yelamdenu

In een paar jaar tijd (4 jaar) heeft Ubuntu zich ontwikkeld van een nieuwe, op Debian gebaseerde linuxdistributie, tot de eerste keuze voor linux op de desktop voor de “gemiddelde” gebruiker.
Men vraagt zich wel eens af wat nu het geheim van Ubuntu is. Ubuntu/Canonical (het bedrijf achter Ubuntu van softwaremiljonair Mark Shuttleworth) heeft een paar keuzes gemaakt die erg goed werken.

- Zich richten op de Gnome-desktopomgeving en GTK+ software, met KDE slechts als hobby erbij maar zeker geen prioriteit — zo kan het project zich concentreren op één geheel;
- In principe geen versie-updates van software binnen een release (zoals o.a. Fedora dat doet);
- Een simpel cd’tje dat live draait en meteen als installatiemedium kan worden gebruikt, en wel voordat de andere grote distributies het deden;
- De cash gebruiken van Mark Shuttleworth voor gratis op aanvraag op te sturen media als marketing (dit kun je zeker niet uitvlakken als factor, maar de discussie over de werkelijke impact daarvan gaat door — had Ubuntu ook de faam verworven die het nu heeft zonder deze gratis cd’s die massaal over rondzwierven?).

Door deze keuzes, die deels zijn ingegeven door het KISS-principe (keep it simple, stupid!) is Ubuntu “Debian” genoeg voor de “serieuze” linux’ers die een beetje neerkijken op Mandriva of (open)SuSE; het is “rolling-release” genoeg (upgrades zonder nieuwe installatie) om interessant te zijn voor mensen die hun pc’tje twee jaar achtereen willen laten werken zonder tussendoor een nieuwe installatie (een van de nadelen van openSuSE en Fedora*, die zo echter wel meer ingrijpende wijzigingen en vernieuwingen kunnen doorvoeren). Ubuntu is snel en simpel genoeg voor iedereen (niet zo snel en simpel als Slackware, dat echter weer veel minder toegankelijk is); en stabiel genoeg voor de meeste mensen, maar met tegelijkertijd een actuele verzameling software (Debian is erg stabiel maar na verloop van een half jaar weer minder actueel; Fedora is erg actueel maar af en toe levert dat verrassingen op).

Eigenlijk is Ubuntu nergens werkelijk supergoed in, maar in al die dingen is het “good enough” (dit is ook een van Linus Torvalds’ motto’s). Alles bij elkaar is Ubuntu dus toch weer stiekemweg erg goed.
Dat is, vermoed ik, vast het geheim van Ubuntu.

*Fedora is mijn persoonlijke favoriet, zie:
http://fedoraproject.org/
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f9.html

Someone on a software-related blog stated the following:

    (…)

    But doing things for "going green" or "climate change" is bunch of garbage perpetrated by fascists and all the liberal nonsense. Being environmentally-friendly is a good thing, but doing anything because of "climate change" or for "global warming", is an invalid argument continuously poured out by crazy liberals who don’t think for themself and do not question all scientific evidence before deciding for themself if they even believe it exsists or not.

Well, you’re right, but for the wrong reasons.
"Climate change" is a hoax, not because it’s not there, but because there is literally *NOTHING* that one can do about it. The CO2 is simply there, no way to bring it down.
But there is a valid reason to cut the use of energy. And that is called Peak Oil. It’s fairly simple, actually, the cheap oil is running out (not, "the oil is running out"). This affects oil *AND* food prices everywhere now.

The reason the climate change hoax is promoted is to put the public safely to sleep and create an issue that people can debate on while the establishment is out for real business.
Because in the end, nobody gives a [peep] about "climate change". And everybody knows that, still it’s nice to give people in the opposition, who have nothing to do anyway, some toys.

See what happens in the US - finally people start buying the cars most of the rest of the world drives. The somewhat less greedy-for-gas type. Not because of Al Gore’s Sermons, but because of Uncle Sam’s Clams.

But I do think that you, as well, have been caught by the distraction, because not only is the climate change thing a hoax, the "there is no CO2 problem" controversy it ITSELF a hoax too.

Some people signaled that with the rise of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, more people on the innernets seem to express their hatred of the millionaire-funded project. 

Well, hatred of Ubuntu is obvious.

People that feel good about being special using Linux, feel kinda funny that even granny and uncle John can now use Linux (i.e., Ubuntu, cause that’s what their nephew installed for them) without having to resort to King Geek daily.

It does take some of the Xclusivité out of the deal. First Linux’s goal was world domination, then it seems to kind of happen on some scale and then its suddenly scary.

I think we should try to find a way to criticise certain projects and distros in a fair way without ending up in the trenches. That might be more difficult than asking from a newb to recompile his kernel, fix Grub and kill X to load his new xorg.conf. Let’s face it people, Ubuntu’s doing something right. So do so many other projects.

I still recommend CentOS for the stable and Fedora for the funkiness, but it’s getting hard with this Buntu release being LTS. Ubuntu’s doing someting right, just find out what, copy that, improve on that. It’s legal, it’s encouraged, it’s being done.

What’s good for the distro king, is good for the distro joker.

For those interested in running or installing a Linux operating system such as Fedora, or a BSD operating system such as FreeBSD or PCBSD* it is nice to check the procedure since burning a pile of bad cd’s is a waste of disks, your wallet, and your mood.

 Windows users need a special tool such as Nero to burn a downloaded image file to disk properly (often this has the extension .iso.) Windows cannot, as far as I’m informed, burn an image to disk.

Of course there are two ways of burning an image file to disk: one is to just copy the file to the cd, which is useless, except for archiving or backups. Don’t store Linux images, they age quickly and they’re easily downloaded from a torrent network.

The second way is to create a bootable disk from the image file. This is the option one has to look for in any cd/dvd burning program, such as Nero. Nero’s interface is painful to the eyes, and there are other programs, but in general it will do to find the option "burn as image’, ‘create bootable disk from image’ or similar descriptions. Don’t use options with the word ‘data’ in it, since those options will probably just archive the file to disk. Which is not a problem if you like to decorate your teenage walls with old useless CD’s, though.

But before burning anything to disk one has to check if the downloaded file has not been corrupted; after all, some downloads do fail. The way to do this on Linux/Unix systems is to check the md5sum or, less common but the default for Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS, etc., the sha1sum. This is not the place to discuss the technology behind this - for one because I do not know.

it’s very simple: open a terminal, and type

~]$ md5sum /home/you/path/to/latestngreatest.iso or

~]$ sha1sum /home/you/path/to/latestngreatest.iso

On Apple/OS X systems, the same applies, but the command is md5 instead of md5sum. The difference probably has its roots somewhere in Unix/BSD vs. Linux politics. :) It’s possible that OS X has a graphical tool for this in the Disk Utility, but since a) I’ve never looked for it, and b) I haven’t met many Apple users that are willing to erase their disks for Linux or another BSD, I will leave you with the terminal option.

After a while you will see a meaningless list of letters and numbers; compare this to the provided checksum to see if they’re equal and you’re done. 

Something to recommend is the use of  CD+RW or CD-RW (rewritable), because if you end up being frequently curious at Ubuntu’s, Fedora’s or Debian’s latest release, this will save you a pile of CD’s or DVD’s.

Disk should always be written at a low speed such as 4x because this minimises the chance of failures, which are usually fatal for your attempt to install or run, since this is software, not a pile of mp3s on a disk we’re dealing with. 

To boot on a regular PC, make sure the BIOS is set to first look for something to boot from in the DVD/CD drive; I assume most people will be aware of that, but the key to enter the BIOS right after starting your system is usually Del[ete], F2 or something. Some systems are stubborn, but if you can’t get a machine to boot off the disk drive, because you can’t enter the BIOS (sometimes there are ‘brand’ BIOS’es like IBM’s or Toshiba’s, that are different from the off the shelve ones), try to find what kind of things you have to do or call/email some support folks of your vendor. That’s what they’re payed for, after all. You might need the serial number of your machine.

If consulting said vendor or its website is to no avail, just try to press all kinds of function keys at once when starting the system, it won’t kill the system, and you have a good chance of getting into the place where you can adjust the boot order, boot sequence, or whatever they call it.

 Have lots of fun freeing your pc or laptop. And remember, distro hopping is bad for one’s health. :)

*if you’re ready for BSD, I don’t assume you need this information. But I include it because Linux is not the only thing out there in the free/open Unix world. And then there’s even Solaris, these days. :)

Announce Fedora 8

On this autumn period where the best fruit are matured, it comes the time to harvest the new Fedora release.

This new Fedora is named “WereWolf”, but do not be afraid this release will bring you all the safety and stability that you could dream of.
The main point of this new version is without any doubt

SIMPLICITY

After 5 months of intense work, and in order to provide you the latest technologies, this new release will be for you as for us a major evolution.

The major new features are (among others):

Codek Buddy (aka codeina) :
By default Fedora does not provide non free codecs. This is sometimes a problem for the end users who has to install them on their own. This is the reason why Codec Buddy has been created. This tool is able to help you to install the required codecs to helps you to listen to your MP3 or watch your movies, in a very simple way.

PulseAudio: (NTBR)
Fedora 8 provides the last generation of sound server. The goal is to offer to the music fan a great improvement to the support of low latency. The new technology opens the gate to new functionalities like decrease automatically the volume of the noise when you are watching a movie.

System-config-firewall :
This new interface is much more accessible for the new Fedora users. It is a very intuitive interface thanks to its step by step configuration.

System-config-selinux :
Nowadays, the configuration of SELinux is distinct from the one of the firewall, in a new user friendly interface.

System-config-printer : (NTBR)
The printer configuration system has also been changed. During the installation, it will now create automatically the printing queue, this is the end of the steps where so much users has failed on the past.

NetworkManager 0.7 :
Entirely rewritten in order to satisfy to the wired and wireless network, giving a higher speed of connection and a better integration (thanks among other to the Dbus API and the WPA for the wireless).

Better laptop support :
Thanks to the information returned by “smolt” the Fedora team has improved the management of the Suspend to Ram and Suspend to Disk system, and the recognition of the multimedia keys on the keyboard.

Package management :
Pirut (a GUI for yum, the package manager) has been updated in order to meet the users’ demand. It is now able to manage directly the repositories from this GUI, simplifying a lot the work of new users.

Fedora 8’s theme :
For each new Fedora release a new theme is created. For Fedora 8, the icons, the windows’ border have also been changed to fit the theme. This project is named “Nodoka”.
The desktop background is named “Infinity”. You could say, “yes, well it is just a new desktop background”, however the main innovation for this background is that it changes over the day, from the blue in the morning to a relax and peacefull purple on the evening.

Virtualization :
Virtualization is an important part that more and more people use, within this new release, virtualization has also evolved. The safety has been greatly improved thanks to a new library that allows you to use the SSL/TLS protocol to secure your access. The other modifications are on the graphical interface of virt-manager, more user friendly and providing the last functionalities.

FEL (Fedora Electronic Lab) :
This new product made in Fedora has been created by the SIG (Special Interest Group) “embedded”. This project try to implement as much applications as possible. This software and tools are focus on a electronic theme in order to provide a live-cd to universities.

For the developers, we did not forget that the last version of eclipse 3.3 is available for Fedora. This new version provides a lot of new functions:
JDT : for Java development.
CDT : Editor, builder and debugger for C and C++.
Autotools : plugin for CDT to support autoconf, and automake (among others).
Mylyn : first interface that allows the developers to request the
Bugzilla’s database.
PHPEclipse : plugin for PHP development of test.
Specfile editor : plugin for the SpecFiles for RPM creation.
PyDev : plugin for Python
…

In order to get this new release, you can go to this page :
http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora

The Fedora ambassador, from the FedoraProject.

There’s something remarkable going on in the (operating system) software world. This has, actually, been going on for quite a few years. A lot of users tired of proprietary (’closed’) software and the licenses that go with it, and of course the flaws that many people perceive are in Microsoft Windows, now turn to something called Linux. Many of them get so enthusiastic that they start to actively convert Windows users to Linux.

It would be dishonest of me to claim that I haven’t tried this occasionally; the thing is that Linux and free software is actually often very good. But I did learn: don’t disturb the happy Windows user. They may use all kinds of illegally installed anti-virus software, they may have an unknown number of unnecessary services (or spyware programs) running on their pc’s; they may have all kinds of hidden frustrations, as long as they don’t complain, don’t try to linuxify them if they’re not really open to it.

Installing the Mozilla Firefox browser on Windows would be a good idea, though.