So… Not in Gsoc.  It’s a bummer, but in a way I am very happy not being in it this year.  I am very busy as it is, and to fail is worse to me then not getting in at all. I have started my Internship at Miro.  It’s been very productive, at least in my eyes.  [...]

I don’t know why people make such a big deal about Nine Inch Nails‘ With Teeth album. All I ever hear are people complaining that Reznor got lazy, sold out (to get out of his UMG contract), or that the music just plain sucks. I can see how people can argue that With Teeth may not be part of the best of Nine Inch Nails, but it is competing with albums such as The Downward Spiral, The Fragile, and Year Zero. The danger in doing great work such as those albums is that even good stuff can’t even compare. Also, comparing a radio album to concept albums is comparing an apple to oranges. Even still, that apple is still pretty damn good compared to the other apples in the basket. That’s not to say there is no Nine Inch Nails garbage out there. Reznor tends to release anything and everything, including remixes or concept explorations that probably shouldn’t see the light of day. With Teeth is not one of those things. It is still better than 80% of the Industrial/Rock music out there even if it sounds like it was made for the radio. I like it.

I wrote earlier that I was having problems with SUSE Enterprise Linux 10.1 and my wireless card working.  I thought it worked out of the box w/ Ubuntu but I was looking for a different network card.  The Dell D830 that I have and use with Kubuntu is the Intel 3985 and not the 4985.  This card works fine.  Now with the newer card and using 8.04 I can’t get the wireless card to work correctly.  I’ve googled and googled and can’t find a simple and easy step by step guide to get this card to work.   Any help

Dear Lazyweb, Does anyone have any graphs / charts / data comparing each distribution and the amount of commits their respective members did upstream for a project (ie like gnome)? I have seen the kernel ones with Redhat and Novell taking the lead in contributions, didn’t know if their were similar ones for any user space projects?

THANK YOU!

The Ubuntu-ni LoCo Team is holding a Translation Sprint on June 13th. If you don’t live in .ni, you can always join us at #ubuntu-ni in irc.freenode.net What: Ubuntu Translation Sprint When: Friday, June 13th (09:00-16:00) Where: ISI, Managua Be there!! …or… bad things can happen to you!!

Last week's edition of Ciberpaís included a lengthy article which tried to explain Debian's and Ubuntu's OpenSSL problem to unexperienced computer users, it's impact, what should people do and what happens next. Mercè Molist sent in a few questions for me to answer, a small part of which were used in the article. While I don't like a few bits of the article that much, I tried my best to make it clear that Debian is not a bunch of clueless and careless Free Software enthusiasts. The treatment that the incident had in some well known Spanish security-related websites was in my opinion deplorable, so I want to thank Mercè for the opportunity to clarify some of the Debian bashing. I expect the full interview will be published either here or at Mercè's website in the following days.

I have been working pretty hard lately, mainly coding some personal projects. I always used to listen to music whilst coding, these days I tend to listen to podcasts. Is that sad? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I thought I would post a list of Linux and Ubuntu related podcasts which I listen to on a regular basis [the list is presented in no particular order]:

• LugRadio — one of my favourite podcasts and probably THE podcast which got me hooked on listening to podcasts. LugRadio is released every 2 weeks and is currently in its 5th season. The production quality is always excellent and the content can be very thought provoking. Note, the LugRadio presenters are somewhat notorious for their use of colourful language, therefore it is probably not wise to listen to this podcast while at work [without headphones], or in the company of minors ;)
• The Linux Link Tech Show — again, another personal favourite, and again, a podcast which is not particularly safe for work. TLLTS is released every week and is normally over 2 hours in length. It is also probably [?] the longest running of all Linux related podcasts. Production quality is not always the best; however, the show is presented in a down-to-earth manner and the content is varied and interesting. The presenters often interview influential members of the Open Source community.
• Ubuntu UK Podcast — a fairly new podcast, [just released episode 6], but a very good one; IMHO, it could quite easily become the official Ubuntu podcast. The presenters apply the Ubuntu Code of Conduct to the show and therefore it is safe for work. Production quality is excellent, as is the content; Mark Shuttleworth has already been interviewed twice! Hopefully the presenters will be able to continue to push out this level of quality. The show is published every 2 weeks.
• Launchpod — again, another fairly new podcast. Launchpod is not strictly speaking a Linux podcast, still, due to Launchpad's close ties to Ubuntu it is interesting to hear news from the Launchpad developers. Production quality is fair and content ranges from Launchpad specific news to interviews with Launchpad users. There does not seem to be a set release schedule [very un-Ubuntu like]. Note, listen out for the funky base!
• lottalinuxlinks — a Linux related podcast by Dave Yates, recorded at 75 miles per hour during his drive to and from work. I am not sure it is entirely safe [or legal for that matter] to record a podcast whilst driving, still, I enjoy listening to this podcast as it has character :) Like TLLTS, the presenter has a relaxed, down-to-earth approach to podcasting. Production quality is fair and the content is varied. Released frequently.
• Fresh Ubuntu — an Ubuntu specific podcast which covers news and community happenings. Another podcast which is presented in a down-to-earth manner. Production quality is generally good, as is the content which provides an insight into what is occurring within the Ubuntu community. Released most weeks.
• Linux Basement — "Greetings & Salutations", is how this podcast is commonly introduced, it goes downhill from there :D Just kidding, the Linux Basement is another down-to-earth Linux podcast, although content covers other topics such as Drupal and web development. The presenter, Chad Wallonberg, also entertains by writing and performing songs for the show. Production quality is good and the podcast is released every 2 weeks or so.
• Linux Outlaws — a podcast in which the presenters take a "laid-back" look at Linux and the Open Source scene. The presenters have good chemistry and the show is often amusing and insightful, although not particularly safe for work. Production quality is good and the show is released most weeks.
• The Bad Apples — Linux from the perspective of an ex-Apple user. The show has recently been released less frequently than before; still, when it is released it is often varied and insightful.
• The Talk Show — okay, so it is not Linux related; however, it amuses me to listen to Mac fans. Also, is it not good to mix it up now and again? Released sporadically.
• hashlugradio — a podcast which discusses issues raised by the LugRadio podcast and its community. Has recently been released less frequently than before, when it is released, the quality is good and often amusing. Another show featuring colourful language.
• The Linux Action Show — the Linux podcast presented by Bert 'n' Ernie from Sesame Street. Not :) The real presenters, Bryan 'n' Chris, take an energetic look at the latest Linux related news and releases. Production quality and content is excellent. The show does feature some strong language, though not nearly as colourful as LugRadio. The podcast is released every 2 weeks.

The above pretty much sums up the podcasts I am currently subscribed to. Am I missing any which you think I might enjoy? Tags: linux, podcast, ubuntu

As some may know I have entered, together with a team from my company, Holman Fenwick Willan, in this July’s Water Aid 6 Peaks Challenge. This is a challenge to visit the summits of the highest peaks in each of the six regions of the British Isles, all within 72 hours: Snaefell (Isle of Man), Snowdon (Wales), Scafell Pike (England), Ben Nevis (Scotland), Slieve Donard (Ulster) and Corran Tuathail (Republic of Ireland). The walking amounts to a total of 50 miles with climbs of 20,000 feet, two sea crossings, not to mention 1,000 miles of driving in our trusty camper van. In 72 hours… Our team is made up of 6 walkers and 2 drivers. The challenge is in aid of a very worthy charity, Water Aid, and we have undertaken to raise the very significant sum of £4000. We would be very glad of your support, which can be given at our Just Giving website page. The more donations we receive, the more inspired we will be in our training! Please also feel free to pass these details directly onto any family, friends, colleagues or total strangers who you think may be interested in supporting us in this challenge.

Let me tell you something about “less”: You are probably underrating it for no reason. Of course you know “less” is always there and it does it’s job - showing files while being able to scroll backward - and some even use it instead of “tail”. But, hey, let’s examine some of the command line options to get more out of less: -M: this option extends the prompt on the bottom. By default less in most cases just shows the name of the file it is showing, with “-M” turned on, it also shows how many lines the files has, which lines it is currently showing and how far (in percent) you have gone. No killer feature, but nice to have. -i: this option causes searches to ignore cases. A search for “pattern” therefore also finds “PaTTerN”. You like this, don’t you? You like this even more, as this search still enables you to switch case sensitive search on by searching for a pattern containing at least one uppercase letter. A search for “Pattern” for instance would still be case sensitive. If you even want to prevent this, you could use “-I” which totally ignores cases. -r: Sometimes getting warnings about binary characters? With “-r” you tell less to display raw characters. This can help you when displaying files containing color codes. It is said that log files from Rails contain these types of code. -c: Just a gimmick to redraw the screen more clearly by beginning from the top line instead of scrolling. This might result in a slightly increased data transfer rate when using ssh but can improve usability. -a: This causes less to skip found search patterns when pressing “n” not from item to item but from page to page. You might know the pain when searching for a pattern that comes up more than once on a page and you start hammering “n” getting confused on what you have already seen and what not. This options just skips at least the current page before displaying the next found pattern while still marking all patterns of course. -f: This can help you in conjunction with “-r” to force the display of raw characters without being questioned again. Confused about the sequence of the options? Don’t be: $ less -Mircaf is something you just learn or create an alias for. This one, to sum up the options, will display an extended prompt, ignores cases in searches, while being able to switch them on, skip found search patterns at least per page, display raw characters like color codes without asking and redraws the screen as good as possible. Another feature that should be mentioned is the “follow file” mode that some of you might know. It is similar to tail as it shows you the content of a file that gets appended while viewing. You turn this mode on by pressing “F” (uppercase F). The advantage over tail is that you can interrupt the mode by pressing ctrl-c and scroll back though still being able to return to follow by pressing “F”. Not so familiar is the fact that you also can jump into the follow mode from the command line: $ less +F starts the follow mode immediatly. Of course typing “+F” on the command line is not sophisticated as typing “tail” but you can create an alias for it like “ltail” or whatever you like. As a summary: $ alias eless="less -Mircaf" $ alias ltail="less +F" gives you two new commands. “eless” as an extended less provides you with the described features. “ltail” simulates “tail” but enables you to jump back to the normal less by pressing ctrl-c. Instead of creating an alias for “less -Mircaf” you could also use the environment variable “LESS”: $ export LESS="-Mircaf" A credit goes to mnemonikk, who was just too lazy to blog this. Please note: As less is still being developped, command line options might slightly change. For instance in newer version “-R” instead of “-rf” might lead to the same result. Just try it or check the version of less you are running (”less –version”) against the official less changelog.

PCworld:New versions of two of the world's biggest Linux distributions have hit the street. How do they match up?

Interesting idea - Buntfu.com is a community based computer vendor. That means: Anyone can list their inventory of GNU/Linux based computers on our auction style store. Everyones system listed is preconfigured with a complete GNU/Linux desktop or server OS. Together we can provide support for and find help through our community based support forums.

I just lost my mind and decided to try loading Skype on the laptop running Ubuntu. Well, I didn't really lose my mind, but curiosity got the best of me. Perhaps the Linux version is a bit better than the Windows version?

A couple of weeks ago I decided that the release of Ubuntu 8.04 was as good a reason as any to finally take the plunge into the world of open source software properly.

In this issue we cover: new Ubuntu Membership approval process, new Ubuntu Members, new LoCo approval process, LinuxTag 2008, Launchpad 1.2.5, Launchpod episode #3, Forum Tutorial of the week, Ubuntu UK Podcast #6, Full Circle Magazine #13, Team Reports, and much, much more!

I can't count the number of times people have offered $100 bounties for implementing some feature or other in Inkscape. From what I've seen - and I've seen MANY features come into Inkscape from folks who aren't developers - $100 is the wrong way to do it. Not that people are anti-money or anything like that. Certainly we've gotten rabid success out of our Google Summer of Code projects, but these pay out $4500. So maybe $100 just isn't the right price point to stir interest (even a simple feature is going to require 10-20 hrs work, at which point you might make more flipping burgers!) In any case, aside from GSoC, I've not really seen that many successful cash-for-code projects in Inkscape. But I *have* seen a number of similar situations that ended up *quite* successful, but didn't involve money at all. The Mac port of Inkscape is my favorite example. Inkscape started as a Linux-only product but quickly gained a Windows port. A lot users were also very interested in seeing a Mac port, but few of the active developers were all that interested. I think maybe someone even offered a $100 bounty for it, although I'm not certain; in any case none of the existing developers took interest in doing the port. But there was one user that was really interested in getting it, and he sat down and hacked away on it. After a few weeks he talked to me and said it was just too frustrating to get something that worked properly and he was giving up on porting it. (IIRC, he was able to get it to build but not cleanly, and when it ran it didn't work properly.) I sympathized but encouraged him to write up his notes into the Inkscape Wiki, to explain how far he got and the problems he ran into. "Maybe someone else will know how to sort those issues out some day." Meanwhile, people continued to clamor for a Mac port. Eventually, another person took interest in just doing it himself, and when he asked me about it, I pointed him at the wiki page the prior person had written. This was useful in getting a leg up, and he was able to sort out the build problems the first person had run into, but he eventually also gave up frustrated with the limited results he saw. I encouraged him to update the wiki page with his findings. This cycle went on for some time, but eventually enough knowledge had accumulated that someone (JiHo I think) was able to clean it all up into a proper procedure, and to start getting successful builds that more people could use. This enabled people to focus on the next layer up - fixing the Mac-specific bugs. Now there were also complaints that while it ran on Mac, it looked out of place and was hard to install due to its dependence on libx11. People started clamoring for a "Native Mac Inkscape Port". And so the cycle began again... In Inkscape I've seen this pattern repeated again and again. And not just in Inkscape. This seems to be a universal mechanism for how open source works. I'm sure there's an aphorism or law or something that describes it. In any case, the lesson that can be taken from this is that if you want to get some feature or fix into an open source project, rather than offering money, have a go at it yourself. Even if it is well beyond your technical ability or time availability, your efforts may be enough to simulate someone else to eventually have a go at it too. This could be a detailed procedure you followed that got close to working but had a fatal problem. Or a messy patch you made that *should* work but doesn't. Or it might be a list of possible solutions you've ruled out and why. If you think, "I want a way to just throw money at the problem and make it just work," then remind yourself, "Time is money" and throw time at the problem instead of cash. Spend $100 worth of your time banging your head on the issue, trying out ideas and hacking on code if possible, and posting the results even if they turned up negative. They may give someone enough of a clue to stand on your shoulders and reach the goal.

I am pleased to announce that the Michigan LoCo Team is holding a Bug Jam on June 9th at 6:30 pm. What is a Bug Jam? Every day people report bugs about Ubuntu in the bug tracker Launchpad [0] but the number of bugs reported is more than the current bug triagers can effectively handle. In short, the Ubuntu community needs more bug triagers. But how do you triage bugs? Bug Jams are events where people who are interested in learning how to triage bugs get together to learn how to do this and answer everyone’s questions. It is a fun learning event. Also, it is a great way to get started doing your 5-a-day and add your name to this list and increase our team’s ranking: http://daniel.holba.ch/5-a-day-stats/ When and where is our Bug Jam? It is Monday June 9th at 6:30pm at the Main branch of the Clinton-Macomb Public Library [1]. We will be in a conference room with free wifi to library card holders. People without local library cards can sign up for one in 5 minutes, but if you are planning on doing that, please try to show up a little bit early. Directions can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/5rygg3 . What should I do before the Bug Jam? Check out some of the bug triaging resources online right now like: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage There is a wealth of information linked to from this page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad/KnowledgeBase What do you do after the Bug Jam? There are plenty of restaurant/bar options in the area to celebrate a jam well done and eat dinner. Feel free to email the mailing list[2] for coordinating rides and asking questions before hand. [0] https://launchpad.net/ [1] http://cmpl.org/ [2] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-us-mi

Found this in my feed reader today. Classic.

I have been using 4.0.x since January, so I have learned to live with some of the quirks such as suddenly disappearing panels. The KDE4.1 beta fixes many of these problems, as well as gives the desktop a tremendous speed boost. Some other improvements I’ve noticed are: * Smooth scrolling in Dolphin and Konqueror, even on pages/directories containing lots of images. * Drag and drop icons from the menu to the panel and desktop for shortcut launchers * Add more than one panel! * Very good and fast desktop effects with Xrender. Fglrx is currently broken for me, so this is a big issue. * Ozone lets you have differently colored window borders * the Display systemsettings module actually seems to work * Plasma stability (especially nice for a beta) * very innovative “+” and “-” in dolphin when hovering over icons for selecting multiple files/directories * When you resize the panel, the various applets are resized as well. As a side note, I have been using Neon (nightly amarok builds).The default Neon color scheme does match the default plasma color scheme, but it does not match my slightly tweaked scheme. Apachelogger handily came to my rescue and told me to copy the kde4 kdeglobals to the neon config directory. “cp .kde4/share/config/kdeglobals .amarok-nightly/share/config/” will do this for you nicely.

I got the opportunity to sit down at UDS/FOSSCamp with the Brainstorm guys: Stéphane Graber and Nicolas Deschildre. These guys have done an amazing job implementing Brainstorm and adapting it to user feedback, but while they're busy writing the software and finishing school it was clear that they needed help getting developer involvement in the site. One thing we're always cognizant about in the back of our heads is how transparent Ubuntu's development and processes are. It wouldn't be useful if people just posted ideas and got no feedback on the feasibility of their ideas. So I've been collecting developer responses to the big ideas. Today I posted the first response from our X.org maintainer Bryce Harrington to Idea 322. I've also added Chris Cheney's OpenOffice.org responses to Idea 298 and Idea 3395. I'll be posting more responses to ideas over the coming days. I will also be hunting down developers for more responses and getting them more involved in answering ideas. Of course if you're an Ubuntu Developer and would like to post in the developer comments section then we gladly will accept any feedback you can give our users. Get ahold of us and we''ll put you to work. :) These responses will hopefully illuminate the progress of different areas of Ubuntu and educate users on How Things Work(tm). Of course, I also recommend the YouTube Ubuntu Developer Channel for more information. Stéphane and Nicolas have larger plans for Brainstorm so stay tuned!