1 (2.1.0-6) TurboGears 1.0.8 (1.0.8-1)
Ubuntu 9.04 packages: full list of packages (text only)
From the ubuntu.com wiki: Intrepid Ibex release parties
Waxy O’Connors, just off Leicester Square - 14-16 Rupert Street, London, W1D 6DD. Map
We have the Dargle Bar booked. It’s located on the lower level and looks out onto the Tree Room. We will have our own private bar and you can also order food here. Nearest tubes to Waxy’s are Leicester Sq or Piccadilly
Spread the word!
A belated farewell to the Feisty Fawn, the Ubuntu release that tipped the seesaw for me, finally persuading me to abandon Windows for my day to day computing. I noticed the support “end of life” notice on the ubuntu.com website yesterday and couldn’t help but sigh.
I joined the Ubuntu party with version 6.06, but it wasn’t until 7.04 that I felt comfortable making the jump. Feisty ran as well on my desktops and server as it did on our relatively low-spec family laptop. Of course it wasn’t perfect, but it was plenty good enough. I don’t mind admitting that I would get a warm, tingly feeling (put your mind back in the gutter!) whenever I saw the splash screen as the system booted. That boot logo had come to represent security, reliability, power, freedom, ease-of-use, and crucially, Ubuntu’s inclusive and tolerant community.
A big thanks to all who made it possible: GNU, the kernel maintainers, Debian, Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical, the Ubuntu developers and community, and the tens of thousands of programmers, hackers, project managers, bug reporters, documentation writers, financial contributers, etc. etc. from the Free and open source software communities who have made and continue to make it all possible. What an awesome and worthy endeavour GNU/Linux is.
Here’s looking forward to Intrepid!
Wikipedia is in the process of migrating its 400-odd servers from a mix of RedHat and Fedora installations to the server edition of Ubuntu. It’s a great coup for the Ubuntu project and the feedback gained from Wikipedia’s operations will no doubt be very valuable indeed.
One obvious point to make is that given the profile of Wikipedia’s operations, any issues they may encounter while adopting Ubuntu Server are going to be exposed in a very public way. But hey, it’s all going to be character building stuff!
The article also highlights another encouraging possibility:
Despite these efforts to push Ubuntu in the server market, Canonical has had difficulty competing with Red Hat and Novell for enterprise server marketshare. Some changing trends could, however, soon give Ubuntu an advantage. Organizations are increasingly turning toward free, community-driven Linux distributions as in-house Linux expertise becomes more accessible. During a presentation at the LinuxWorld conference earlier this year, 451 Group analyst Jay Lyman said that Ubuntu and CentOS will both gain enterprise acceptance as a result of this trend.
A couple of weeks back I bought an Asustek Eee PC 900 in order to obtain some seriously mobile networking and computing (see screenshots). I considered waiting for the 901 but really wanted to take the device on a trip down to Cornwall so took the plunge. I opted for the black model; no kitchenware here thank you ;-). It sports 20 GB of storage split across 4 and 16 GB solid state drives, 1GB of DDR II SDRAM, a 900MHz Celeron Mobile CPU and a 1024 x 600 resolution display on a 22.7cm (8.9″) diagonal TFT panel.
Ubuntu Hardy Heron running on my Asus Eee PC 900
Like many other Eee PC owners it seems, it didn’t take long (about 5 minutes) before I decided that the pre-installed version of Xandros had to go. Functionally, there’s nothing wrong with the default OS but it probably won’t appeal to those who are used to the standard GNOME, KDE or other more conventional Linux desktops. Eee PC’s Xandros eschews common Linux desktop configurations in favour of a simple tab-based application launcher style interface. It also presents you with licensing agreements which must be agreed to for both the customised operating system and at least one of the tools. Nevertheless, it possesses a capable set of applications that will take care of the essential tasks such as web browsing, email, word processing, Skype, music, basic photo and video editing, and more besides. It uses tried and trusted free software favourites such as OpenOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird, together with some of the most popular KDE applications providing the rest of the core functionality and features. Importantly, the Eee’s version of Xandros has (naturally enough) been tailored specifically for the machine and everything works perfectly with the hardware. However, it doesn’t feel much like Linux, not least because neither a terminal window nor package manager is available by default.
If you want a “more kosher” Linux desktop, the full KDE-based Xandros desktop can be installed, but I decided to go for Ubuntu instead. I initially tried a version of Xubuntu 7.10, eeeXubuntu, customized for the original EEE 701, but the wi-fi packed up after I downloaded the first batch of updates and a couple of hours of diddling about with suggested solutions failed to restore it. I was concerned that a GNOME installation might be a bit much for the Eee’s relatively limited hardware resources, but was attracted to the idea that the Eee would be running the same apps and tools as my desktop machine and so gave Ubuntu EEE a whirl, a customised version of Ubuntu 8.04.
The install went pretty well and most, if not all, of the Eee’s hardware worked without further tweaks. There were some issues such as the audio volume adjustment keys and the wireless adapter power switch failing to work (although the former can always be adjusted via the standard software controls and the latter can be switched on and off in the BIOS). In addition, shutting down Ubuntu from within a GNOME session fails to subsequently power off the hardware (requiring instead a five second push of the power button), whereas choosing the shutdown option from the login screen shuts the machine down correctly. There are a few other minor glitches as well, although workarounds and fixes, which I haven’t yet got around to trying, exist for many of these. (The fact that I haven’t got around to trying them yet indicates how relatively trivial the issues are.)
Multiple GNOME windows running on the Eee PC 900
Glitches notwithstanding, the core features worked fine. Ubuntu installed without fuss and the Wi-Fi worked out of the box. I was immediately able to connect to my WPA2 network and most of Ubuntu’s tools and standard functionality seem to be present and correct. My Wi-Fi connectivity survived the initial surge of updates. I needn’t have worried about performance, it’s perfectly acceptable thanks in part to the full gigabyte of DDR II RAM. The only performance irritation so far has been the boot time which is a rather agricultural 53 seconds. I didn’t record the Xandros start up times, but I think the boot up time was well under half the time that Ubuntu EEE is taking (there are scripts available that claim to reduce Ubuntu Eee’s start up time, I’ll try them out and report back). Not all of that start up time is taken booting Ubuntu, it takes around 6-7 seconds for the Eee’s BIOS splash screen to appear and the grub menu displays at around the 10 second mark.
I admit that I got a thrill when I first saw the Ubuntu logo together with the “circle of friends” on the black boot screen on such a small device. The ability to carry Linux around on a device weighing around a kilo, that is smaller than a typical computing book, is pretty cool. The key differences between Ubuntu EEE and the standard version of 8.04 seem to be driver installation scripts, smaller fonts, Evolution, GIMP and some other apps not installed by default, and the creators have tried to banish the brown and orange hues, replacing them with a conventional blue, Xubuntu-style desktop (based on the Clear Looks theme, I think). I wasn’t having any of that and restored the Human theme and Ubuntu’s default browns and oranges 
A blue background still appears momentarily somewhere between logging in and the session desktop appearing. I guess the Ubuntu EEE authors are in the “lose the brown!” camp.
This picture should give you a pretty good idea of the dimensions of the Eee PC 900
OK. I’m out of time this evening. I’ll probably create a Part II to this post in the next few days.
NB. The Eee PC’s screen pixels are physically smaller than those on most desktop LCD panels. For example, when viewed on standard 17″ and 20″ TFT panels the “original size” (1024×600) screenshots in my Flickr set will appear around 30% larger than the actual screen size on the EEE.
