Red Dam

Green Dam, the cybersitter-esque software mandated by the PRC for all new PC’s, is no longer so; after a number of policy reversals computers will no longer be required to run it. It’s a bit ironic that it was pushed with ‘think of the children’ in a country that treats internet addiction by kids with electric shock and/or fatal beatings.

#!Crunchbang Linux

An interesting new entry in the Ubuntu-based distro world is #!Crunchbang Linux (in both full and lite versions), as well as a version especially for the eeePC that is more than a match for the Netbook Remix from eeebuntu. After having tried eeebuntu, Mandriva 2008 Spring, Windows 7ista (Phail), the default Xandros and now #!Crunchbang, their version is the best fit for the first generation 701 (4G) eeePC. Not the freest mind you, as all the codecs, etc are included (as is the array.org kernel); but if your concern is less purity and more practical, then it is nice to get everything setup in one fairly quick step. Something nice about this version is that returning from sleep gets the wifi network immediately, and the conky running with all the shortcuts to open various apps is a nice touch as well.

Dead Parrot

Just another reason to appreciate open source solutions.

Yes We Can

And Did.

It Just Gets Better

Ubuntu already outperforms Vista. And more devices are supported than in any other OS. But you knew that, right?

Aspire One

Very nice review here.

Free At Last

From the unwieldy MS :

“This is the part of the Windows Vista backlash that really matters,” said IDC analyst Richard Shim, who had recently seen HP’s Linux mini-laptop. It’s especially notable, he said, that HP and Dell are experimenting with highly visible non-Windows options. “There aren’t that many companies that can afford to invest in this type of development,” and those two are among them.

A Dream Deferred, No Longer

Wonder how long until we see Ubuntu in the WH.

Scary Moment

Updating from Hardy to Ibex the other day. After changing sources.list and apt-get dist-upgrade, gdm and kdm failed, dropping me to the command line and a bunch of cryptic error messages, chown’ing all my directories to read-only and failing to update as some packages were broken.
After rebooting (and of course this is when the periodic fsck came up), starting up in recovery mode and downloading the correct packages, was able to get kdm running again and thus a desktop environment.
A few notes on what feels different on Ibex: Flash is absolutely brilliant, as are the kernel drivers for the nvidia card, networking is more responsive and some of the odd scim/skim problems (with fonts) seems to have gone away. Still way too early to tell, but all signs point to another brilliant Ubuntu iteration.

The Water’s Fine

There really is no reason to be tied down by a proprietary system any longer. Everything you need to do is available in a Linux distribution of your choice. All you need to do is get the iso file, burn it to CD-R, set your BIOS to boot from CD and all the paid “upgrades“, patch Tuesdays, spyware and other malware will immediately be a thing of the past.

Two or three years ago you might have heard ‘Just get a Mac’, but the usability difference in Apple’s favor is quickly diminishing; by the time ‘Jaunty Jackalope’ is released (Ubuntu 9.04), that too will be but a fading memory.

The days of huge laptops is drawing to a close as well; though some still offer the now ancient XP as a choice, by and large they all run some form of Linux.

When even longtime MS captive HP is considering developing their own Linux distribution, you know that the ship has been breached, and it is only a matter of time before it is fully sunk.

If there is some must have application that has not yet been developed for you, you can always use a virtual machine to run it in; and no, games don’t count.

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