jonathan carter

Ubuntu Feisty Release

Ubuntu 7.04 has been released on Thursday, 19 April. It’s in my opinion, the best Ubuntu release ever. Quite possibly because this has been a relatively long release cycle compared to previous releases. My favourite new feature is how it provides information about proprietary drivers that the system needs to run properly. This will make it easier for users who want to buy new hardware in the future to test whether a system can run on free-software-only before purchasing it.

Yesterday I went to the Ubuntu 7.04 release party in Cape Town (photos). It was a usual collection of Cluggers and other weird people, we had some drinks and Morgan burnt some Feisty CD’s.

Digital Freedom Expo

In parallel with the Ubuntu release, was the Digital Freedom Expo. I had to miss a big part of it due to work commitments, but listened to the live webcasts and caught up on the last day. I got a chance to play with Antoinne’s OLPC Laptop, which was quite fun (I now know how to get a terminal on it, yay!)

Impi Linux Progress

Following on the Ubuntu release, the next Impi Linux release is also imminent. Impi Linux is the Southern African Ubuntu system tailored for enterprise clients, and our main target market at this stage is various South African government departments. Stephan Buys blogged about the new artwork in Impi Linux, expect some announcements shortly

Thunderbird 2

The new Mozilla Thunderbird has also been released this week. It provides better mail tagging and an improved RSS reader. Even though Thunderbird 2.0 looks quite a bit better, I’ll wait until I feel gutsy enought to upgrade to Gutsy before using it

I spent the last week in Johannesburg, at the Impi Linux offices, where I’ve been freshly employed. It’s quite exciting, our local government is making a strong move to open source and free software, and Impi Linux is already signed up to do big parts of the migration, and it seems that more and more government departments are switching fast in what seems to be a domino effect. What’s also interesting is to see how government is turning away from vendors who have dodgy policies on patents, although we have good local people to thank for increasing awareness on the patent issues.

Impi Linux have recently been working hard on recruiting good technical staff, and I’m glad to be in a team where I can learn from so much. They also have Thomas Black on board, who initiated the Open Source team at the Shuttleworth Foundation way before Ubuntu even existed, out of which tuXlabs, Freedom Toasters, the Go-Open Source campaign and other interesting projects emerged from. I enjoyed working with Thomas in the past, and I’m looking forward to working with him in the newly formed Cape Town office. They’re also hiring some cool people from all over to work on the new government implementations. If you’re good at what you do, and you want a decent free software job that pays good, consider sending your C.V. to my new boss.

Working with free software in your day job is challenging and rewarding, remember to tell your friends to learn and use GNU/Linux!