What can I say? It has been a crazy couple of weeks. Not just for me, but for the world in general. Well, not in general, but certainly on some fronts on which I find fascinating and, not surprisingly, I have an opinion. First off, if you wander off into the wilds of planet *buntu, you may notice an increasingly Lucid Lynx prowling around. Be warned, however, that this Lynx is an Alpha and unless you're the sort of person who likes to mess with Alphas, you might want to steer clear until t...
more »Feels like forever since I posted here. It was last year as I recall which means it's a new year. Happy New Year, everyone!
Last year was also when things started going wrong with my Toshiba notebook.
On the surface it might seem like a tragic loss, but I find it hard to get upset since I've had the computer for two years now, which is pretty much how long I expect any of these things to last. It was (still is, I guess) a Satellite P200-AB1 with a Pentium...
more »Clouds continue to dominate my life it seems. Not just because it's December which, granted, has been awfully cloudy and dark as we push ever closer to the solstice. And while I do so love a good solstice celebration, the ever-decreasing sunlight (when it does make an appearance) at times barely makes up for it. However, the clouds I'm referring to are those associated with computing.
Last Tuesday, I gave a talk at the University of Waterloo as part of their annual
more »A couple of weeks ago, I bought my five year old son an Acer Aspire One netbook. Not that he really needs a netbook, but it's another item in our ever-growing arsenal of tools designed to help him develop the skills he needs to develop. That's not really the story here. The story is that the Acer netbook came with Windows XP pre-installed. Since I primarily wanted to use the netbook as a learning tool, I installed gCompris, TuxPaint, TuxType, and OpenOffice. The latter is set to hide most...
more »Consider this a Thanksgiving post. I know most of you are away eating, or arguing with family. Up here, in the Great White North, Thanksgiving was back in early October so I'm sort of working today. You might say I'm indulging in a different kind of bird. Just what kind of bird, however, was something I was very curious about.
There's a provocatively titled article by Robert Strohmeyer over at PC World that professes "The Future of Linux is Google". It waxes prophetically about how Google will eventually dominate all that is Linux and Open Source, and that "it's time for the Linux world to rally". It starts off with a nod to Ubuntu, with the author telling us he used to b...
more »A few days have passed since the big exciting release of the Karmic Koala. Reviews are mixed with people claiming it's the greatest Ubuntu release of all time, and others saying it's an utter disappointment. That's to be expected, of course. People focus on different things and some people will find themselves running a trouble free release. Others will notice weird video problems, flickering screens, and application crashes. If you really must ask, my experience is mixed. All in all, I am...
more »I should probably start out by letting you know that it's now official! Yes, Ubuntu/Kubuntu and all the other *buntus are out in release 9.10, the very Karmic Koala. After months of running 9.10 alphas, followed by betas, I am now running the official Karmic release. Feels good to be official for a change.
What about you? Did you attend any of the release parties? Heading out to one of the parties still to come? Throw one of your own, perhaps? I did pop the cork on a rather nice bott...
more »Hear that clock ticking? There are only nine days left to the release of Ubuntu 9.10. It's all very exciting and that excitement was bouncing about inside my brain as I drove my son to school this morning. A little ditty was echoing in my mind along with what I might write about the big event, when suddenly it hit me. No, not another car. I was paying attention. What hit me was a fully formed vision of the future, nine days hence. Sort of like what happens on
more »I'd like to begin by apologizing for the complete lack of controversy in today's post. I appreciate your understanding in this difficult time when I am finding it hard to really get upset about anything. But I digress.
Pick up issue #2 of Ubuntu User magazine, open it to page 16, and you'll find an article titled "Cloud View" (by yours truly), the focus of which is Canonical's new offering, Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. You'll find stories hyping this for the upcoming release of...
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