January 14, 2008
Melissa Draper has recently posted about the damage done to the FOSS community by the use of terms such as “Micro$oft” and “MicroShaft”. I’ve probably been guilty of this a time or two, but I have tried to avoid it in recent use, as it does make the Open Source Community look, well, stupid.
The community needs to put on a better image. We should not sink to the FUD levels that Microsoft uses, and should certainly not draw more attention to Microsoft with “clever” names. Just think about the reaction from the open source community if a Microsoft blogger called Linux “Lusernux” or something similar.
Open Source Developers have spent a lot of time trying to demonstrate the professionalism of the software and content produced by the community. Those with a narrow mind who insult our competition undermine that work. Seriously consider the image that you are presenting when you write. Closed communications have a way of becoming public.
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Posted by David
January 13, 2008
Well, I was finally able to make it to the LoCo (Local Community) F2F (Face to Face) meeting yesterday. To me, it seemed to be a quite successful event. About 16-18 people made it, which meant that we pretty much took over that entire wing of Mellow Mushroom. The food was definitely top notch as well — I had a great calzone. It was really great to get a chance to know some of the people from the IRC, even if I didn’t get a match between name and IRC nick in all cases.
In the future I (and some of the others) would also like to see meetings with activities or presentations. One idea that was tossed around was an open-source LAN party. We could break out games like openarena, tremulous, and others. Hopefully some of these ideas will come together.
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Posted by David
December 31, 2007
From 1996 to 2001, Atlanta played home to the Atlanta Linux Showcase. Linux has certainly gained a substantial following since 2001, and I think it’s about time that we bring a conference back to the Southeast. LinuxWorld Expo has made several appearances in Boston, San Francisco, and elsewhere, but the Southeastern US has been overlooked. Sure, we have PhreakNIC (Tennessee), CarolinaCon (NC), and others, but none of them focus on Linux or Open Source, and they all miss Atlanta, a hotbed of business and IT in the Southeast.
I’m interested in forming a new conference here in Atlanta to focus on Linux and Open Source software. I’d like to make it user-oriented with a focus on home and small/medium business (corporate users probably look for bigger events like LWE). I’d like to see involvement from local LUGs and other organizations. Mostly I’d like to see the exposure for all aspects of this.
Students for Open Source at Georgia State can help in arranging the use of GSU facilities to organize the event. Additionally, cross-promotion within our departments can help to get speakers and equipment needed for the event.
If anyone else is interested in seeing something like this, let me know. Either leave a comment here or email me at david -at- webgroup (dot) org.
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Posted by David
August 15, 2007
Ubuntu 7.10/Gutsy Gibbon is still Alpha Software. That being said, I’ve been running it on my laptop and run into a few snags.
The first, and most annoying (partly because it’s by design) is the removal of the orinoco_cs driver from the kernel package. Apparently they thought everyone would move to hostap. Apparently they didn’t do their homework: Lucent Technologies Orinoco cards are NOT supported by ANY driver other than orinoco_cs. That means my wireless card is effectively useless under the 2.6.22-ubuntu kernel series.
Why am I using a PCMCIA wireless card? Well, I’d bet it has something to do with the bcm43xx driver continuing not to work properly. No surprise there, however… the hardware is broadcom, so what can anyone do but hang their head in shame?
Yesterday I was updating Gutsy and a new ATI driver came down for xorg… so imagine my surprise when, today, I boot my system and get a full black screen. Ooops, looks like the new ati driver is broken. I’m about to go file a bug report on that. Running on the so-slow vesa driver right now, but at least I could get back in.
At this point, I’m back to using a generic video driver and the Feisty Fawn kernel… hopefully there will be some pending updates to repair things.
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Posted by David
August 2, 2007
On July 17, I reported on the self-proclaimed “Windows Guy” giving Ubuntu Linux a try. Well, it’s been two weeks and boy, does he have a lot to say. Fortunately for the Linux community, it’s almost all good.
His experiences are summarized nicely:
“In the end I’ve been very impressed with Ubuntu. After two weeks of banging under the hood and using it as often as I can, it has shown itself to be stable, fast and customizable. Hardware support is solid and application support is good. It is a tweakers paradise. I can work at work and and home. If I had to I could use it as my day-to-day system and not have many regrets. I’m still not as comfortable with it as I am in Windows, but I’m getting there. I may not be a convert yet, but I am a fan.”
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Posted by David
