is a short blog on a blog a blog or a microblog?

This was going to be longer, but I’m exhausted…

I’ve been using Fedora 11 for about a month…ever since we determined we’d like to scale with our Linux program and Ubuntu doesn’t seem to give us that opportunity.  I am looking at OCS Inventory NG and GLPI (initialism is French) to stick with Ubuntu, but the set-up for OCS has been a pain so far.  I need to give it MySQL permissions, which will be a job once I’m home and remoted in or left for tomorrow.
Basically, we are looking for a Landscape replacement, so if you’ve got ideas, let me know.  eBox was previously suggested and that’s not going to work because it doesn’t do package management.

As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for helping out!

Karmic Koala, Python, Ubuntu Spacewalk, etc.

Ok, it’s just get this out of the way early. There is no spacewalk for Ubuntu.  Well, there’s Landscape, but if you haven’t already discovered Landscape and know it’s proprietary, you probably weren’t looking very hard.  There is work for Debian support for spacewalk, but a student is undertaking that work and it looks like he probably has a year left.  So, it’s coming, probably, but not that soon.

I’m using Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 pre-alpha.  So far no problems except one time trying to update I got a dependency error.

I kinda like Supertux.  I don’t feel like I have a lot of time for gaming, but since gaming is a known lag point for Linux, I feel like I should take some time to learn some games so when people say there isn’t stuff I’ll have something intelligent to say.  Any suggestions?  I *love* Worms, but Wormux is far inferior.

I got a Python: Create – Modify – Resuse by Jim Knowlton on Wrox.  I haven’t had a chance to do much with it, but I’m excited about it.

So, the main reason I’m writing isn’t in the subject (bad form, I know).  At work we are looking for a solution for our travel laptops.  We are looking for rugged/semi-rugged/professional grade netbooks.  The concern many have (I’m not one of these people) is that the netbooks will get beat up.  There doesn’t seem to be good literature online about these machines.  Do semi-rugged netbooks exist?  We’re looking to stay around $300 but certainly not more than $450.  Any help is appreciated!

Karmic Koala, PhotoCampMKE and new space in Madison

Some quick news and notes.

1) ZOMG is simple and buggy, but effective.  If you want it to work with both http://libre.fm and http://last.fm, you’ve got to use the version at http://packages.debian.org/sid/i386/zomg/download.  Woe be to you if you don’t have a Debian based system.  Thankfully my two main home systems run Ubuntu (at work I have Ubuntu, Fedora and Vista [likely to move to Win7 Beta soon]).

2) PhotoCampMKE was great.  I was distracted by upgrading my Android phone, but you can check some of my stuff on flickr (I’m dawhitfield there).

3) A few people are working on getting some co-working space set up in Madison.  Let me know if you’re interested!

4) I’m going to upgrade a second partition to Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 right after this post.  Good times.
Ugh, release early, release often.  Seriously, if you want to know what’s up, you should follow me on http://identi.ca.

OpenCamp, Skype and reading

I was reading an article on Google Chrome and it’s spell-checking and was reminded that I said I’d write more on OpenCamp: An Open Everything Event today.  As I went looking for that link it was 11:59…so, I sorta hit the deadline. Though it’s going to get published “tomorrow”.  Anyway, I wanted to spend a little time discussing why exactly I didn’t have a chance to write much about OpenCamp.

For one, UNC beat Miami 69-65 and it’s a treat when the games are actually on here in Wisconsin, so I watched.  I then watched a little of the NBA All-Star game.  I have no idea when the last time I did that was.  It was probably in high school, but maybe even further back than that.  Not having papers to right or things I’m being forced to read has opened up a lot of time. This is not the place for sports talk though.  If you’re interested, check out my sports Twitter account.

Aside from the fun, I slept late (which was needed because this new cardio routine is wearing me out) and worked on Skype.  This is what I want to spend just a little time discussing.  Skype in Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu 9.04 and Windows XP all either crashes or drops calls.  Note that I’ve tried 8.10 and 9.04 on the same hardware (an HP), but also 8.10 on a Dell and Windows XP on an Acer.  I know some people use Skype as their primary phone and with all the problems I’ve had, I don’t see how this is possible.  Now, I already had a post about how the audio won’t work in Ubuntu 9.04.  The audio works fine in 8.10, Skype just crashes.  Assuming all these people that use Skype aren’t nuts, there’s a few points of problem.  I’m on Charter in Verona, WI and my friend is on Time Warner in Raleigh, NC.  Either of those providers could be doing something weird.  It could be something networking on her end or on my end.  I tried moving the computer closer to the router.  I’ve tried ending other bandwidth usage on the home network.  Wireless in 9.04 seems to be a little sketchy, but dropping calls shouldn’t cause the program to crash!  Tomorrow I plan to test with my parents and if we continue to get dropped calls, I’ll plug in to the router.  If I still get dropped calls, it’s likely either Charter or Time Warner (my parents also have Time Warner, but not in Raleigh).

Also, I should say I spent a fair amount of time testing dimdim and then Camfrog.  Despite what the Wikipedia article says, Camfrog does not appear to work in WINE on 8.10 or 9.04.  I guess this doesn’t really refute what the article says since the article says 8.0x (a clear indication they don’t understand the Ubuntu naming scheme), but I did have high hopes.  I’d like to use dimdim, since it’s FOSS, but I could not get audio to work in Linux and in Windows I could not get video to work.  Neither of the two individuals on the conference call with me could figure it out either.  It certainly isn’t as easy to use as Skpe and I gain nothing from using it, so I won’t be using that.

In happier news, dual monitors on Linux seems to be going much smoother these days.  The way the monitors are initially on top of each other is a bit bizarre though.  Using the second monitor has also killed my desktop effects, but I prefer the screen real estate.

I’m also soon to finish a book on Marx, which is interesting both from a community and from a historical perspective.  It’s interesting to me how much you can see later world events in what Marx said (but then again, this book was written in 1975, so maybe it’s designed that way).  Whatever your political leanings, now is the time to figure out something about economics and Marx was certainly an influential thinker and as an international community leader, I think there are some lessons to be learned from that aspect too.  Once I finish with that book I’ll probably be reading on travel books…though I don’t think I’ll be traveling as much in the next few years as I had originally planned.

Tomorrow should be a hectic day at work. Staff Meeting days always are. Assuming I get home at a reasonable hour, I’ll try to sort out what’s been going on on the Open Everything Madison list and maybe talk a bit about some of my ideas for sessions.

forgot one

As I moved from the living and laptop to the bedroom and desktop I realized I forgot one major project…fixing dual monitors on Ibex with nvidia.  I fixed the “not working at all” issue, but I still need my second monitor.

new blog title and what Linux needs to go to the next level

On the way back from Chicago this evening I thought a lot about openness.  I was asked recently what my ultimate goal is.  I think the answer is that I’d like for institutions with which I or my friends and family are affiliated don’t waste money on proprietary software.  Proprietary software can be good, even great software, but all software has bugs and security flaws.  Why not have the ability to fix them yourself?  As was recently ask at BarCampMilwaukee3 by another participant, “why pay for buggy software?”  Well, the answer may be that it’s the best, but I urge you to think about the total cost of ownership, and I don’t just mean for Windows Vista or Windows XP, but for staying in the Window paradigm.  I’m 25.  In 40 years, how much money will companies I work for spend on Microsoft?  If you gradually phase in FOSS alternatives, how much money can be saved?  How much more control will we have of our software, leading to increased productivity?  Switching is difficulty, but the switch is better done now than later.  To make that transition easier, I think Linux needs Photoshop and iTunes.  I don’t think either of these companies has anything to fear from Linux, but they both have something to fear from FOSS.  Legitimizing FOSS is putting one foot in the grave for these companies, at least on a software level.  However, even if Adobe did release Photoshop for Linux, it would be a long time before GIMP overtakes Photoshop.  In fact, moving to Linux could free up software dollars in budgets for more people to buy Adobe products.  Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Acrobat are industry standard software and are going nowhere soon. It’s hard to say what exactly would happen to Apple if it put iTunes on Linux.  In the short term, they could expect more iTunes sales.  Despite all the closed things Apple does, basing OS X off of BSD seems to have made a lot of folks in the FOSS community happy.  Apple also does some great things for FOSS with their support of Apache, MySQL and PHP.  And, of course, there’s the mutual enemy.  While I don’t see either happening any time soon, I do think that more software needs to make it to Linux for Linux to make the next step.

As for me, I’ve recently gotten an Ubuntu machine on our domain.  The next step is to be able to access domain resources.  That way, I’ll be able to be more productive while saving my employer some money on Microsoft licensing.

The point of all this rambling is, I changed the site name to better reflect the things I feel I should be talking about.

change working title?

So, I am done with Vista for at least a month in between jobs.  I hadn’t been using Vista my last few days at work in favor of Ubuntu anyway.  I am planning on installing Fedora 9 on a virtual machine on my laptop. Here’s a run down of what I was running:

Office desktop: primarily ubuntu, SUSE in a virtual box and Vista dual boot

Office laptop: primarily XP, ubuntu dual boot

both of those boxes are gone.

Home desktop: ubuntu only

Home laptop: ubuntu only

test box: I haven’t used this in a while as I’ve been busy, but I think this is also ubuntu only.

Now, my brother just installed Vista to test and he had been an XP guy while testing ubuntu too, so next week after he moves home I might be seeing it more.  At home my dad has an OS X work laptop and they have a very slow XP Dell.  I think they might have a DOS box in the bedroom, but maybe Windows 3.1.  They had both for a while and I’m not sure if they still have either.  Oh, my brother has a desktop too, and I think it is ubuntu only also, but it gets little use.  Should I go to Wisconsin (likely), I’ll have to get MS certified.  I’ll probably soon be looking to get Red Hat certified too for job reasons (why I’m installing Fedora in virtual box).  The next few months of life should be exciting one way or another.

This brings me back to the main point.  While this blog has never been exclusively about Vista and more about my job related issues in general, since I am no longer a Vista user, it seems strange for the blog to be titled that.  Thoughts?