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This is from LinuxCon 2010 from August 10-12, in Boston. Stormy Peters from the GNOME Foundation talks about the various non-free web services so many of us use and how that might be a bad thing. This seems to be a reoccurring theme lately eh? That's because there is something to it.

If your browser can't play Ogg Theora video, here's a download link:
http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/linuxfoundation/linuxcon2010/d3/ogg/p1_peters.ogg

For some reason the extension given is .ogg when .ogv would be better. Need a player? Try VLC.

When I wrote my previous post titled "Why I Use Ubuntu", I made a statement that after some reflection I feel is just plain wrong and to be honest, does not make much sense. Although I appreciate all of you not pouncing on it, it has started to bug me and the more I thought about the more I realized just how dumb it read.

"My beef is not with proprietary software as much as it is with outrageous pricing and no access to the code to make it work for you."

I've been building a Fedora Remix for some time now. If I remember correctly I started around Fedora 9 and have continued to build them with each new release. I'm on Fedora 13 now. I usually rebuild the remix every time a new set of updates comes out. So far I had rebuilt the i686 and the x86_64 remix 46 times each... and then someone reported some problems with the last couple of builds. I didn't notice because I had been on vacation and was doing the rebuilds remotely without testing the final product. I figured if it built ok, it was probably ok... because I hadn't previously had any problems with any builds.

In the vein of recent posts, I thought I might take a second to explain how I came to use Ubuntu. My first Linux experience was with Red Hat 5 or 6 I believe. I got CD out of the back of one of those Teach your Linux books. I was probably 16 at the time, and I knew a fair bit about computers but nothing serious. But I could whip up a little Turbo Pascal and QBasic :) Anyhow, I was of the mindset that "Hacking" was cool, and Linux popped up a lot in 2600 and Phrack magazines. I remember it took me the better part of a whole weekend to install it to the point where I could finally bring up an X server with the tiled background and big black X. Getting it to use the dial up modem and connect to my ISP took several more hours. I played around with it for about a week I think, concluding "this is neat, but I'm not really sure what to do with it."

I am a PC, Mac, and Linux user. At night I dual boot between Vista and Ubuntu and during the day I use a Mac almost exclusively. As a result, there are many things I like about using my Mac at work and would not mind seeing them on my home desktop. Since buying a Mac right now for personal use is out of the question I have to make do with what I already have. At any rate, one of the Mac features I actually like is the Dock.

If you are reading this it is because I finally got around to taking Scott up on his request for Ubuntu content. I am not a well versed Linux user and over the years have had a love/hate relationship with Linux and the open source community. My beef is not with proprietary software as much as it is with outrageous pricing and no access to the code to make it work for you. I don’t believe Microsoft or Apple are 100% evil nor do I think that Linux or open source are always the best solution for the job - nor do I think Microsoft or Apple are always the best solution.

I wrote a rather long response to a posting I saw on Fedora Planet entitled, "Death of the Year of the Linux Desktop". I'm sharing it here as well.

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The desktop is dead? Some disagree. See this very compressed video on the "Death of the Desktop":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQzZVP1mua0

What makes someone a winner and what makes someone a loser? Linux on the desktop has tens of millions of users. While that might not be double-digit market share it is still a significant number of users. Anyone who looks at those numbers and calls them losing must have thought the game was winnable to begin with. It wasn't. FOSS does not spend hundreds of millions on advertising and billions on under-the-table deals with hardware makers... FOSS simply does not operate on the same playing field. The free hand of the market happens to be attached to a twisted arm.

In reality there aren't any winners and losers because it isn't a race. While those who are in it for money have certain ways to measure success, in FOSS you just make the best software you can and hope users will appreciate it. Of course the squeaky wheels always make the most noise and there are lots of complainers out there (see discussions on KDE 3.x vs. 4.x as an example) but that doesn't mean that vast majority of us FOSS users aren't very happy.

If you know me, you know I'm a Red Hat / Fedora fanboy. I have written a blog post that explain why I'm fond of them and when someone asks me, I refer to it.

Recently a GNOME survey (aka the Neary report) came out that showed who contributes to GNOME and at what levels. Not so oddly enough the results of it turned out similarly to periodic Linux kernel surveys done by LWN and Greg KH. The results being that Red Hat is the top named contributor.

It just so happens that Canonical (the sponsor of Ubuntu) typically does not fair so well on such surveys and as a result they are often criticized for their perceived lack of upstream contributions.

I don't usually repost mailing list messages but just got this one in my inbox from the OpenNode folks. Since I'm a big virtualization geek, I'm sharing. Haven't heard of OpenNode? Here's a brief description before I get to the status update email:

OpenNode is a open source server virtualization solution providing easy to use (CentOS / RHEL based) bare-metal ISO installer and supporting both OpenVZ container-based virtualization and emerging KVM full virtualization technology on the same physical host.

So, OpenNode is a lot like Proxmox VE except OpenNode is based on CentOS and uses libvirt, virt-manager, and other Red Hat standard tools.

Ok, so you know about the XO-1.5 and you've been told about the XO-1.5 HS which is an X0 but with a different keyboard. I finally ran across two pictures of one and here they are:

OLPC XO-1.5 HS

You have to look closely but yes, that is an OLPC. The darker color, antennas down, and hard plastic keyboard really make for a different look, eh? I have no idea why the desktop background on display is from Fedora 7. I believe the idea for offering a model for older kids with a different keyboard came from seeing some altered OLPC units that modders had done. I wish I had some bigger pictures so I could see the keyboard better. It looks very similar to my Acer keyboard except for the function keys.