FLOSS News

I just read this excellent review of the Windows 7 Professional [sic] edition by Ramon Cahenzli. It’s really well written, especially as I assume English is not his native language, detailed, funny and very poignant.

I wish I’d written it. But then that would mean I’d have to buy Windows which isn’t something I really want or need to do.

Here’s a couple of quotes but do go and read it when you have a few minutes spare. You’ll remember why we use Ubuntu and other Free and Open Source software.

I just noticed that I hadn’t posted anything here for what feels like ages – since August the 15th.

So I thought, hmmm, better write something.

But what? A quick update on what’s been going on perhaps? That’ll do…

I’ve been working quite a bit with the brilliant free and open source vtiger CRM recently. Looking at some of the less widely used features and updating our training materials for the recent 5.10 release. I’ve also just submitted a small patch for the Customer Portal feature, to do with its web layout and have been thinking about how best to improve this, and the Webforms modules, to make them easier to customise.

Most readers of this humble blog will be very aware of my personal opinion about Mono and specifically with regards to where it should belong in Ubuntu.

Free and Open Source Software projects are built using a wide variety of programming languages. Blackduck who study this kind of thing have released some interesting data regarding the use of various languages to develop FOSS applications.

C# (the language of choice for Mono advocates) is languishing in 10th place behind Perl, Python, PHP, Java and many not insignificant others.

I’ve been discussing the layout of the forthcoming TB3 release on their mailing list recently.

I wonder…

Since I wrote about getting the Windows license fee refunded on my Asus 1008HA netbook here in the UK, there have been more examples where individuals have had some success.

First we had a story on slashdot in the USA that seemed to be inspired by my own:

[Please Note: If you use the book links from this site to Packt's and decide to buy *any* book from their site, we will get a small commission that we'll use towards the upkeep of our servers etc.]

Trixbox CE 2.6

Following on the heels of the Asterisk AGI Programming book review, Packt asked me to take a look at this one.

It seems, unfortunately, as though my experience with Amazon was not common place.

Neil Wilson left a comment this morning explaining that his request to Amazon did not meet with the same response as my own…

We are not in a position to offer a partial refund for this product. You can of course return the laptop to us for a full refund if you wish

On the 21st July 2009 I reported how Amazon had made it really easy for me to reclaim the cost of the Windows XP license on a new Asus netbook. This was a very popular post for my humble blog; especially after appearing on Slashdot thanks to reader and Digital Tipping Point producer Christian Einfeldt.

Finally.

My wife’s PC was the last bastion of proprietary software hell remaining in our home (and we have quite a few PCs). 2 days ago, Helen explained that she’d been having a nightmare with Windows. You’d start to login and immediately it would log you out again! Nice. And there was no easy way to prevent it. “Safe Mode” did the same thing. Very helpful – not. Googling threw up a lot of people with the same experience and some rather dodgy sounding workarounds to rectify the situation.

Following my earlier post about getting the Microsoft Tax on the Asus netbook refunded very efficiently and painlessly by Amazon, I’ve been doing a little reading, formatting, re-partitioning, installing and updating.

The newest PC in The Open Sourcerer’s household is now duly christened, cleansed and freed from proprietary software hell and will, from this moment forth, be known as Magrat. All our machines are named after characters from the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett.

Yesterday I received a great prize from the people at Miserware for helping with the Beta trial of their power saving software for Linux computers; a new and very shiny Asus 1008HA netbook PC.

Last night in bed I was reading some more of a novel (Not Novell) called “The suspicions of Mr Whicher“. It’s an interesting book, based on a true story about infanticide in the middle 1800s and one of our very first real “detectives”. But I am finding it a bit on the “dry” side truth be told…

Anyway, about 1/2 way through the book I discovered something amazing. A reference to a psychological condition called:

My favourite music player has just been updated and version 1.2 released.

I picked up the story from The H where they’ve done a great job of describing most of the new features in a single paragraph.

Mono seems to be causing a great deal of debate and discussion within the Ubuntu Community right now. I’m sure it probably always has, but it definitely seems that the intensity is building at the moment.

For those who don’t know what Mono is, from their website:

Mono is a cross platform, open source .NET development framework.

A couple of evenings ago we were invited to come and talk about what we do with the team who put together the Ubuntu UK Podcast.