Showing posts with label ubuntu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ubuntu. Show all posts

Thursday, June 11, 2009

is ubuntu superior?

Due to the agreement between our Education Department and Microsoft I work in a Microsoft centric environment. So when our network manager recently became very enthusiastic about the latest Ubuntu release (9.04), I asked him to spell it out. This is what he said:

Ubuntu is better than Windows (eg. Vista) as follows:
  • managing memory
  • easier to install virtual box, for testing multiple OS environments
  • managing multiple OS environments, it can run 4 separate sessions without noticeable lag (cf. 2 sessions max with Vista and VMware)
  • app support out of the box - it just tells you what you need to run an app and then installs it for you
  • no need to run anti virus software
  • more stable, it never seems to fully crash (blue screen of death)
  • if the window does freeze then it has a kill an app feature which works
btw I bought a dell mini inspiron last year and am now running Ubuntu netbook remix on it.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Kusasa, a Zulu word for tomorrow

Kusasa
http://www.kusasa.org/index.html

This project from Mark Shuttleworth's foundation reflects my ideas of how computers should be used in schools and / or education. What a gem! Thanks Margaret!

Check out Mark Shuttleworth's amazing biography
  • successful IT entrepeneur / venture capitalist (digital certificates and internet privacy)
  • first African Cosmonaut
  • founder of The Shuttleworth Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to social innovation in Africa with a particular focus on education
  • founder of the Ubuntu project ("Linux for human beings")
  • founder of HBD Venture Capital, "Here Be Dragons", which legend has it was used to describe uncharted territory on early maps ...
  • promoter of the Hip2BSquare brand, which aim to make mathematics and science sexy to pupils who are choosing their subjects for high school
"My current project, aims to produce a free desktop OS for the world. Everything you need on a single CD"

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu manifesto

Shuttleworth's Ubuntu philosophy is scattered throughout his blog. I've collected them in one place here.

Big challenges for the Free Software Community
"The real challenge lies ahead - taking free software to the mass market, to your grandparents, to your nieces and nephews, to your friends. This is the next wave, and if we are to be successful we need to articulate the audacious goals clearly and loudly - because that’s how the community process works best"
# 13: "Pretty" as a feature
"If we want the world to embrace free software, we have to make it beautiful..."

#12: Consistent packaging
"... I’d like to see us define distribution-neutral packaging that suits both the source-heads and the distro-heads"

#11: Simplified, rationalised licensing
"I’m absolutely convinced it is free source, not “open” source, which is at the heart of the innovation that will carry free software to ubiquity ... But my voice is only one of many, and I recognise in this world that there are lots of reasonable, rational positions which are different but still, for some people, appropriate ... So what can be done? Well, I turn for inspiration to the work of the Creative Commons. They’ve seen this problem coming a long way off, and realised that it is better to create a clear “licence space” which covers the various permutations and combinations that will come to exist anyway ..."

#10: Pervasive presence
"... turning that haphazard process into a systematic framework - making sure that you (well, more accurately your laptop and your cell phone) know how you should reach out and touch the person you want to communicate with. It’s about an integrated addressbook - no more distinctions between IM and email ..."

#9: Pervasive support
"... why do people say “Linux is not supported”? Because the guy behind the counter at their corner PC-cafe doesn’t support it ... This is why I encourage governments to announce that some portion of their infrastructure will run on Linux - it catalyses the whole ecosystem to make their existing capacity public ..."

#8: Govoritye po Russki
"There are 347 languages with more than a million speakers. But even Ubuntu, which has amazing infrastructure for translation and a great community that actually does the work, is nowhere close to being fully translated in more than 10 or 15 languages"

#007: Great gadgets!
"This world is increasingly defined not so much by the PC, as by the things we use when we are nowhere near a PC. The music player. The smart phone. The digital camera. GPS devices. And many, perhaps most, of these new devices can and do run Linux ..."

#6: Sensory immersion
"What interests me are the ways in which there is cross-over between the virtual world and the real world ... there’s going to be a need for innovation around the ways we blur the lines between real and virtual worlds"

#5: Real real-time collaboration
"... people who work with word processors and spreadsheets have rights too! And they could benefit dramatically from much better collaboration ..."

#4: Plan, execute, DELIVER
"Bugs, feature planning, release management, translation, testing and QA… these are all areas where we need to improve the level of collaboration BETWEEN projects. I think Launchpad is a good start but there’s a long way to go before we’re in the same position that the competition is in - seamless conversations between all developers"

#3: The Extra Dimension
"...an opportunity to rethink and improve on many areas of user interface at the system and app level which have been stagnant for a decade or more"

#2: Granny's new camera
"... the ends of the spectrum - the power users and the don’t-mess-with-my-system users, are already well serviced by Linux ... It’s the middle crowd - the guys who have a computer which they personally modify, attach new hardware to, and expect to interact with a variety of gadgets - that struggle. The problem, in a nutshell, is Granny’s new camera"

#1: Keeping it FREE
"... create something that we’ve never had before, which is a completely level software playing field for every young aspiring IT practitioner, and every aspiring entrepreneur. I believe that’s how we will really change the world, and how we will deliver the full benefit of the movement started more than two decades ago by Richard Stallman"

Friday, December 15, 2006

Hip2BSquare


the blue shows ubuntu growth, cf. Red Hat and SUSE, more graph details here

I'd rather use the Operating System developed by Mark Shuttleworth than Bill Gates

Check out his amazing biography
  • successful IT entrepeneur / venture capitalist (digital certificates and internet privacy)
  • first African Cosmonaut
  • founder of The Shuttleworth Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to social innovation in Africa with a particular focus on education
  • founder of the Ubuntu project ("Linux for human beings")
  • founder of HBD Venture Capital, "Here Be Dragons", which legend has it was used to describe uncharted territory on early maps ...
  • promoter of the Hip2BSquare brand, which aim to make mathematics and science sexy to pupils who are choosing their subjects for high school
"My current project, aims to produce a free desktop OS for the world. Everything you need on a single CD"
Why is the default desktop in Ubuntu brown?
Yes, that's rather unusual in a world where most desktops are blue or green, and the MacOSX has gone kitchenware. Partly, we like the fact that Ubuntu is different, warmer. The computer is not a device any more, it's an extension of your mind, your gateway to other people (by email, voip, irc, and over the web). We wanted a feel that was unique, striking, comforting, and above all, human. We chose brown. That's quite a high risk choice, because to render brown your screen has to render subtle shades of blue, and green, and red.
Likes: spring, cesaria evora, slashdot, chelsea, finally seeing something obvious for the first time, daydreaming, coming home, sinatra, sundowners, durbanville, flirting, string theory, particle physics, linux, python, mp3s, reincarnation, snow, mig-29s, travel, lime marmalade, mozilla, body shots, leopards, the african bush, rajhastan, russian saunas, weightlessness, broadband, iain m banks, skinny-dipping, fancy dress, flashes of insight, inexplicable happinesses, post-adrenaline euphoria, fast convertibles on country roads, clifton, the international space station, artificial intelligence.

Dislikes: admin, legalese, running, wet grey winters, salary negotiations, public speaking.

Monday, December 11, 2006

bug one

Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace.
This is a bug, which Ubuntu is designed to fix

Microsoft has a majority market share | Non-free software is holding back innovation in the IT industry, restricting access to IT to a small part of the world's population and limiting the ability of software developers to reach their full potential, globally. This bug is widely evident in the PC industry.
Steps to repeat:
1. Visit a local PC store.
What happens:
2. Observe that a majority of PC's for sale have non-free software pre-installed
3. Observe very few PC's with Ubuntu and free software pre-installed
What should happen:
1. A majority of the PC's for sale should include only free software like Ubuntu
2. Ubuntu should be marketed in a way such that its amazing features and benefits would be apparent and known by all.
3. The system shall become more and more user friendly as time passes.

- https://launchpad.net/bug1.html
  • Mark Shuttleworth wiki
  • Mark Shuttleworth blog