Older blog entries for Burgundavia (starting at number 109)

Steve, please don't fan the flames. The update to DaveJ's blog came because I emailed him politely and pointed out his error.

As for the OLPC stuff, it has been made abundantly clear that the shipping OLPC image will contain completely free software, including no binary blobs from Marvell. The binary blobs are there right now so the boards can be tested while the free firmware is written. I can dig up a reference for this if you want. Remember that the wireless card is completely new, not standard consumer grade stuff.

For the record, I do think we could do better getting stuff upstream. More on this (and Useful's challenges in this area) later.

Rock! I was a little worried my membership application had been lost in the shuffle but I guess my concerns were for naught. Now where is the membership committee so I can join and make certain other people don't wait was as long as I did?

Integrating a Linux desktop into Active Directory is one of the dreams of nearly any Linux admin. The simple fact of the matter is that AD is a very good product and has won in the marketplace. Just hooking up your Linux clients and having them authenticate against AD is not hard, and the ubuntu-directory team is making it easier. However, this is only part of the puzzle. As Jorge Castro said to me, "I would kill to be to control the settings on my Ubuntu clients from AD".

Jorge, start your murdering. Today, Enabled People, makers of Linux-XP, showcased their "Integration Service", which purports to show the controlling of gconf lockdown via AD policy. Interesting, but no code yet, let alone a license the code will be under. We can only dream...

If you live the US, you need to vote. My grandfather used to say to me "You can only complain about the government if you voted". And the only way we are ever going to get a sane US government for the sane to go and vote. Don't know how? Your Guide to Voting

If you possibly can, vote via paper ballot. Electronic voting machines have serious issues and don't buy the argument that it will take weeks to count your vote. Canada has managed to vote via paper ballot for quite some time now and still delivers accurate results on the night of the election.

Please, when you got and create a team on Launchpad, please append the ubuntu- prefix to your team. Thus if you are working on product foobar in Ubuntu, your team is not foobar but ubuntu-foobar.

Why, you ask? Two reasons, namespace and findability

Namespace: Because Launchpad is used by more than just Ubuntu, you don't want to run into a conflict. What if the original authors of foobar want to use LP?

Findability: If you team name contains ubuntu- in its name, it is going to be abundantly clear that you mean foobar in Ubuntu, not just foobar in general.

Yes, long time, no blog

Life happens. A "What I did this summer^WWWfall" coming soon.

Even on Novell's developer pages: How to configure Ubuntu for AD. Thanks Ryan for the link.

You can't fault the Novell guys for trying and SLED 10 isn't a bad product. It is just that you just can't buy a community like Ubuntu's, nor can just expect one to grow absent any structure. This is something which has become more and more apparent in recent weeks. You need things for it to grow on and gardeners to channel the growth into some sort of order. But mostly you need the right frame of mind. As Jane Silber said at Ubucon, "We started by getting the community right and then the company, rather than other way around". It says a lot that the COO of a company would come to a small community gathering and not be there to tell us about how great the company was (well, maybe we already knew that...). In fact, the only time the Canonical people took the floor was when asked to and then only for a few minutes.

After spending I don't know how much time convincing people that Fedora is not alpha for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, they apparently let their CTO out in public and bad things happened. I quote "FC5 and FC6 constituted the role of an alpha", which means, Fedora is an alpha. Lovely. Given I work for a company that bases our product off Fedora and thus what happens to Fedora affects how well I eat this month, I am so very pleased.

A meme, because I can

missing are Ottawa and CalTrain.

Got at b3co.com via Planet Debian

For many a GNOME release now, the gnome-games package has not had a major update. All that is about to change, with Jason Clinton and Andreas Røsda having taken over maintainership. The plan is to remove one game and add one game in the 2.18 cycle (which would be for Edgy+1). However, they need your help in telling them which games you play. Go vote now!

Donnie, I am sorry to hear about Gentoo's community issues. I have to say is that the Gentoo developers in the booth next to ours at LWE were unfailing polite and professional. I believe, and I suspect Jorge would agree, that they were among the most professional and well organized in the .org pavilion. My opinion of Gentoo has risen much higher as a result of it.

PS. I am not sorry we stole Brandon Hale (tseng) away from you. ;)