Linux

I've spent the last couple of days distro hopping on my netbook and ended up with a pretty impressive UNR (Ubuntu Netbook Remix) 10.04. It had been happily running Linux Mint 8 XFCE with full Compiz effects before that.

For a while now I've tried to get a balance of a really useful thumbdrive that I can carry around. I've found a solution which appears to be rather cool and multifaceted, so without further ado, let's dive in.

For a long time now I've autojoined servers and channels on XChat, recently I added one and today I finally snapped and removed one. The channel for the Techrights.org website (formerly known as Boycott Novell) becomes a joke at times, and today I finally had enough. They have 2 channels; the old one #boycottnovell and the new one #techrights. Apparently the old one is a kinda off topic area and not a lot of people join the new one as of yet. Until about 5 minutes ago I autojoined #boycottnovell.

I've found an unusual solution to using Identi.ca on my old P4 desktop that I thought I'd share. To be fair it's a split solution between my desktop my new Samsung Galaxy Portal Android phone. I found that any GUI Twitter / Identi.ca client consumes quite a few resources to have sitting open all the time on the notification applet, some are worse than others. So I now split it with Twidge, Shorten URL and Mustard.

For those people using XMarks and NoScript in Firefox who are having issues with the latest update not being allowed to sync here's a solution I've found. Other solutions may be available. I am using Linux Mint 8 XFCE with Firefox 3.6.6.

A little while back I used Linux Mint 8 Main Edition, as I wanted an easy encrypted home partition and my usual XFCE edition wasn't released. For those who don't know, the Main Edition of Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and is a Gnome environment. It was quite a pleasant experience although I couldn't switch long term. One application I gained a new respect for was Nautilus, the file manager in Gnome.

Microsoft's army of apologists like to spread the word that Linux is a "hobbyists OS", so this post is a look at what that means and why it's a label more suited to Windows. The attack is meant to draw attention to the fact that anyone can write code which appears in Linux, inferring the quality of the code is dubious. Basically, it can't be good quality if people outside the corporation write it.

For the last few weeks I've found myself lashing out unfairly on issues, comments etc online. The latest was my previous post about the Fedora Ambassador Threethirty. It wasn't done for hits on the site, it wasn't done out of malice but it was an attack. It was unfair and the comments I got on it made that clear. I shouldn't need comments to point out what I should have seen but that was how it panned out on this occasion.

A few weeks back Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, asked it's users which non-free applications they'd like to see made available in their Apps Store. The idea as far as I can work out is to take these figures to vendors like Adobe to try and convince them to port applications like Photoshop and Dreamweaver to Linux. The idea is to prove to Adobe that there's a market for their investment. There's one small problem however.

I've noticed recently arguments continue to pop up on Identi.ca around the GNU / FSF with their supporters who seem to try to force people to call Linux "GNU Linux" and can't see the hypocritical stance they're taking. Before I begin, let me point out that I broadly agree with the goals of the FSF, I believe the GPL licence is brilliant, I choose and advocate the use of free software when it's up to the task and therefore a viable option. I'm just getting sick of the same argument over and over again.