jonathan carter

I just subscribed to Python magazine, who have just released their first issue. The first issue is available at no cost, and future issues will be available at different costs depending on how you’d like to read it.

I wasn’t sure whether it’s the right thing to do to buy a Python magazine, considering that there are so much good free material out there, but the quality of the first issue seems very good, and if it will improve my skills, then I think it’s certainly worth while.

Found some real good news via Slashdot this morning, Russia will have a locally built Linux distribution, called “Russian OS”, installed in every school in the country by 2009. It doesn’t seem that they’ve chosen on which distribution this will be based on, but I hope it will be Ubuntu. I’d actually be happy with Debian too (as a second prize), but with Ubuntu they get a great system and can get commercial support from Canonical. This is really good news for the open source world. Hopefully we will see more announcements of this kind in the future.

Ooh, and another interesting find in the RSS reader is from Groklaw. Jill Carpenter, who does the artwork for Groklaw, has created a wallpaper for Edubuntu that will be the default wallpaper in Edubuntu 7.10! Way to go Jill!

And that reminds me… some people requested that I upload the slides of the GNOME CLUG talk I presented a few weeks ago. Get them here.

I’m quite surprised at the lack of blog posts there have been about the news that ATI will be working with the Open Source community to develop 100% free 2D and 3D drivers for the Radeon chipsets. This is real big news, considering that, if you ask most Linux enthusiasts what the biggest problems in GNU/Linux distributions are, it normally comes down to the few extra proprietary software that people have to install, which are usually Java, Flash, drivers and binary firmware blobs.

Intel has been providing specifications to the community for some time now. Now that ATI (now part of AMD) will be doing the same, it will hopefully put a good deal of pressure on Nvidia to also provide specifications.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu 7.10 is already in feature freeze, and won’t ship the free ATI drivers. Mark Shuttleworth said in an interview that even though it won’t be available in the initial 7.10 release, it will be installable via ATI’s installer, and the Ubuntu team will provide the new drivers via an update, once packaged and tested.

Since I mentioned Flash earlier, I think it’s worth saying that the GNU Gnash project is moving very fast, and works as a replacement for Macromedia Flash for many users. It will be provided in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), due for release next month.

Yesterday, the Cape Town Wireless Users Group (CT-WUG) met and elected our first committee. I’ve only been on the WUG a few months, users connect to high-sites put up on the hills and high buildings, and the high-sites are connected to each other to form a large user-driven network. Currently we have about 30 members. The WUG is quite useful for our users, since local Internet bandwidth is very expensive.

Many users run services like VoIP, mail and some game servers. I share an Ubuntu mirror that contains dapper, edgy, feisty and gutsy binaries for main, universe, multiverse and restricted. I’m also currently sharing web too via a local-only DSL account, which is useful for some members that don’t have Internet, and planning to add some more things when I have some free time again one day!

It was decided yesterday that we’d start with a small committee, I think this was a very good idea. We had a quick vote and the following people have been elected:

• Grant Delaney (mufasa) - Chairman
• Henk Burnett (rellik) - Vice Chairman
• Wynand Karsten (TheFox) - Secretary
• Herman Mathee (n0s) - Treasurer

The committee is made up of very active and enthusiastic members, Grant (better known as mufasa on the wug) initiated the first link. We’re also going to formalise other parts of the WUG, and start teams for managing certain technical aspects of the WUG. We decided that CTWUG would formally exist as a research platform. Also, thanks to David Savage who chaired the meeting yesterday, he did a great job of keeping the meeting focussed and making sure that everyone understood what we were doing.

I hope to see CTWUG grow quite drastically and cover most of Cape Town in the next year or so. It would also be nice to see CTWUG become a member of WAPA, an interest was expressed yesterday to get CTWUG more recognised by all the various industry and control bodies, such as ICASA, I think we’ll get there.

PS: if you’re on Facebook, and on the WUG, don’t forget to join the CTWUG group.

 

Debian turns 14 today. That’s a LONG time for a free software project (for any software project, really). I can’t wait to see what Ubuntu looks like when it turns 14. That would be… Ubuntu 18.10? Congratulations Debian! Here’s to the next 14!!! Also a personal thank you to everyone who has worked to making Debian, the planet’s universal operating system, rock!

 

As Christer Edwards reports, the 4th Alpha release of Ubuntu 7.10 is available for testing. Christer sums up everything quite nicely, but I’d just like to add one thing though. If you have restricted bandwidth, you can use rsync to update between builds, whether they are daily builds or new alpha builds. Rsync (mostly) only downloads the differences between CD images, saving you time and bandwidth.

If you have an Edubuntu alpha server ISO for example, and you’d want to update it, and the new ISO image is located at http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/gutsy/tribe-4/gutsy-server-i386.iso, then you simply need to replace the ‘http’ with ‘rsync’, and add a ‘cdimage’ after the ‘cdimage.ubuntu.com’, then you can use it with the rsync command to sync it to the latest image:

$ rsync -avP rsync://cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/edubuntu/releases/gutsy/tribe-4/gutsy-server-i386.iso gutsy-server-i386.iso

You need to do that in a directory that currently contains an older copy of the ISO image. I suggest you make a copy of the old ISO, just in case there is something wrong with a newer build that makes the image unusable!

While you’re at it, also try out the newest LTSP builds available for Gutsy. LTSP has made some important strides in this release. One of the most interesting changes, is that NFS has been dropped in favour of NBD, which currently provides increased performance, and will allow for better security in the future.