Older blog entries for Burgundavia (starting at number 97)

The sun shines on Debian

While I personally have had an awful last two weeks, I saw something today that made me smile: HP announces support for Debian. As Bdale says, some-days the rock moves.

Just a reminder, I will be helping run the GNOME booth (Booth #9 in the .org section) at LWE and then enjoying the hospitality of Google at Ubucon. Come on by and visit us.

from Wondermark via BoingBoing

Glad the government is keeping me safe

Yes, I am being sarcastic. In wake of the arrest of several individuals in the UK for apparently plotting to blow up a few aircraft and all the subsequent restrictions on what you can and cannot carry on to the plane, I have to wonder: Is air travel truly made safer by this? As my job with Userful has and continues to involve travelling extensively, it has never been clearer to me that airport security is a giant joke, very much a cargo cult. It is a heavily ritualized affair, with all the players going through the motions without the understanding behind them. A stark example of this was during a recent trip to Ottawa: When I passed through the security at Vancouver, any security person not dealing with a person was turned around, back to the entrance, watching the World Cup on a small television screen. At points this included the entire group of them.

So ask yourself this: If all the security screening vanished tomorrow, would air travel be any less safe? I am finding it hard to answer yes to that question.

Well it appears that I am headed to San Francisco, thanks to my employer. I will be at the GNOME booth at Linux World Expo from the 15th to the 17th demonstrating our Desktop Multiplier stuff (packaged by Jordan Mantha as desktop-multiplier in multiverse). After that I will be at Ubucon for the 18th and 19th. Having my trip partially funded by employer means I will be unable to help out with the Ubuntu booth, but judging from the wiki page, there are already some great people running that.

As the 18th is my 24th birthday, I look forward to the drinking BoF held in the afterhours of the first day.

QOTD
Quite easy - they'd be allowed to do that just like these people are allowed this. You may not like it personally, but that is beside the point. Ubuntu (and GPL and other free licenses) do not put a restriction on who can use it beyond following the license terms. Left-wing or right-wing; religious or rational; army or peace organization; chemical industry or Greenpeace; Israel or Palestine; Superman or Lex Luthor - all are allowed to use it freely if they follow the terms." - Jan Moren on ubuntu-devel

Add/Remove ..., reviewed

Seems somebody has finally taken notice of Add/Remove Programs, something that has only been in Ubuntu since 5.04. Read the review here.

However, this brings up an interesting point. Click and Run (CNR) in Linspire gets a lot of press. This is likely because CNR is marketed as a separate entity from Linspire (the distro). In fact, there was even talk of bringing CNR to Ubuntu. So how do we market Add/Remove in the same way? Should we "bundle" the Ubuntu repositories with Add/Remove under some umbrella brand? (Please email meas I have no comments on this blog)

Matt, I struggled with your Firefox issue for long time, but then I had an Epiphany.

And there shall be one less silo...

There is good news on the Linux printing front: The de jure standard of OpenPrinting (a part of the FSG/LSB) has merged with the de facto Linux printing information and driver clearing house, linuxprinting.org.

However, I still see one major issue: That of CUPS. While it is a good piece of software and the de facto standard on Unix machines, CUPS is dual licensed and thus the creators have little commercial interest in helping an initiative to make better Open Source printing drivers for they would cut into the sales of their own product, which they proudly proclaim has over 5300 drivers. Which this Linux Planet review mentions as a selling point of ESP Print Pro, the commercial version of CUPS, over CUPS. Is it time for one of the big Linux vendors, either Novell or Red Hat, to buy out Easy Software and end this dual licensed insanity?

With a , it appears the DCC has slid into history. As these sort of things usually do (think UnitedLinux or UserLinux), there is no formal end, merely radio silence. Likely Ian leaving for FSG and MEPIS moving to Ubuntu were major factors in killing it. However, despite it's acrimonious beginnings, I mourn the passage of the DCC. Any organzation that gets people out of their little silos and talking to each is a good thing.

Clue infects the CBC

In happier news, it appears we have our first mention of Ubuntu at the CBC. In an article on the EOL of Windows 98/ME, we have a mention of Linux, specifically Ubuntu. They even have feeds of some of their stuff in OGG format (lower left, above the listening guide).

While new and interesting ideas about Evolution appear stalled, a group of new applications have been sneaking up to show us all a better, faster, lighter email and calendaring app.

For starters, there is Tinymail, written by Philip Van Hoof. This is followed by Dates and Contacts, which I think are pretty self explanatory. So you say, what about the 148 lines of Python? Well, Chris Lord, who is working on Dates and Contacts for Opened Hand, glued all those three together with a mere 148 lines of Python. The source, just to prove it.

What about the backend? Well, Ross Burton, also of Opened Hand, has been working on an embedded Evolution-Data-Server. Not only does it talk dbus, it even takes up a fraction of the space.

And the best part? No data migration (I hope). For a test I am going to be trying out this awesome combination this weekend. All hail the next evolution of Evolution!